Transcript for episode 3, ‘Football Regulation: It’s time to take action’.
Zina Smith
Hi and welcome to episode three of Campbell Tickell’s podcast, ‘CT brief honest conversations’ in this episode, chief executive of ‘Fair Game’ Niall Couper and Campbell Tickell, partners Radojka Miljevic and Greg Campbell discuss proposals to improve governance in the beautiful game that is football. We hope you enjoy and do let us know what you think.
Radojka Miljevic
I’m going to be focusing on men’s football today, not because we don’t value the women’s game. In fact, Campbell Tickell is sponsoring a Fair Game event in March to celebrate women in football, but because a recent review of football has focused particularly on the men’s game. So, we will focus on the men’s game. And that review is a fan led review of governance in football, chaired by Tracy Crouch MP and published at the end of November 2021. And this podcast will explore a little bit the context that led to that review, some of the key recommendations arising from that review, and what we think might happen next. We’re all trying to read the runes. What can we expect government to do, but also what you can do, you as the listeners to this podcast. So first things first, let’s start with some introductions. So, I’m the host. My name is Radojka Miljevic, I’m a partner at Campbell Tickell and I am a supporter of Liverpool football club. That started when I was very young. My three older brothers supported Chelsea, so I decided to support the red team. And the beginning of Tracy Crouch’s review really resonated with you know young girl playing football with boys outside, but not being able formally to take up playing football at school or in other environments.
So that’s me. Niall, can you introduce yourself, please?
Niall Couper
I’m Niall Couper. I’m the CEO of Fair Game. Fair Game is a group of 34 value driven football clubs basically looking to change the governance of football in the UK, with England in particular. I am also a board member of the Dons trust who own AFC Wimbledon. I’ve been a Wimbledon fan for longer than I care to mention. Needless to say, I was a mascot in 1983, actually against Hull City. It was just the turn of the year, and we lost that game two one. But that was the last game we lost that season. We stormed to the fourth division championship.
Radojka Miljevic
How did that feel being a mascot?
Niall Couper
Well, it’s the days of Harry Bassett, so I can tell you there was some very interesting language in the dressing rooms. Dressing room just before the match, but it was great. Yeah. Running out onto the pitch and having shots at Dave Beston, who’s in goal for us. So yeah, it was great. I remember I was with my brother being a mascot at the same time, but, yeah, it was good fun.
Radojka Miljevic
And Greg, Greg Campbell.
Greg Campbell
I’m a partner at Campbell Tickell and I’m afraid I’ve been a football fan also for a very long time. I’m a season ticket holder at Tottenham, have been for a number of years. I’m a member of the Tottenham Hotspur supporters trust and apart from the pain that goes with being a Spurs fan generally, I would just like to quote one statistic. The current ownership of the club has been in place for 21 years and in that time they’ve had twelve permanent and five interim managers or head coaches. What we experience is that the fans are consistently ignored and the club management’s continuing or consistent failure to engage with fans generally, and the supporters trust in particular, is a source of frustration. And this kind of remoteness, I think, contributed to the frankly boneheaded decision by the club management to seek to join the European Super League last year in a desperate search for cash at the expense of proper competition. In terms of Campbell Tickell, governance and effective regulation are at the heart of much of the work that we do in different sectors. We continually advise all sorts of organisations on what good governance looks like, and beyond that, we also engage with regulators in different sectors, housing, social care, charities, sports and other industries such as utilities and energy.
We’ve designed regulatory frameworks; we know what effective regulation looks like and how it should operate. And what we see now is that with the Tracy Crouch review, there is an opportunity now in a sport that is enormously popular but bedevilled by poor governance, financial failures and self-regulation that’s at best feeble. And the opportunity has come about now more than anything else, I think, because of the pressure from football fans. And I would also say we are supporters of Fair Game, which we think is a fantastic initiative, which has made huge strides in less than a year. And I heard Niall say it was 34. Clubs are now in membership. I thought it was 33, before that it was 31. It’s continually going up and I think that’s really welcome because we’re talking about clubs at different levels of the football pyramid.
