The Football Governance Bill should be kicked out

What will this government be most remembered for? Ed Miliband’s wind turbines? Assisted dying? Farm bankruptcies?

No: rather, I suggest it will be football. There were some 34 million attendances at football matches in England’s top four divisions in the 2022/23 season. I bet that most of those fans have no idea what’s about to happen. If the Football Governance Bill passes – all 125 pages, 100 clauses and 12 schedules of it – the game could change drastically.

The case for the bill is that football is plagued by debt, racism, sexism and dodgy owners

The government proposes, as its Conservative predecessor did too, to create a state regulator for football. Yes, in addition to Ofwat and Ofem we are to have Ofball or Ofgoal or Ofside, or whatever the new regulator is to be called. No team in the football pyramid will be allowed to play professionally without its permission. A team’s crest, its home shirt colours, its home ground, its very name: none of these will be able to be changed without the regulator’s approval.

The story begins with two events that didn’t happen – or, rather, with one that didn’t and one that almost did. The first was the attempt to create a European super league, which quickly fell apart after a backlash from fans. The second was the extinction of Bury Football Club. Both panicked Boris Johnson’s government into rushing out a response, which came in the form of a review conducted by Tracey Crouch, then a Conservative MP, and guided by a panel of expert advisers, including Roy Hodgson, the former England manager.

The review ‘conducted an online survey seeking views on the issues being considered’. This received 20,000 responses, a tiny fraction of those who watch matches, making it hard to see how the report justifies its title: ‘Fan-led Review of Football Governance.’