"We can force an owner to sell" - Gary meets the Independent Football Regulator

The Independent Football Regulator has released its State of the Game report and the findings are eye-opening as the perilous financial situation much of the pyramid faces is laid bare. Gary Lineker and Alastair Campbell speak to the chair of the IFR David Kogan and find out what powers he has to improve the landscape in English football. We also look at what it would take for him to intervene and force an owner to sell a club, and how he could possibly get involved in the Manchester City case once the appeal is heard. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:09Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Football with me, Gary Lineker and today, Alastair Campbell from The Rest Is Politics. We have a special episode for you. The independent football regulator has published its first state of the game report and its findings are a stark warning to the Premier League and the whole football pyramid. Joining us to discuss the report is the Chair of the Independent Football Regulator, David Kogan. David, thank you very much for joining us. You've been pretty busy this last week or so. I think the first question should be, what is the independent football regulator and what is the core purpose of what you want to do?

• 2:54Speaker 03

  The obvious idea of it coming through was when a group of owners decided to get involved in the European Super League and there was an immediate reaction from fans and from others against this kind of extreme use of power, which then failed. The other was the failure of Bury. And failure of Bury triggered, in most people, I think in football, the realisation that the economics of football have always been crazy. It's always written massively on debt and there's always been this belief, there was always a tomorrow, that either it'd be a new owner coming through, new money coming through, you could trade a player, make money. But actually, football has radically changed. The financing of it's changed, all the money is bigger, all the risks are greater, all the issues are greater and that led to the regulator being created.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  And we've got powers that allow us to get lots of information from clubs, get ahead of the game, start getting involved in clubs which are in trouble and then intervene if they really get in trouble before they go under. So we're about resilience and we're about security. And we're there really to make sure that towns like Bury, towns like Leicester, actually survive with a football club and an institution that is critical to their environment.

• 4:02Speaker 00

  So your state of the game report, 94% of clubs are loss-making. You paint a pretty negative financial picture. 60% of clubs in the National League and the EFL, technically insolvent. And yet, if you look at football's history, all the founder members, still there?

• 4:21Speaker 03

  Just.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  Still going.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  Sheffield Wednesday got very close.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  But I get why you have to write a report that sets out the facts, but is there something about football that actually will allow it to survive for the long term?

• 4:34Speaker 03

  Well, you would hope so. I mean, I've spent 15 years of my career selling the Premier League's media rights and indeed the EFL's media rights to global markets and to UK broadcasters. And you always say, the product is the thing, the clubs are the thing. This is an extraordinary product, you should invest more and more money in it and it's always going to be that money that will save football going forward. Football today is a nine billion pound a year industry, yet as you say, 60% of the clubs that are in the EFL and the National League are actually facing what would in a normal business be serious trouble. So while the sun is shining, what we want to do is get in there and start fixing the problems. And those problems aren't so much about debt, they're about liquidity. And just to explain what I mean by that, the really stark statistic in this report

• 5:17Speaker 03

  is that 32 clubs owned by serious owners are trading on 30 days cash cover or less. Now, if you're running any sort of business, if you're running your own household economy and you can't plan your money beyond 30 days, what happens if that owner decides to walk away? That's happened with Chancery, Sheffield Wednesday, where he stopped paying players, he stopped paying the water bill. You know, the water pressure at Hillsborough dropped to the point where toilets couldn't be used. So what happens if that starts to, if owners start to withdraw funds or they get hit by a bus? Those clubs immediately are in peril. Football's constant ability to reinvent itself is about having security and planning to allow them to get away from that sort of problem and that's what we're there to do.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  So do you think, what could you have done to stop Bury suffering the fate that it suffered? Although Bury in a form is still going.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  And what could you do to get the water pumps going again?

• 6:09Speaker 03

  Well, within the report, we look at three specific examples of where you could see at least two seasons prior to the collapse, trouble already building up. And the fact is that the EFL and the Premier League, but particularly the EFL, obviously had the ability to intervene with those clubs. And what it doesn't have the ability to do, and we do, is get those clubs to give you information every year that's sufficiently detailed, sufficiently early, that you spot trouble before it happens. A lot of what we're going to be doing in the next-

• 6:37Speaker 00

  But hasn't all the trouble really happened already?