Radojka Miljevic
So Greg has started to take us into a conversation, really, around why do we need these changes? What would you say to any listeners who would say, well, football is a set of businesses. Why are you trying to meddle in those businesses and how they operate? What is it that’s special about football? Why does it need this kind of protection or regulatory overcoat put around it? What is it that’s not working or broken? Niall, let me come to you first.
Niall Couper
Yeah. There’s two elements to this. Firstly, you can look at a long line of failures within football. So, you’ve got a situation where clubs are spending more on players wages than they receive. You’ve got the history of Bury who collapsed, Macclesfield who collapsed, where there’s something like 31 clubs since the turn of the century have gone into administration in the top four flights. This is a game that is basically not regulated well, and it is consistently failing. And the difference here is that the people who suffer are the fans and the supporters and the communities they serve. Those are the people that are here. So clearly, from that perspective, it isn’t regulated. Now, the idea that football should be not regulated falls down on the fact that when you look at other big areas of the economy that aren’t so. Banking is massively regulated, schools are regulated, hospitals are regulated, the fruit and vegetable industry is regulated. And one of the things that it becomes ridiculous is that you talk about a banana is more protected than a football club. And that’s where you’ve got to know you need to think about that, that clearly, we need to have our game protected and it’s not happening at the moment.
I’d rather have my football club than my banana, to be honest. Also, I like bananas, though. Rad, to be honest.
Radojka Miljevic
It’s interesting. I know of a charity that did some research about left behind communities and correlated that with the loss of community assets. And I wonder if there’s something in safeguarding heritage, something that comes through in the fan led review report and the government’s agenda around sort of levelling up. Are there some connections here about football? Is a cluster of community assets in a way, of community heritage? And actually, if we want to ensure that communities aren’t left behind, there’s something about the protection of that heritage and assets.
Niall Couper
Yeah absolutely Rad. I think there’s two elements again to that. It’s two elements for everything at the moment, is when you look at the community assets, obviously, that’s really important to the pride of a local community, and there’s absolutely no doubt about them, the history and the traditions. But what’s interesting about what we’ve been looking at is the financial distribution within football. And if you’ll talk about the levelling up agenda, this is where you start looking at where does that money go to? And how much of a difference could it make? Because football is a very, very wealthy game, yet a club that gets relegated from the Premier League gets 55 million pounds roughly a year just for being relegated. And that’s more than is given to all the clubs of League one, League one, League two, National League, National League South, North, Women’s Super League, women’s Championship put together one club, more than 144 others. But that’s 144 communities, Rad. That’s 144 places where that extra bit of revenue would be transformational. Because when you add all the parachute payments together, that becomes 270,000,000. If you were to redistribute that, forget about the solidarity payments or the potential new tax levies, or even looking at the new TV deal the Premier League have just done, just touching on that parachute payments alone, that sum of money makes a huge difference in all of those communities.
And if you look at encouraging clubs to invest in their communities is what Fair Game would encourage people to do, then you’re left with a situation where that levelling up agenda really takes force. And that’s where I think the Fan-led review can go to the next level. The Fan-led review points out loads of different elements that are really important. But if you bring it together in what we call our sustainability index and then look at the levelling up agenda, then the difference could be brilliant, it could be fantastic. And I think that’s the path that we believe, that’s directional travel that we can see happening. And that’s what we are really pushing for.
Radojka Miljevic
Okay, we’ll come back to the sustainability index. Greg, you touched on, if you like, fan’s impotence, in a way, that they are the pulse behind clubs and yet their inability to be engaged and to influence decision making. The succession of sort of poor owners in different clubs, the fact that both of the clubs that we support went ahead with fantastical plans around a European Super League didn’t seem to have great player support either. I would say, are there other things in football that need fixing from you.
