A new study suggests reforming football governance by testing and training directors. But is the regulator capable, asks Ed Warner?
Countless millions follow professional football in England, claiming allegiance to a favourite club whose fortunes are entwined daily with each individual’s emotions, their highs and lows in seemingly unavoidable synchronicity. Turns out these essential forces are controlled by just 595 people.
A new study of the governance of the English game reveals the make-up of the boards of the 116 teams in the top five layers of the football pyramid – from Premier League through EFL to the National League. There are 595 directors of those 116 clubs. An average of just over five per boardroom – pretty standard for small- to medium-sized businesses.
However, the report from the sports team at actuaries and business consultants LCP and corporate governance specialists at Law Debenture Corporation reveals the danger of averages.
Their analysis of Companies House records might be seen as setting the new Independent Football Regulator an early task; thrusting it into or keeping it out of trouble, depending on your viewpoint.
Some of the data in Football Governance in Transition will ring alarm bells for those of us schooled in governance codes in either the business world or that of publicly-funded sports.
I’ve long experience in both and have seen the deemed best practice in sport gradually coalesce with that already prevailing in the market for companies listed on stock exchanges. Football, it is clear, is a long way behind both of these sectors.
This lag is easily explained by the private nature of clubs that are not in receipt of public money. That doesn’t mean they might not benefit from the checks and balances that more governance rigour would bring, though, however much this might rankle with directors comfortable with minimal scrutiny – apart from the heat of online fan forums and scorn from the stands when times are tough on the pitch.
The numbers that jump off the page for me include: four clubs have only one director; 14 have just two; 27 per cent of directors at the Big Six clubs are aged over 70; nine clubs have no British directors at all; 20 per cent of all directors are from North America; 91 per cent of directors are male.
While one might have thought that the bigger the club, the more modern its board structure is likely to be, the analysis suggests that’s not so. For example, Premier League boards have no greater female representation than the average, and 20 of the Championship ones consist entirely of men.
Should you fancy setting a pub trivia question about clubs with one-person boards, the answer is: Coventry City, Sheffield Wednesday, Swindon Town and Crawley Town.
If you are immersed in football fandom, the broad thrust of the data may not come as a surprise, even if the numbers themselves are.
After all, clubs are traditionally regarded as the playthings of wealthy individuals; overseas ownership has grown rapidly in recent years; and the public-facing decision-makers in the men’s professional game are rarely women, even though the demographic of supporter bases has become noticeably more diverse as football’s popularity has grown.
The establishment of the Independent Football Regulator has very much been a political initiative. Few MPs have wanted to appear on the wrong side of a development intended to protect the interests of fans and the positions that the clubs they follow occupy in the nation’s social fabric.
As yet, however, it is unclear just what the IFR might do to fulfil the ambitions its architects have for it, or whether indeed there is anything it will be able to do to prevent the financial mismanagement of clubs that is often cited as justification for its existence.
LCP and Law Debenture set out a trio of recommendations for the IFR to establish and then police: that clubs’ boards should have at least three directors; that there should be greater diversity in boardrooms; and that all directors should demonstrate an understanding of the game’s workings and culture, with the IFR providing training to facilitate.
The first of these looks timid to me. If there is to be a required board size, then four directors would be more appropriate than three.
Gender is but one basis on which to judge diversity. If there is to be any diversity stipulation then a range of factors should be considered, including ethnicity, age and social background. It’s hard to address such a matrix of requirements with only a small number of directors.
None of this is to decry the ambition, merely to highlight the challenge, especially when dealing with private enterprises.
The training suggestion is the most intriguing. As the report’s authors point out, this is something evident in other spheres, including the pensions industry – which happens to be at the core of LCP’s business.
Elsewhere in sport I have seen incoming non-executive directors struggling to get up the learning curve of a complex new industry. They may bring valuable expertise from other fields, but sport’s structures and practices can appear alien and hard to penetrate. Football is no different, however much one knows as a fan.
I’m unsure whether the IFR could provide a virtual classroom that genuinely schooled newcomers on football’s business nuances. But requiring new board members to submit to an interview with the regulator to assess their knowledge would be a trial worth undertaking.
As with all matters regulatory, however, someone has to foot the bill. And money will be the determining force in the battle over the exercise of the IFR’s powers in the years ahead.
Stop the clocks
There are 357 days until the start of the slimline Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games. Tickets aren’t on sale yet, although the event’s website assures us that demand will be high. No sign of a TV deal with the BBC, or any other domestic broadcaster for that matter.
It’s unusual for such a major event to pass the year-to-go milestone without fanfare and an open box office. It is admirable that Scotland and Glasgow stepped up to rescue the CWG after Australia suddenly handed back its hosting rights. Now, though, they need to ensure that the 10 sports showcased next year have real impact beyond the city itself.
Sandwiched between the men’s Fifa World Cup and European Athletics Championships in Birmingham (tickets for Brum go on sale on 11 August), Glasgow 2026 might just find itself starved of the oxygen of publicity. Organisers won’t want to rely on a last-minute rush for the half a million tickets that need to be shifted.
Nae bother though! As of last week Glasgow 2026 does at least have Finnie the unicorn as its mascot.
Pop will eat itself
The BBC is seemingly in a perpetual state of existential angst. It is always amusing to read and hear the state broadcaster’s reports about itself, whether that turmoil is in sport, geopolitics or cookery shows.
With a year to go to Glasgow 2026, the Beeb’s Scotland sports news correspondent splashed with the absence of a domestic broadcast deal. As he reported: “The BBC has been the principal broadcaster of the Games since TV coverage began in 1954.”
My bet? The BBC will screen next year’s CWG but pay very little indeed for the privilege. The Games desperately needs the oxygen that BBC1 and BBC2 provide – and the Beeb’s negotiators know it all too well.
Making waves
The World Aquatics Championships are underway in Singapore. Aside from reports of a 12-year-old Chinese swimming sensation, they may have passed you by.
You can, and should, catch the action on a stream accessed via the Aquatics GB website. Credit to the governing body for stepping in to secure the rights in the absence of mainstream broadcaster interest. More on this in next week’s column.
Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com