• 6:40Speaker 03

  No, because what happens is you get an owner comes in and I'm not going to, you know, the examples we, Wigan is one example, actually Sheffield Wednesday is actually quite a good working example. You know, Chancery bought into Sheffield Wednesday, I think I'm right in saying in 2015, and he put a lot of money in, as owners do, trying to win the golden ticket to get into the Premier League. And as a lot of owners do, they discover it's not as easy as it looks. And he failed. Not his fault, not his players' fault, they just were up against better teams who got promoted. And the moment they started to fail, and we see this a lot, the money started to dry up. Now, because we are licensing every club from November, every club in 116 clubs, we'd be licensing all of them, we have the power to look at a club like Sheffield Wednesday

• 7:25Speaker 03

  every year, look at its finances, look at its business plans, look at where the cash is going. So we'd be a very early detector of trouble. The PFA and I were talking about this and somebody at PFA said, you know, we know from our players that when we suddenly see that the form of travel in the club has radically been downgraded, or there isn't tape for socks, which actually was an indicator in-

• 7:46Speaker 00

  Well, even Manchester United, cutting, you know, meals for the staff.

• 7:50Speaker 03

  These act as amber warning lights that the EFL and the Premier League were never going to pick up. We are picking them up all the time. And without going into detail, we have a watch list of clubs that's a constant watch list where we're getting these indicators. We believe that we will have sufficient knowledge, sufficient insight and sufficient detail from our team of supervisors. We have one supervisor for seven clubs. That supervisor's job is to be in daily contact with his or her seven clubs and be an early warning system, get the data we need and we will then intervene.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Are you confident of getting everyone on board here? Football in this country has-

• 8:27Speaker 03

  The Premier League.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. The EFL.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  It has the FA.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  The National League.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  The National League. There are so many different bodies and now we've got an independent regulator. Do you think you will have the power to make a difference?

• 8:44Speaker 03

  Actually, I do. And so let's talk about, first of all, there being lots of bodies, some of whom didn't want us to exist.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  Including the Premier League.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  Certainly, including the Premier League. I think now, if you were to talk to Richard Masters, as I did only this morning-

• 8:58Speaker 00

  At the Premier League.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  At the Premier League, I'm sorry. And you talk to Rick Parry at the EFL, they will tell you that they think the year and a half that we've been in existence, we have had a reasonably potent impact. And actually, we have been extremely active behind the scenes, dealing with clubs from the National League upwards. And all the bodies who run those leagues now are aware, not only that we're present, but that we're being very active and we have powers they don't have. Most people did not expect this report to be quite as detailed, quite as long and quite as effective in identifying real facts and data. And therefore, I think our credibility is pretty high now. But the problem with this job is every day, every hour of every day and every week, there is something new.

• 9:42Speaker 03

  And that credibility so far is okay. We'll see where we are, you know, in the course of the next few months.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  You say you'll intervene, but so for example, your own report, 17 EFL and National League clubs are technically insolvent, even if players weren't being paid. Right, so that is not a feasible business. And that's now.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  Come back to your earlier question. You're the person who said in football, people always survive, right? Exactly. Who knew there were 17 clubs in that state until this report was published?

• 10:08Speaker 00

  Good point.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  Okay, the fans wouldn't have known.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  So what do you now do about that?

• 10:12Speaker 03

  Right, so what we're going to do in the case of those clubs, actually, I think the 32 clubs that are trading on 30 days cash cover, that's an equally big issue, actually. All of those clubs will have to get a licence to continue operating as a club.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  What does that mean? How do you give a licence? So if a club comes to you, take my club, Leicester City, bit of trouble at the moment, they're trying to sell, obviously.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  So what does that actually really mean? They have to get a licence?

• 10:38Speaker 03

  So the way that this works is that from November, we'll go to all 116 clubs. But we've got three fairly simple questions. Do you have a business plan? That's a pretty straightforward question, right?

• 10:47Speaker 00

  You would think they would, wouldn't you?