Greg Campbell
Before I address that question, what I would say was so striking and, well, I thought it was fantastic actually. The European Super League was brought down by a kind of international howl of outrage from fans across this country. Not just the fans of the six clubs that had signed up to it, but also fans in other countries as well. And it shocked a lot of people, it shocked the clubs, it shocked politicians. And suddenly a lot of people realised, wow, this is a big potential issue. And of course, from politicians point of view, when they see a lot of people very angry about an issue. And dare I say, one might wish to see anger about some other issues as well. But let’s just stick with football for now. They are thinking, oh, my God, what’s going to happen in terms of elections and so on. But as for other issues, well, Niall’s talked about the financing arrangements. There is financial fair play, which was put in place by the football governing bodies a number of years ago, which everybody recognises is just a joke. And there is no real accountability. The issues of what individual clubs can spend on players, there is no effective control of that.
There is considerable market distortion. Again, Niall has touched on that sort of area. There’s the ownership structures that currently allow for people with, let us just say, questionable backgrounds and motives to take full control of clubs. And a lot of people have highlighted that in relation to the recent takeover of Newcastle United, for example. There’s the power of players’ agents and the way that they contribute to distorting the finances of the sport. There’s the failure for clubs and the powers that be to tackle effectively the behaviour of small minorities, but noisy minorities that engage in racism, homophobia, sexism among fan groups at games and on social media and so on, and sometimes even among players. I could go on, but there’s a whole string of issues.
Radojka Miljevic
Yeah, and we can add a bit of poor governance into that lovely ingredient mix. So, in a way, we’re clear about why the game needs to change. Let’s talk about the Tracy Crouch review. I don’t want to go into all 47 recommendations. Might be a little bit soporific for our listeners, and maybe we can focus on a cluster of the strategic ones. So I’m thinking in particular around regulation, around licencing owners and directors test, fan engagement, that kind of thing. Let’s open up some of those sort of key kind of planks in the recommendations. So there’s a recommendation for a new independent regulator.
Niall Couper
I think it’s a definite positive step forward. Again, it’s about being in a situation where something outside the vested interest of football, which is one of the big problems that have happened when you’ve got the FA, whose biggest revenue stream is the Premier League, clearly having a vested interest in what is going to benefit football, and the Premier League, who also fund a lot of the other major supposedly independent bodies within football. So there’s an element to do, to have that independence that’s been missing for a long time. And to be honest, we’ve been talking about the idea of reform within football for actually, what, 60 years? I think the first time was 1964 or something like that, and it’s never happened. We’ve got a succession of sports ministers that are now, to be honest, backing Fair Game, which is brilliant, all kind of putting their hands up and going, we tried, but we failed. Because football, they gave the task to football authorities to sort it out themselves and they didn’t achieve it. So, I think the time for an independent regulator is now. I think it probably was 20 years ago, but we’ve got to a point where it has to happen.
There are so many issues and Greg ran through a whole stream of them for which I 100% back. All of those things need to be sorted out and the reality is the best people to sort it out are independent people that haven’t got a vested interest to play in it, aren’t kind of supporting their own club or their own Premier League or whatever. They’re there because they believe in creating a fair way of working. Our view on an independent regulator is look for the tasks that are needed to have the best regulators, who are the best regulators, who are the people who’ve got the best experience in regulation, and those are the people that should be running our game, because they will bring in best practice and best approaches, which in a way, kind of talking to Campbell Tickell, your area of expertise. So it’s almost like you know, if the government should go to some people to say right who should be the people to do it, then I’d be pretty confident that you would have a very good idea of some of the best regulators out there, because that’s really where we need to go. It’s not about my tapping somebody on the shoulder and going, right, you’re my mate, do it.
It’s not it’s like, are you the best person for the skills that are required to deliver football from the kind of rolling disaster that it’s been for the last 30, 40 years. So that’s kind of where I see. I think. I think we’re in a situation where it’s a no-brainer to have an independent regulator now.
Radojka Miljevic
And there are some kind of recommendations that are very focused on improving the leadership within clubs, aren’t there? I’m thinking in particular a new code of governance floated the owners and director’s tests. Does one of you want to talk about those a little bit? In a way, it’s about the stewardship of the clubs. The review is drawing attention to how to improve that and recognising that governance is kind of weakness in the current system of football.
