This article is taken from the August-September 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

It’s an irony that in the last Conservative government’s dog days, a party that had recently been led by a prime minister who claimed to be its most free marketeer leader in recent times (if only for 44 days) found itself in a row about its decision to heavily regulate a globally market-leading product; one responsible for nearly 100,000 jobs and something close to £4bn in tax revenues.

We are talking, of course, about the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) proposed by the football governance bill; the plans for which are — at the time of writing — on ice as we wait to see whether Labour will redraft the bill.

The IFR’s gestation has not been the quickest: it dates back to a 2021 fan-led review, chaired by the former sports minister, Tracey Crouch, itself the product of a 2019 Tory manifesto promise resulting from Bury FC’s expulsion from the English Football League following the collapse of a takeover bid; an incident described by the then sports minister as a “very dark day for English football”.

It was, then, a response to widespread acceptance that football simply wasn’t managing itself properly. Whilst dodgy owners of various flavours were taking control, the biggest clubs were eyeing up the mountains of cash that a breakaway super-league could provide. At the lower levels, clubs like Bury were either going out of business or close to the brink. As for the fans, it seemed the game had almost entirely forgotten them.

At the top of the English football pyramid, the financial numbers are eye-watering. Since 1992, consumer prices have increased by just over 100 per cent. Premier League revenues from matches, TV revenue and sponsorship, by contrast, have increased by 2,800 per cent. This deluge of cash has been matched by a carefree attitude to losses, which have also kept pace; most clubs are losing millions every year.

These clubs are quite simply playing a different game: there is a huge disparity between the financial situation of the lower league clubs and the Premier League and, indeed, between the lesser lights of the Premier League and the “big six”. A “Leicester City story” (the club came from outside the financial elite to win the 2015–16 league) now seems impossible. In recent years anyone other than Man City, or at a push one or two other clubs, seem highly unlikely to win.

What is football as a whole gaining from this largesse? There has been a failure to find a deal for the distribution of money down football’s pyramid, and the outgoing Conservative culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, made clear that if one could not be found, this was exactly the sort of thing a regulator could sort out. The Premier League, for its part, blames this threat for the failure to find a landing zone.

Good, then: a top-heavy, ethically questionable and uncompetitive league finally getting the oversight it needs — simple as that? Well, consider, for a moment, the case for the defence. At stake is the fate of the most-watched football league in the world. Millions of people follow teams from all over the country, putting on a sporting spectacle that is, whatever its flaws, undeniably impressive.

If the trickle-down effect is not where we’d like it to be, it has still lifted the Championship to a level where it is one of the richest leagues in Europe. The Premier League’s CEO, Richard Masters, has put out a statement to this effect: why jeopardise the global supremacy of England’s top league, which he claims allows for the “most generous funding in world football” to lower league teams, and why introduce strictures where the Premier League’s rivals have none?

And yet: consider not what they say, but what they do. We have seen both Everton and Nottingham Forest deducted points for breaching financial rules. Regulation was once conspicuous by its absence, but it seems the league’s teeth have now been found. It’s credulous to see this administrative zeal as due to anything other than the mounting consensus that some form of control must be exerted.

However, whatever form regulation takes, it will only be as effective as the teams’ lawyers allow it to be. It’s unlikely that Man City will suffer all that much. Intriguingly, if much of the Premier League’s wailing and gnashing of teeth can be dismissed as inevitable, it’s the stuff they mutter darkly about, but as yet don’t seem willing to talk about publicly, that might carry more weight in future discussions.

There is, it seems, a plausible risk that the regulator rubs up against FIFA’s statutes. Would the worldwide body suspend England from tournaments for allowing state interference? In the real world, probably not. But if the body is keen to avoid its stated aim of preventing governments from getting involved in the game, do not for one moment think it is anything other than nakedly political itself, and willing to turn any misstep to its advantage. There’s also the concern that whilst regulation might better level the playing field, it is likely to be onerous for smaller clubs without access to teams of lawyers and accountants.

So here we are. A supposedly simple fix to a problem that opens up interminable squabbles over compliance, practicalities and unintended consequences. As Liz Truss could tell you, it’s never easy when your big political ideas rub up against reality.