Reforming Football Ownership and Funding

The Prime Minister was given the opportunity to back a supporters’ bid for a football club facing liquidation today.

The situation of Ilkeston Town FC was put to him at PM’s Questions this lunchtime. Mr Cameron made a general noise of support for the idea of fan power, but he added nothing about his (vague, non-statutory) pre-election pledge to “encourage the reform of football governance rules to support the co-operative ownership of football clubs by supporters”. Instead, he said he hoped his questioner “would understand” if his main concern was England’s 2018 World Cup bid!

Ilkeston‘s story is familiar. In September the Conference North club was wound up in the high court over a £47,000 tax bill from a previous ownership era – less than the Saturday bar bill for many of the ‘big boys’ carrying mega-debts. The fans are now bidding to relaunch Ilkeston as a community-run club with small business backing. The liquidator has extended the deadline for ‘final sealed bids with evidence of funding’ until 29 October and it is hoped that a deal can be done by 12 November. Supporters Direct is backing the supporters’ bid with advice and assistance.

In Scotland, we are rightly preoccupied with the mess at Dundee. But supporters’ groups and Trusts across Britain have a common interest in the furtherance of initiatives like the Ilkeston one.You can sign their petition to Erewash Borough Council here.

As Richard Bath wrote in Scotland on Sunday this past weekend, there’s no ‘silver bullet’ to restoring the integrity of the game. UEFA’s ‘financial fair play’ rules are helpful, but entrench inequality domestically. However, Bath added that there is much more that can be done, and as has already been noted here, the Bundesliga model of  a 51% supporter stakeholding sets a benchmark. The democratic mechanisms for fan involvement in Spain also have something to teach us, despite their shortcomings.

The previous UK government put forward a scheme to require football clubs to hand 25 per cent of shares to fans, plus the priority right for fans to buy their club should it go into administration. That got buried in the election and in rows about company law and insolvency law, but it is something Trusts and fan groups should keep pushing on. Similarly, ‘leveraged’ (debt-based) buyouts should be banned, and supporters should be able to sue governing bodies for not applying the “fit and proper persons” test rigorously enough. Several recent English and Scottish owners would not have passed this threshold.

Most of all, the ludicrous situation where fans only gain real influence (and responsibility) when a football club is in crisis or bankruptcy should be consigned to history.