Niall Couper
Totally agree with that. I mean, think I love recounting a story that Tracy Crouch was having with the chairman of Gillingham, who basically runs it as his board is himself, and that’s it. So, he’s kind of going right, actually, you’re saying I need to be accountable to a proper board that’s elected or whatever, or represents certain skill sets and traits. Yeah, absolutely. It’s completely what I’m saying. And the fact that that doesn’t exist, or you don’t have transparency, or you have people that are filing accounts that are two or three years out of date or are hiding things away, you’re comparing chalk and cheese, and we have one of our experts analysed accounts and he was identifying 77 different forms of accounting within football. The fact is, it becomes very difficult to identify when a club is in crisis. It’s very difficult to ensure that clubs have the right skill sets to actually operate. One of the things that I find interesting in there was the concept of a shadow board from fans. Now, that’s very interesting, but I think where that becomes more important is that making sure that shadow board has the skill sets, because its identifying skill sets to run a football club.
And that’s the sort of bit that you need to do when you’re looking at the directors. The directors of a football club need to be able to be people who actually have the ability to run a football club, rather than just tapping somebody and saying, right, you’re just going to be in here to nod through things. We need to have a much more better sense of structure and better sense of governance than exists at the moment. I could go on to the owners and director’s test. There’s probably a slight variance on where Fan-led review is compared to Fair Game, but it’s very slight. Fair Game would probably come down a very simple line, which is that if you committed a criminal offence or an offence that would have been deemed to be criminal in the UK in the last ten years, then, frankly, you shouldn’t be a director of a football club, is our kind of very simple bottom line.
Radojka Miljevic
The Fan-led review has gone further in a way, hasn’t it? With the integrity test and learning from the kind of financial services sector. In a way, there’s a good robustness there isn’t it.
Niall Couper
I wanted to come onto that Rad, because that is one bit that we put a recommendation into the Fan-led review. And I can tell you, I was going to say off the record, but we’re so clearly on the record, that that was completely cut and pasted from one of our experts, who was completely cock-a-hoop when they saw it. Because we’ve got people that work for the FSA Financial Standards Authority and had a big analysis of that and they put in a quite detailed recommendation. And that was one bit that when I saw it, when you’re going through it for the very first time, you go, they’re going to be delighted with this bit. And that was one of those. But I kept on turning the pages and I was delighted with an awful lot of the fan of review.
Radojka Miljevic
I think it’s hard not to see an incredible congruence with aspects of your manifesto at Fair Game. And in a way, maybe that’s drawing out that the review has been effective in listening, in, taking on board the feedback, but also, in a way, if you start from a shared sense of analysis about what’s wrong, it’s hard not to think that issues into some particular recommendations around owners and directors, around sustainability, financially, around good governance. And it’s something that we know from other sectors, isn’t it? We’ve seen, Greg, some of these. We’ve seen some of these initiatives actually in other sectors, around things like a golden share, for example, ideas about how do you ensure that a group of people don’t run away with themselves with a bunch of assets and heritage and legacy and history?
Greg Campbell
Yes, we have. I was talking earlier about regulators in different sectors, and we did account for a report that we put together a few months ago on the justification for an independent regulator. And there are nearly 100 regulators in different sectors in this country now. This is not about bureaucracy gone mad. This is about recognising at government level, parliament and so forth, that self-regulation in those sectors is not sufficient. It doesn’t actually do the job of tackling people who are in a monopoly position. Niall’s example around the chair of Gillingham, or the owner of Gillingham, I think is a good example. There’s a failure to recognise, if you like, the special nature of football in local communities, which we’ve been talking about. There is a need for accountability. Football clubs, especially as you go higher up the pyramid, are in a kind of monopoly position in many areas. And I always remember there were studies conducted and I think this is going back some decades ago, but I think it would still apply sociological studies that were conducted in particular towns. And I recall these being focused on towns in the northwest of England where it was identified that when the local football club did badly of the weekend, performance in the factories dipped quite significantly through to the next game and it only picked up when the club got a decent result.
So, clubs are special, clubs are different. There is a need for that kind of wider accountability. It needs to be recognised, frankly. Well, we always knew there was going to be a lot of opposition to robust proposals of the kind that Tracy Crouch’s review has come up with. And sure enough, we’ve seen some influential players agents saying, oh, this is never going to work, blah, blah. The chief executive of Leeds United actually went so far, the other week as to describe the proposals as maoist and liken them to the great leap forward. Apart from the fact this is paranoia of the highest order, these are the kind of messages that people who really cannot get their heads around why accountability and engagement with communities is important.