• 10:48Speaker 03

  They don't. 60% don't. 60% don't. The second question is, do you have a plan if you're relegated? Any plan, a huge number don't. And the third one is, do you have a plan if your owner chooses to to leave? What is your plan then in terms of your cash? So you can survive long enough for another owners to buy you.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  You could end up in a position where you, the regulator, are the person doing the thing that you were created to help football stop, which is places losing their clubs.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  No, I don't think so. I think what we will be doing is helping those clubs actually find solutions to problems they're not trying to face up to at the moment.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  But what if they don't?

• 11:27Speaker 03

  We will then work with them in terms of knowing what their cash flow is, because we will know, knowing what their owners' plans are, which in itself would be a breakthrough in quite a lot of clubs, because owners work in a pretty opaque way in many clubs. And thirdly, we will lay licence conditions there. So if the owner wishes to go and own the club, they're going to have to meet our licence conditions. And if at that point the owner chooses not to, we will then, and this is part of the new deal that's being discussed between the Premier League and the EFL, there will be access to funds to allow liquidity to be built up. So a new owner can be found. So unlike in Bury, where basically the owner, just basically, wanted to get rid of the club, sell off the ground. And by the way, one key element in all of this is we have powers to stop clubs selling grounds from under the fans and under the club, which is normally the key asset of that club.

• 12:13Speaker 00

  Where do these funds come from? Premier League?

• 12:15Speaker 03

  In the current relationships being discussed between the Premier League and the EFL, one of the new components of it is what will be known as a liquidity fund. And that is sufficiently large to allow an independent body, it won't be us, nor will it be the Premier League and the EFL, an independent body to allocate funds to clubs who are on the point of going under, the point of seeking a new owner. So they've got a landing zone, they've got a breathing space to survive, which is actually the case, again, from Sheffield Wednesday. Sheffield Wednesday got very, very close when the administrator moved in and not surviving because it didn't have enough funds simply to keep going until a new owner came. So we are going to be dealing with all of these issues, but with enough safety nets built in, that I think our job is to preserve clubs. My job is not to close football clubs now, my job is to help football clubs survive.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  But Gary's question, are we talking there about government money? Are we talking about money that's going to come from within football?

• 13:05Speaker 03

  From within football.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  So that's mainly going to be the Premier League.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  The negotiations have been going on now for five months. So just to go back a step, so so four or five months ago, I I gave a speech in which I basically said, to misquote Tony Cross in 1973, you and I are probably the only people that have enough to remember, the party's over. And the party's over in the sense that the Premier League and the EFL last negotiated a relationship in 2019. And that ran out in 2024. They were due to renegotiate it, they had two attempts to renegotiate it and completely failed. Again, one of the reasons we were created was to actually get the world of football to work with itself to find solutions. So we rock up and I basically said, if you do not find a solution now, we will use the powers in the act that I've got on what is known as the backstop.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  And the backstop essentially, in its final extent, is that the regulator can impose a finance, a new financing deal on football. And it is absolutely not my desire to do that, because it would be absolutely wrong for a regulator to come in and tell the world of football how to spend its money to help itself. The world of football needed to find its own solutions. And it's been actually an extremely pleasing thing. I've sat in every negotiating meeting for the last five months between the two parties, all of which has been conducted in complete secrecy until recently. And the Premier League is now talking about more than doubling the amount it pays every year in what are known as solidarity payments, money flowing down to the other leagues. And the EFL and it's sort of pretty much in agreement on this.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  It has put forward a large fund for redevelopment, which can be spent on anything that clubs in their lower leases spend on either grounds or on youth development or on a whole series of other issues. So there's a genuine development fund there that clubs can call on. And it has within it a liquidity fund that is there for clubs that get into trouble and about and need money that will pave their way from the point here under one owner to a brighter future under the next owner. That next owner being, of course, people we have to approve. The key thing about it is the big row between the Premier League and the EFL has been about parachute payments and the gap between those clubs who get relegated from the Premier League into the Championship and those other Championship clubs that don't have it, and the huge difference in finance the two have had.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  Under this arrangement, the amount of money paid in parachute payments will reduce and the amount of money going into the Championship will vastly increase. But more than that, there will be what is known as a merit rate. So the top clubs in the Championship, just like in the Premier League, get most of the money. As you go down the Championship, the amounts of money go from the person who's first to the person who's 24th will start to drop. So basically, the clubs at the top of the Championship and the clubs coming down from the Premiership, the delta between them, between parachute payment clubs, non-parachute payment clubs is going to significantly reduce, which makes the Championship a much more competitive league. And to answer Alice's point, none of that money is coming from government. None of our costs come from government.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  We have, next week, we'll be putting out the levy where we tell football how much our costs are and how much it has to pay. Everything is paid for by football.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  You mentioned there, which I've found quite interesting, is that you you will have a say on new owners coming in. Two questions. One, if the club's run badly, can you force an owner to sell?

