The Premiership faces perhaps its biggest ever political challenge from what is in effect a combined front of the new culture secretary, Andy Burnham and FA chairman Lord Triesman. Everton supporter Burnham has been tipped as a possible future Labour leader and responding to the concerns expressed by some football fans should do him no political harm.
The Premiership faces perhaps its biggest ever political challenge from what is in effect a combined front of the new culture secretary, Andy Burnham and FA chairman Lord Triesman. Everton supporter Burnham has been tipped as a possible future Labour leader and responding to the concerns expressed by some football fans should do him no political harm. Both Burnham and Triesman feel empowered by the political climate that favours greater regulation following what some commentators have trumpeted as the end of the Anglo-American model of free market capitalism, although they should perhaps avoid being as hasty as those who earlier proclaimed the end of ideology. Burnham insists that the government did not want to interfere in the running of the game and that it was for football authorities to decide how to address the issues. However, they have effectively been issued with a three month ultimatum by the culture secretary. The Labour Government has generally enjoyed excellent relationships with the Premiership and will ultimately feel constrained about destroying something that is important to the profit line of News International. However, that does not mean that there may not be some modifications to the model as the result of the discussions that will now take place.
Addressing the annual conference of Supporters’ Direct, the body he once chaired, Mr Burnhaim laid out seven areas of concern, including transparency of club finances and debt, insolvency risks, the league’s ‘fit and proper person’ rule for owners and the number of foreign players. ‘Despite the levels of money in the game, football must be a sporting competition run like a business and not vice versa,’ he said. He demanded a response from football’s three English governing bodies – the Premier League, the Football Association and the Football League – in the new year. Though aimed across football’s hierarchy, the thrust of his attack was clearly directed at the Premiership. His personal conviction is that the new wave of overseas owners and heavily-leveraged takeovers threaten to destroy the link between some clubs and their communities. He argued, ‘The game is becoming increasingly polarised. The top clubs who build on global success are in danger of becoming detached from their communities.’
For many big clubs, of course, that detachment has already occurred. The caricature of the Manchester United supporter living in Guildford is a familiar one and there are certainly plenty of United supporters in Surrey who do not originate from Manchester. Arsenal supporters go to the Emirates from all over southern England and well beyond. It is very easily to slip into a nostalgic haze about fans walking to their local ground wearing rosettes and sipping steaming cups of Bovril at half time. There have always been some clubs that have been dominant. A student I am currently supervising for a dissertation on the political economy of football did not realise that Arsenal was a rich club in the inter-war period (hence the ‘marble halls’ of Highbury) or that a club like Charlton had a number of foreign players after the Second World War (from South Africa).
Nevertheless, the imbalances have become greater than in the past, particularly in terms of the ‘top four’ in the Premiership, although the Champions League is part of the story there. The ‘fit and proper persons’ test has been apparently insufficiently stringent in design and application. There are also ways that one could tweak the Premiership model to improve competitive balance, although none of them would be straightforward, given that the existing leading clubs are unlikely to support anything that undermines their success and profitability. Even so, the Premiership is facing a pressure to ‘do something’ and when that call comes from the media and politicians, it generally has regulatory consequences. Nevertheless, the Premiership could offer some concessions without undermining its basic model which really rests on a lucrative TV deal.