Radojka Miljevic
It’s interesting because in a way, again, it’s reflecting back on awareness of what good governance looks like, not just in football, but across other sectors and other types of organisations. I mean, you mentioned, Greg, there have been some predictable responses to the review. There have also been some really positive responses and know, positive responses from less predictable audiences. If you see what you know, Niall, I think I watched one of the kind of Fair Game videos over Christmas where someone was saying, well, I wasn’t sure about an independent regulator when all of this started out, but I have to kind of say, actually, maybe I’ve come around and I’m interested in what kind of reception have you been aware of at Fair Game for the review and have you been pleased about that reception? Anything surprised you about it? Anything novel?
Niall Couper
I think there have been a couple of big turning points, really. The reception has been generally really good and the kind of arguments and stuff that we put forward have been increasingly well received. The big turning point was probably an EFL meeting at the start of December where the EFL actually came out, their board actively supporting the fan and review and our findings. We’ve been obviously working with a lot of our clubs who are in the AFL, lobbying behind the scenes and doing that. So for me, that felt like a massive turning point. You’re talking about 72 clubs saying actually that football needs to change. And again, they’re really quite influential, big clubs that are all backing that. I mean, there are a couple of people in the championship that perhaps not completely behind it, but the EFL as a collective were saying, right, this is what direction of trouble that we need to go to say that two big things. The independent regulator that football can’t regulate itself, coming from a group that regulates football to some degree, then also saying, well, actually we need to look at potential proper structured fan engagement that hasn’t really been there before to look at the issues of good governance, financial sustainability, all of those are issues within the EFL.
To suddenly realise that actually these need to be addressed and to get that level of reform, that felt like a real turning point for us at Fair Game. What we did was the start of the process was to look at identifying the problems. And Campbell Tickell, we’re right in the middle of all of that, at that start of that process. And then the big thing was we weren’t going to just say finger point and say, this is a problem. We went out actively to say, right, well, what’s the solution? What do we need to change? And I think that’s where we’ve played our massive part in it, because we’ve said, right, well, what does the new world of football look like? What should we be aspiring towards? And that’s where we felt really happy to see a lot of that reflected in the review itself. And that’s where, you know, look, I’m not going to deny that the influence of Campbell Tickell in some of that governance structures, it’s there. You can see your own footprint is there as well. And I think what we wanted to do was give a voice to those people that have done that research and done that work and put it in front of government and in front of clubs to make that difference. And I think that’s where we’ve seen and it’s been really good.
Radojka Miljevic
I must say. James Tickell, I feel I’ll be scolded by him if I don’t say we’re Campbell Tickell. And it’s a common. Everyone falls into the trap, but it’s our dear colleague. I feel I need to sort of pay homage to him.
Niall Couper
James Tickell. James Tickell. James Tickell. James Tickell. Huge apologies.
Radojka Miljevic
They are, of course, Campbell Tickell. Tickell. Not Tickell, but it’s a mistake commonly made. Yeah. And I think there was great collaboration, actually. Football Supporters association, there was a coalition of the willing, wasn’t there, early on, to really try and move things in the right direction. Greg, I think you reached out and worked really collaboratively with some other organisations.
Greg Campbell
And I think one of the aspects that’s been quite striking is the number of MPs, backbench MPs, who have declared their support for Fair Game, but also for the recommendations of the review. And it goes right across the political spectrum. Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, SNP, Clyde Cumri and sundry independents, they are all there. And I think that’s really encouraging. And at the same time, I know that we’re starting to see some councils, some local authorities consider resolutions that they might pass in support of the independent review recommendations and indeed in support of Fair Games, specifically within and alongside that and in terms of some of the messages that I’m sure we would be keen to encourage any listeners to take action on, contact your local MP, contact your local authority, particularly if, you know, councillors, cabinet members, whatever, and encourage them to come out in support of the review recommendations and for these to be implemented in full.
