The British government presented its bill on Tuesday March 19 to create a regulator for English football. The objective is to better ensure the financial sustainability of clubs, particularly in the lower divisions, to rule out “unscrupulous owners” and to better protect the history and culture of old teams.
After more than a century and a half of self-regulation, and despite resounding international success – the Premier League is the most watched football championship in the world, English stadiums are packed… – the idea of a regulator came from shock caused in 2021 by the proposal to create a “European Superleague”.
The project, led in particular by Real Madrid, was to create a European competition partially “closed”, some of whose founding clubs could not have been relegated, as in American sports. It caused an outcry across the Channel: some supporters took to the streets and the Prime Minister at the time, Boris Johnson, promised to intervene.
Two bankruptcies
Three years and a white paper later, the regulator is about to see the light of day. The new rules will prohibit any plans for closed competition, definitively burying the European Superleague. But in looking at the question of football, the British authorities have raised many other problems concerning the lower divisions. In recent years, two clubs – Bury and Macclesfield Town – have gone bankrupt, angering supporters of these teams founded in the 19th century.e century.
To avoid these excesses, the new regulator will supervise the first five divisions of football, from the Premier League to the National League, and will be responsible for better distributing revenue there. For several years, the Premier League and the lower divisions have failed to reach an agreement on the subject. If negotiations continue to fail, the regulator will be able to intervene and decide.
The aim is to end the serious economic imbalance that exists in the lower divisions in England. Desperately trying to reach the Premier League, which provides very high income, clubs spend lavishly, at the risk of bankruptcy. In the Championship (the second division), player salaries reach on average 125% of club turnover. All the teams in the first two divisions have a net debt of 5.9 billion pounds (6.9 billion euros).
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