This week Gary Lineker and Gary Neville launched a petition asking for the government to implement an independent regulator to oversee English football by December 2021. Their petition is here and I would urge people who have not signed it to do so.
How petitions work is that the government will respond to any petition which is ruled in order (so it is clear what is being asked, and is in Parliament’s gift to deliver it) and attains 10,000 responses. If a petition reaches 100,000 responses, it will be considered for debate in Parliament. At time of writing it had surpassed the 100,000 response mark and sits at over 140,000. A debate is already scheduled for 14 June.
The government’s response to this petition is going to be pretty straightforward - this is something which is already being considered as part of the government’s Fan-Led Review into Football. It appears in the Terms of Reference (which I wrote about, you can find that here) so is being seriously looked into. The Parliamentary debate is likely to see the government respond with the same argument - though there will be plenty of grandstanding from MPs of all party affiliations over how much they have always loved the team which happens to be in the constituency they were parachuted into.
There is no doubt an independent regulator is needed. There is support from fans, the existing structures managing the game clearly do not work, and football is too important an industry to not have proper regulation. What is more interesting to me is the ask that this should come into place by December 2021. The question I ask is whether it is possible to set up a regulator by then? And if so, what steps need to be taken in that time.
December 2021 is a seemingly arbitrary deadline. It comes mid-season and not linked to the financial year (which businesses - as football clubs ultimately are - tend to work from). The petition itself closes on 13 November, meaning they expect this to be turned around within days of the petition closing. But. Being generous and taking the start date in May, the government has six months to put in place all the necessary legislation to bring in the regulator.
Right now, nobody (and I would include the two Garys in this) has answers to all the questions of what an independent regulator should look like. And, even if the two Garys do, they can’t dictate the shape of that to an industry that must be consulted before major changes such as this.
To understand the scale of what is being asked, here are all the steps that need to take place in the next six months, if the government is to meet the December deadline:
- Gathering evidence
This is a particularly important step. The Fan-Led Review needs to gather opinion from clubs, players, fans, officials, broadcasters and figures right across football. But the clue is in the name - it will be led by fans. While the two Garys are no doubt football fans, Lineker is an influential pundit and Neville is both a pundit and a club owner. The Review is not designed to be led by the most influential with the biggest platforms, it will need time to gather this evidence to understand how deep the problems run.
- Developing conclusions
The Review will take the evidence and draw conclusions in all of the areas relating to its Terms of Reference. This will be wide-ranging, but on the independent regulator alone it will need to consider the issues with the existing regulations, the issues with the regulators at present, and why the game is being failed by the current system.
- Developing proposals
From those conclusions, proposals and recommendations will be made for what needs to change and what should come next. There are big questions here for a new regulator. What powers should it have? What actions can it take for clubs who don’t comply? Who will Chair it? Who will sit on its board? Will there be fan, player, club or owner representation? How will it interact with the FA, Premier League. EFL, LMA, PFA, fan groups and broadcasters? How will it be funded? All these questions - plus many more - need to have concrete answers which will stand up to scrutiny.
- Writing the report
What good are proposals if the report they are contained in is so poorly written nobody has a clue what you are on about? This will be a landmark report (for better or worse) and will be pored over by politicians, football writers and fans for any and all nuggets of information - and read with a critic’s eye for what is left out. You can’t write a landmark report like this overnight. It’s not your dissertation.
- Consulting on the proposals
Change cannot simply be forced through without consulting the industry it is set to be affected. Clubs, players, fans, the FA, leagues, officials, broadcasters and many, many, more interested parties all need proper time to digest the proposals and respond to a genuine consultation over every proposal and what it means for the game. This is too important to be a box ticking, open-and-shut exercise. It will need time to be done properly - especially if the proposals are not deemed sufficient enough.
The general rule with consultations is this: The more complex and the more impactful the proposals, the more time should be afforded for affected parties to submit responses. The Terms of Reference for this report suggest this will be a massive set of deep, meaningful changes proposed. They will need a lengthy time for the proposals to be consulted on.
- Responding to the consultation
Once the consultation closes, the government then needs to take the responses to that consultation, digest them, and formulate its response to them. Does the consultation back up what they proposed? Or will they make changes as a result of the feedback? There is likely to be a huge amount of responses to any consultation around the Fan-Led Review. This alone could take months.