Radojka Miljevic
I’m going to come back to that about actions that we want people to take. Just before we get to that place. I just wanted to come back on one thing, Niall, around the sustainability index that Fair Game is promoting, because I know, in a way, the review has spliced bits of it up in different ways, but it’s not quite the same as the kind of package that you have in the Fair Game manifesto. And I wondered if you wanted to just touch on that briefly before I move on to other things.
Niall Couper
Yeah, totally agree. What we’ve got with the fan lender review is we’ve got a lot of the elements that Fair Game have been calling for, and the four big ones are financial sustainability, good governance, equality standards and fan engagement. And they are the four big criteria that we have as part of our sustainability index. Those four do exist, all of them in the Fan-led review, largely. I mean, there’s a slight governance, we include environmental standards, but that would be the only slight difference. They’re all there, but they’re on page twelve and page 28 and page 79 and page 163. And what we’re proposing is that, as Tracy Crouch has rightly said, is that it’s a whole package and you need to consider the whole thing as one collective thing. And for us, the best way to do that is to, we call effectively padlocking them together, and that’s by the sustainability index. So if you bring them all together into one particular criteria, then you actually ensure that they all exist. Because at the moment, the only option to sanction is effectively the loss of a licence. And if that’s the only realistic sanction that exists, then how many clubs are going to lose their licence because they’re rubbish on equality standards or they’re rubbish on finding their accounts in time or all that sort of stuff.
So what we wanted to do was start categorising clubs and scoring them on that sustainability index, very much like the football academies operate now. And obviously, the higher you score effectively with a redistribution of funds, the more money you should receive. So that would be our incentive. And that’s how we believe if you looked at the parachute payments and the potential of the new transfer levy and put that into one big pot and then distribute it to those clubs on how they score in that criteria. That effectively gives you an incentive to become a well run football club and change the culture within the game. And that’s how we see it. All those elements are there. The idea of redistribution funds is there, the idea of good governance is there, the idea of equality standards is there, the idea of financial sustainability is there, the idea of fan engagement, they’re all there. All we’re saying is, here’s the next. We internally, we know Tracy Crouch has provided all the ingredients. We’re now putting it and saying, right, here’s the method to make the cake. That’s basically what we’re trying to do and that’s what sustainability is about.
Radojka Miljevic
So how long do we think the cake is going to take to bake? What are the next steps in this process? So there are some immediate kind of responses from government. What might we expect? And then, in terms of the gestation of our kind of cake, how long is it going to take to get a regulator in place?
Niall Couper
Basically, where we’re at is that the government is expected to issue a formal response to the Fan-Led review in February. The indications are that that will be almost a rubber-stamping exercise. There’ll probably be a little bit of tweaking going on because there’s some lobbying going on. The background, particularly from the Premier League, we’re expecting that then to go to the Queen’s speech, which is in May. We are obviously hoping that it’s included in the Queen’s speech. And the indications are that it will be. If it goes into the Queen’s speech, then that’s where it then goes into. Basically. Which slot does it fit into the legislative calendar between now? Could be my own guess, is we’re probably looking at something around October time when we would then be looking at trying to do that in terms of when a regulator could come into being. Tracy Crouch talked a lot about a shadow regulator being in place very soon. And it’s basically, how much does that shadow regulator then become the regulator, and what are we looking at? That I can’t tell you. I don’t have any more information or any more intel about when the shadow regulator may come into being, and that’s something that we’re trying to find a bit more details about.
I’m sure Greg, with your experience, will know a lot more about when a regulator might actually come in.
Radojka Miljevic
Just on that coming into being of the regulator. I feel like that’s very deftly handled in the report, actually. There’s a sort of sensitivity about not frightening all the horses immediately in the way that IREF is positioned. I think in the Crouch review, it’s sort of that sense of a kind of soft entry or something. It sort of feels as though it’s a way of getting people on know, getting buy in into something that would be quite new and radical for football.
Niall Couper
Right. Because I’ve heard the opposite as well, which is that the quicker it happens, the more likely it is to happen.