• 16:27Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  You can.

• 16:29Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  And secondly, you mentioned there you have a say on the new owners that are coming in. Is this a new fit and proper person test that no one's ever failed?

• 16:38Speaker 03

  It's, actually, I'm not, that is not true.

• 16:42Speaker 00

  Has someone failed?

• 16:43Speaker 03

  I mean, I I can only talk about our our regime, but there's certainly been people who have wanted to buy clubs, who have not actually got to the point of being able to do so. But I'm not going to go into any detail about it.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  But that would that have been forced by the fit and proper persons? Or would that have been the clubs themselves?

• 16:59Speaker 03

  No, no, every every judgment we make is based on fit and proper person test. So the difference between what the Premier League has and the EFL's and ours is that ours is backed by statutory powers, number one, and ours is much broader. So we look at owners, we look at directors, we look at senior executives. That's a far wider group of people in any club. And we also have far greater powers to remove and indeed of approval. And indeed, 90% of the times, we approve people automatically.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  What about state-owned football clubs? I mean, it's it's a train that's left a station, obviously. But at the same time, if another club wanted to do that, would you now stop that?

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Not as a matter of course. I mean, I think we would be looking at any company, country, individual who wishes to buy a club against the criteria that are laid out in the in the legislation that created us. That legislation does not allow for us to block something just because it's a Norwegian sovereign fund, as an example. And actually, we have a pretty good, strong, mixed economy of different types of owners within the five leagues. And I'm not sure it makes sense for us to do that. But, you know, it'll come down to the circumstances which they apply and the guarantees they want to give. But we're bound very much by the way the legislation has been written, which doesn't preclude that from happening.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  If you had been in existence at the time that Roman Abramovich took over Chelsea, do you think he would have, with proper due diligence, been passed as a fit and proper person to run a Premier League football club?

• 18:25Speaker 03

  Well, I think, you know, and and it's an answer that I I I think I understand. People find fairly unsatisfactory, but it's the answer I give, which is we will, we look very closely at the legislation and what we can and cannot do in terms of taking a view on any individual. Clearly, when he tried to buy Chelsea, which was like 2004, Richard Scudamore then at the Premier League would have regarded him as being a fit and proper person. He obviously had the money to buy it. He obviously had the money to keep it going. Whether, in the context of 2004, he'd have been regarded as, he probably would have passed our test. Would he today as someone who's been sanctioned? Absolutely not.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  Hmm. And Manchester City, if their appeal fails, and we'll see, but I mean, I read the the judgment, it seemed pretty compelling to me, then it's hard to make the case that they are currently being run by fit and proper people.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  You know, I'm happy to have this conversation with you once we know the result of the appeal.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  Can I ask something about this? Because I find this.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  I absolutely can't comment on that.

• 19:26Speaker 00

  No, can I find this? I find this quite odd that we have to wait for the appeal. Now, if you're sentenced to murder, you're put in prison. You don't then go, well, we're waiting on appeal, even if you do appeal.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  Man City are murderers, says Lydicat.

• 19:42Speaker 00

  Well, no, I think you'd slightly taken it out of context there. I was just using an analogy.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  So I don't quite understand, because they have been found guilty at present.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  Uh, yes.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  Yes. So.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  By the initial commission, yes.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  By the initial commission. But for some reason, in in this sense, we have to wait for an appeal. And then there might be sanctions and then they'll appeal the sanctions and we have to wait for that appeal as well.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  Okay, obviously, I'm not going.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  I think this is just a frustration of fans.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  This is a, well, I completely understand that. I mean, this is clearly a Premier League process, which is then going through a second independent panel. I mean, I'm not sure people quite realise, there are two different panels. They've obviously got a timetable they're working to and we're we're not aware of that timetable. We don't see it. We have a reasonable idea that the Premier League would like this to all be done within this season. And you can understand why they would wish that to be. And what is it they have to do? They have to, first of all, judge the evidence for the appeal. And I'm not a lawyer and nor are either of you two. And obviously, Man City believes with its extremely high-class group of lawyers that it's got grounds for appeal.