- Drafting laws
After a consultation is closed, and the response is released, the government would then set into process the drafting of any laws which need changing in order to implement the proposals. This step will not happen if the proposals are so minor they do not require changes in the law - but the ideas mooted around include the German-style 50%+1 fan ownership model, and the guaranteeing of player and fan representatives on club boards. A new football regulator would also need to be placed on the statute book (IE would need laws passing) with its powers set out in legislation.
- Debating and approving laws
Once the laws are written and published, the Bill setting them out need time to be debated. A Bill goes through four stages as it winds its way through the Commons:
First Reading (where its title is simply announced to the House)
Second Reading (where the core principles are debated)
Committee stage (where amendments are considered)
Third Reading (where all MPs vote on the final version following the amendments)
Then it has to go through this all again in the House of Lords - and any amendments they make will mean it needs to go back to the Commons again (and then any further amendments the Commons makes would then have to go back to the Lords - a process known as Ping Pong).
This process is summed on the picture below:
After both Houses approve a Bill, it goes for Royal Assent - where it is signed off by the Monarch. This is usually an immediate formality.
While this whole process can be rammed through all stages in a matter of hours, this is usually only in an emergency. If football wants the legislation to stand up to proper scrutiny, it should be comfortable with allowing both the Commons and the Lords to debate the changes and make amendments if something is not quite right.
- Providing time for football to adapt to the new rules
Any new laws need an implementation stage which provides a deadline for an industry to get its house in order so it is ready for new rules to come into place. For an industry of the scale and importance of football - and something so serious as implementing a new independent regulator - this could again take more than six months on its own.
In sum, for all the above to take place by December, this is an overwhelmingly ambitious timeline. The Fan-Led Review alone may not be completed by December, never mind all the following steps which need to fall into place to implement any laws which come out of it.
My question though is whether it is possible to completely trim down the timeline to get an independent regulator through by December. It is possible for the government to ram through legislation in a day. For rules to come in immediately. And it is possible for the fan-led review to have the independent regulator carved out of its terms of reference and fast-tracked. It is also possible for changes to be made which are so minor that it needs no legislation at all (though an independent regulator with no legal powers would not be able to do any regulating). That is all possible, but is that something football really needs?
I ask because an independent regulator is a hugely important body when it comes to football. It needs to have consent from clubs, fans, players, managers, broadcasters and everyone who has an interest in the game. When there are so many bodies which need to interact, understand and work with the new regulator - when many are likely to have powers taken away by this regulator, and all will have to answer to this regulator when things go wrong, it at the very least means proper consultation with all affected parties.
The main problem with the European Super League proposals were the way they were announced. By shady club executives who gathered in a backroom and decided they would set up a new league and take all the money with them. They put together the proposals with no input from fans. Their own players and managers were left in the dark, and none of them were prepared to front up the plans in public. It was arrogantly expecting football to bend to their will.
And this is exactly why a new regulator needs to have approval and have its role, functions and powers formed by meaningful engagement with the people who matter most - the fans. That’s why the fan-led review (at least if taken at face value) is a powerful opportunity for football. It is a chance to reshape the game so it works in the interests of fans. So while, yes, theoretically one could completely sidestep many of the above steps, ram a new regulator through at pace, or put in place a regulator with no legal ability to do any regulating, that would mean little to no engagement with fans. It would be another proposal just hoisted on the game, with everyone expected to accept it. That is the last thing football needs.
This is why I feel the petition as it stands, with a December 2021 deadline, is reckless. It builds up the hopes that fans will get something that just isn’t feasible in the timeframe offered - at least not in the way we would want an independent regulator to work.
But that doesn’t mean you should ignore the petition. I ask you to sign it for a reason. The two Garys have done something which is certainly usable by the Fan-Led Review. The petition itself passed the 100,000 signatures mark on the day it was launched. It now sits at over 140,000 signatures - there is no doubt that there is support for an independent regulator among football fans.
What the two Garys should do now is make sure this support is recognised by Tracy Crouch as she gathers evidence and starts to work through the terms of reference of the review. It is clear football needs better regulation and the existing measures have failed. The fans clearly want it too. But to put all the above steps in place by December would only lead to a rushed reorganisation which could turn out to be at best a colossal waste of time and potentially far more damaging than the existing system.
So the answer is yes, theoretically one could implement an independent regulator by December. But the last thing football needs is yet another body which fails to get clubs in order. The Fan-Led Review needs to get this right and needs time to do this properly. Influential figures like Gary Lineker and Gary Neville - as well meaning as this petition is - should use their platforms to ensure the Fan-Led Review genuinely solves the problems facing football, not to argue for a rushed conclusion. That is the last thing football needs.
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