Radojka Miljevic
Okay. All right. Well, Greg, how long is it going to take to get a regulator up and running, do you think, from your experience of other places? In our experience?
Greg Campbell
Well, there’s a number of different aspects to it. Niall may well be right that we would see legislation published in the autumn. It depends how contentious it’s seen as being in the commons, which is one of the reasons why, as I say, it’s really important to put pressure on local MPs. We might expect it to become law around the spring of next year. But you see, there is a danger that this gets caught up with general electioneering. The general election has to happen by May 24. If government changes the fixed term Parliament’s act, as everybody expects that they will, it’s possible that the general election will take place in the autumn of 23, or possibly even May, June 23. Having said that, I think that government, they had the principle of a fan led review of football governance in their manifesto in 2019. Having seen how many fans are concerned about these areas, which as we were talking about in relation to the European Super League, I think they will want to be able to say, look, this was in our manifesto before. Here is the regulator established. Day one. The regulator is established. They need to appoint a chief executive, they need to appoint a chief finance officer and all the other executives, they need to get a whole infrastructure in place. They need to get their funding agreed. The funding is likely to be, I suspect well, we’ll see what comes out of the legislation when we get there, but I suspect it’s going to be a mixture of treasury grant via the digital culture, media and sport department, together with membership fees or regulation fees or whatever paid by all of the clubs that are licensed.
Radojka Miljevic
Legislation.
Greg Campbell
The legislation will, will go through. Let’s assume the legislation goes through at some stage. It’s got to take at least a year before the regulator is really making things happen. Having said that, there’s going to be political pressure for them to be doing things quickly.
Radojka Miljevic
Okay, so we’re getting towards the end of the podcast now. So, Niall, we’ve had our listeners engaged, finding out about the fan led review. Obviously, one of the real steps that you need to take is go away and have a look at it, get familiar with what’s proposed. We’ve given you some little edited highlights here, but what practical action can listeners take if they want to support football being transformed, football being brought back closer to communities, football being sustainable, well run, well governed, more equal, if that’s possible. What do they need to do if they want to support this?
Niall Couper
So if you go to our website, fairgameuk.org, at the top, there is a lovely little tab that says take action. If you click on that, it gives you four different options of things you can do. And two of the most important are contact your MP and contact your local council. And it will tell you a step by step guide on exactly how you can do that, how you can find your mp, a template sort of letter to write to your MP, same with your council that’s in there. And that will help make a really big difference. It’s going to be down to politicians about whether this actually happens or not. We’re still reaching out to clubs because clubs mean that we have more voice as Fair Game. We still want that. But ultimately, it’s about getting as many MPs pledging to support the family review and vote it through. And that’s the big thing. That’s the moment that we need to try and do. So, all of you listeners, everybody reach out, tell all your friends, get on Facebook, get on LinkedIn, everything like that post, that link that I’ve just mentioned, and just write as many letters as you possibly can and talk to as many MPs. If you know them, go speak to them. If you know Councillors, go speak to them.
Radojka Miljevic
Feels like a special window of time in a way, doesn’t it? It’s like we’re between the old world and the new world and this slipping between one and the other. There’s a sort of month or something. It feels like it’s a unique window. And actually, this would be a terrible wasted opportunity if you love football, not to go and do something straight after this podcast.
Niall Couper
Absolutely Rad. I mean, it is now or never, really, when we talk about the government response in February, we need to get people getting onto their MPs and their councils between now and then, because that’s what’s going to shape it. And then if we’re looking at Queen speech, all of it is, you really have to do it if you want to change football, if you want a better world football, then do it.
Radojka Miljevic
Thank you very much everyone for listening. Hope you’ve enjoyed it. And please go to both of our websites if you want to find out more about what you can do next.
Zina Smith
We hope you enjoyed that discussion with Niall, Greg and Radojka. If you’d like to find any of the resources referred to in this episode, take a look at the links provided in the description of this episode, or head to Campbell Tickell and Fair Games websites.
Find out more about this podcast.
To discuss the issues raised in episode 3, contact Radojka Miljevic on: radojka.miljevic@campbelltickell.com or Greg Campbell on: greg.campbell@campbelltickell.com
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