• 20:51Speaker 00

  Irrefutable evidence.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Irrefutable evidence. And secondly, there are two other, you know, elements that might come out before the appeal, but we don't know. One is, what are the sanctions? What would the Premier League sanction it? Nobody knows this yet. And the other is, of course, we've only seen a redacted version of the findings. We haven't seen the unredacted. The point about the unredacted is the evidence behind the unredacted. And that, of course, may throw up any number of things. I am not going to get pushed into making any judgment on this until we've seen all of those questions being answered. And then we will have to decide whether we're going to mount our own investigation and come to a conclusion on that and what we're going to do. And preempting that would be a colossal mistake.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  Does there come a point, at any point? Point in this process where you do have a role.

• 21:33Speaker 03

  Ultimately, we do have a role, yes.

• 21:34Speaker 00

  What were your role?

• 21:35Speaker 03

  Well, we were, we would judge, we would judge against the tests of ownership and senior directors and executives. We would judge the actions of those individuals. We're not there, we can't, uh, unlike the Premier League, who obviously can take action against the club in terms of fines or points deduction or whatever it may be.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  You can't do that.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  No, no, because that's about the competition.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  What can you do?

• 21:56Speaker 03

  We can, as you, you asked me earlier, we look at the individuals. We will look at the individuals who've given evidence. We will look at the individuals involved with the club and we will take a judgment call.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  And you could conceivably force them to sell?

• 22:07Speaker 03

  We have the power to ask an owner to step away from a club if we believe that they run a club in a way that is neither

• 22:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  fit, fair or done with privacy.

• 22:16Speaker 00

  Can they refuse or?

• 22:18Speaker 03

  No.

• 22:19Speaker 00

  No.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  No, we've got absolute power to do so.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  Now, let me, let me just say something about this, right? Since we have, unusually, I actually have time to get really possibly too long answers. You should tell me if they're too long.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, get on with it.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  I don't have any desire. I mean, let's forget Man City. Let's just talk about any theoretical club, right? Where I think things slightly get lost in all of this is a club that has been in existence for a hundred, a hundred and twenty years, wherever it may be, which is the depository of the generations of fans supporting it, of the city or the town from which it comes, actually supporting it. A club is an institution that is absolutely critical and has to be supported.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  The ownership of a club can change. I mean, look at Everton. Went to now potentially, well, third owner in five years, six years, one of your former clubs. I mean, the fact is the ownership of a club and the club itself as an institution are not necessarily the same thing.

• 23:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  Okay?

• 23:16Speaker 00

  Well, I don't think anyone would want Manchester City to be completely expunged from, from football.

• 23:21Speaker 03

  That, well.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  Well, some Manchester United fans might.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  And let's hope you're right, because the fact is, um, clearly you could get potential sanctions or actions by the other clubs in the Premier League, or indeed actions by us, which might have unintended consequences. So part of the reason why I am not going to get dragged into a view about what we might do is we're trying to look at all the consequences of what we do alongside the consequences or what everyone else may do. And that may include the H M R C, it may include UEFA, it may include god knows who else.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  And the important thing, of course, in it to remember in this is that the fans are always a constant. And they're the ones ultimately that suffer the most in this. And this is part of the problem for you and everyone else. In terms of punishing football clubs that are in the wrong way or they break the rules is that, take for instance Leicester, right? So they get points reductions because they didn't do things properly. And then ultimately that costs them relegation. Now, let's take it back to clubs that get in a mess financially and are then punished by points reductions, which sends them down.

• 24:25Speaker 03

  Which we don't do. Just to be clear, we don't do points reductions. That's not part of our power.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  No, but I'm just saying generally in football at the moment, so that, that might send a team down when they've got financial problems, which obviously exacerbates their position. So it's always a difficult one because football is not just about the game, it's about the community and the people. And so it's quite hard to get a balance between who you're punishing and who you're not punishing.

