The regulation battle
Researcher
This weekend marks the return of Premier League Football to our stadiums and our screens – and the start of a period where my mood will, most weekends, be determined by whether Arsenal’s new No. 9, a man I did not know existed six months ago, can kick a ball into a net.
In Westminster, the Government has been busy netting its own prize: the successful passing of the Football Governance Act and the new Independent Football Regulator (IFR). Created a mere four years after it was recommended by the Fan-Led Review of Football Governance, the IFR is a perfect microcosm of broader regulatory issues bedeviling the country that Re:State will be exploring in upcoming research.
The IFR was conceived of as a way to address two high-profile and scandalous events in the football world. In 2019, Bury FC was expelled by the English Football League (EFL) following its financial collapse, causing a deluge of complaints by fans. Two years later, a collection of twelve top-tier clubs from around Europe announced that they would be joining a new ‘European Super League.’ After a severely misjudged set of press releases from the clubs involved drew enormous fan backlash, they swiftly backtracked – but it left an undercurrent of anxiety about the future of English football.
The Government’s response to these events is telling. While such reports are often cheerfully ignored, the recommendation to create a new regulator for English football aligned neatly with a troubling governmental habit: setting up new bodies as a highly visible, easily understood policy win. Our paper ‘Quangocracy’ documented how pervasive this attitude is in Westminster – all signalling, with little regard for unintended outcomes, such as the possibility that new regulatory requirements and burdens may actually harm the competitiveness of English clubs in an international sport. This is particularly frustrating given that four years on, the problems the regulator was meant to address feel much less pressing.
The addition of yet another regulatory body to an ever expanding collection in the British State seems to run counter to other Government promises – such as “tackling the complexity and the burden of regulation” – and the eye-catching pledge to cut administrative costs for business by 25%. Successive governments have pledged to reduce regulatory burdens, reduce complexity, and provide clarity, yet the direction of travel remains firmly in the opposite direction. The IFR perhaps gives us a glimpse of why: there are a number of ways to achieve the stated goals of the new regulator, yet none match the political appeal of setting up a new body: a highly visible solution, at relatively low direct cost.
Proponents of the IFR argue that football clubs are special – they are community assets that do much more harm when they go bust than traditional businesses. But football isn’t unique in this sense, and the logic could certainly be used to justify the creation of many, many more regulators – for other sports, for other businesses and markets, all while the Government’s hopes of kickstarting growth through rationalisation of the regulatory landscape lie in ruins. Along with looking to rationalise existing public bodies, the Government needs to learn to exercise restraint in the creation of new ones – particularly ones which are this poorly thought through.