• 24:51Speaker 03

  Well, okay, I mean, I, I actually completely agree with you. And, and I mean, I think just stepping back a bit, when I started work at Premier League in nineteen ninety nine, and I looked around and I, I was selling a television rights with Richard and I looked around that room. One of the things that marked the Premier League then was most of the owners in that room had been the owners who'd created the Premier League. So you had Ken Bates would sit next to, or Chelsea would sit next to David Dean of Arsenal. Personally, they did not get on. But when it came to a consistent view about how the Premier League should be operating, essentially as a commercial operation, my job is just to make it more money. There was a pretty broad consensus among those owners about the forward direction of where the league should go.

• 25:30Speaker 03

  Today, Richard Masters, unlike Richard Scudamore, has a much more difficult job because what he's got are a group of owners who are individualists. There isn't the collective sense of, of driving forward. And the result of that over the last ten or fifteen years is both the Premier League and the EFL have come up with a rulebook that has massively expanded. Because they're acting as a regulator of those clubs. And once you start regulating your clubs and getting into points deductions, as we've seen, uh, then you get case, cases of clubs burning, suing other clubs, Everton, actually. Here I am in front of the two of you, you would know this better than anybody. I'm not saying that Premier League was wrong to do any of that. I'm saying it becomes ever more complicated. It becomes ever more tricky.

• 26:15Speaker 03

  And the consequential effects of doing that stuff are very hard to judge.

• 26:19Speaker 00

  What's the answer?

• 26:19Speaker 03

  Well, the answer is that, uh, in the case of how you regulate, there needs to be a much more clean and consistent approach. I think, I think what the Man City case might show everybody is that you've got to have some really deep, long-term thinking about the way you handle your shareholders as a, as an institution, as the Premier League and the EFL do. And from our point of view, as a new institution with the powers we've got, I'm not there to punish, you use the word punish clubs, I'm not there to punish clubs, I'm there to help clubs survive.

• 26:52Speaker 00

  You mentioned the Burnley Everton situation. And if you think about that, so we got relegated and then turns out Everton have, you know, been a bit dodgy on something. And we got compensation for that.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  You did.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Right. So the Manchester City situation could result in virtually every club in the pyramid deciding we were one lower than we should have been.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  And, and indeed therein lies the law of unintended consequences. At what point do you draw, is a line drawn on my club, which is Tottenham, who I think I'm right in saying.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  Um, five ti- five times in the last ten or fifteen years came fifth and therefore didn't get into the Champions League. I mean, you, and listen, I'm not saying this as a fan.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  Title.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  And could have won a title because they came second.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  And the point is, um, trying to manage the effect of all of this, which is, you know, the job of the Premier League more than me, is going to be very, very complicated. And I don't think, actually, in a lot of the discussion about whether Man City is found innocent or guilty, um, a lot of consequential effect of all of this has yet to, you know, really, really even begun to be seen.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:59Speaker 03

  And one, in a curious way.

• 28:00Speaker 00

  Must be a role for you in that.

• 28:01Speaker 03

  Well, there is a role, there is a role with us, but our role is primarily about the individuals on the owners, directors and senior executives test. And just to add one last thing, because people have asked me this, but I, and I, you know, in the original legislation to create us, there was a clause that said we had to take into effect trade, British trade, not diplomacy, but trade. That clause was removed when the legislation was reintroduced by the Labour government. It was originally the Conservatives' bill and the Labour then changed it. So the considerations I have to bring to this, much to everybody's disappointment, I think, are purely those of football.

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• 30:08Speaker 00

  There's always a link to politics in everything. Andy Burnham was asked about it and he sort of answered it and he got quite a bit of stick for that and then had to come out and kind of change his statement slightly. Obviously, you you've been part of the Labour Party a lot down the line and people will ask the question, don't they, that, you know, how much are the government themselves involved in this? And people say, well, you know, you've been part of the Labour Party for a long time and Labour Party are now in power. Just to put the record straight, is is there any kind of interference from government at all?

• 30:41Speaker 03

  None.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  Or could they?

• 30:42Speaker 03

  No, I never made it a secret. I've been a supporter of the Labour Party since 1970. I had written two books on the Labour Party. I was chairman of a thing called Labour List, which was Labour Party website. And I was a donor to various people, two of whom fought the 2020 Labour leadership election. And the reason I donated to both Kirstama and to Lisa Nadi, and she was then a backbench MP, was actually to prevent another candidate from winning. So, you know, I'd actually never met Lisa Nadi.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  Was it a concern of yours when you were given the role that the fact that you've been associated so much with Labour?

• 31:15Speaker 03

  Really, I pity your poor listeners having to listen to this, but let's do it anyway. So I was first approached by the Conservative government because of my long history in football. Okay. I said to the Conservative government at the time, are you really sure you want me as a candidate? Because when, you know, as soon as it goes to Downey Street, when I just get vetoed. Because although the Dean Doris had appointed me to be on the board of Channel Four, I am known to be a Labour donor and I'm known to be a Labour Party supporter. It was never a secret. And in fact, the Conservative government said, no, that's fine, apply. Then the election gets called five days later. Labour win the election. I was asked to reapply and I withdrew after six months of not hearing a word. Pretty typical of government, because I was too busy doing other stuff.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  And then they came back to me again four months later, out of the blue, asking if I was interested in doing it. And the thing is, how could I not be interested in doing this? I spent, what, 20 years of my career working in football. I'm an unbelievable believer in football as a as a sport and as something to protect. And the fact is, I didn't expect £3,000 donations that I'd made six years before to be part of the attack on me. Conservatives then attacked me for being a crony and stooge. And all I will say about that, and the question you're trying to ask me now about Andy Burnham and others is, since, one, nobody who has ever met or worked with me would regard me as being subject to pressure. I don't really react well to

• 32:42Speaker 03

  people trying to pressurise me into doing anything. I have not had a any pressure from anybody in government to do anything other than what I regarded as being this job in the right way. And I, and I, what I've said this week is if there is any political pressure, because as you said earlier, football and politics go, and the Man City case combined them in a certain way, any pressure from anybody, I'll resign rather than be subject to it. But the truth is, I don't for one moment think that will happen. I think unfortunately for me, I haven't got the excuse of people putting me under pressure. The only person is going to end up having to take the blame for whatever decisions we make, and myself as chair of the board, and we and myself and my colleagues in the board will have to take a decision on this. So I can't blame any politician for pressurising me. It'll be my fault.

• 33:27Speaker 00

  I suppose the tricky aspect is the state owned football clubs where there has to be some kind, like Andy Burnham, I'll talk about that, some kind of diplomacy between our Prime Minister and the people that run.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure. I mean, of course, but the fact is, the government took a decision to appoint, it's in the name, the Independent Football Regulator. They chose a particularly difficult, bolshin, irritating human being to be chair of it, who's never going to be subject to much pressure. And now, actually, they are having to separate these two issues out and and I completely understand. I can see why that's that's an issue. Clearly, you couldn't be a thinking human being without looking at the impact on Manchester, the amount of money that's been spent on Manchester in the last 15 or 20 years. I mean, clearly. But the fact is, that is not my concern. My concern is the result of the inquiry that's taken place and what happens when the second commission that the Premier League set up makes its judgement.

• 34:21Speaker 00

  What do you feel about the difference between people cite the two? Let's let's use the two clubs in Manchester. Manchester United, like, super debt ridden. They've come in, all the fans hate the owners, the Glazers, probably now Ratchell as well. And all the fans on the other side of the city really like their owners, but at the moment, they've broken rules because they've been found guilty. So which is the worst scenario?

• 34:46Speaker 03

  I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that question. And even if I did, I'm not sure I don't want to answer it. I mean, I mean, it's not a bad description of the position, but I don't have a, I don't have a formal or informal view to answer it.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  We all talk quite romantically about football fans, you know, without the fans, there's no game. That is all true. But is part of your job not also to educate football fans about the reality of the football business? Because where football fans end up being disappointed is when they think something about their clubs. We all have this amazing romantic attachment to our clubs and then we find actually that stuff goes on that damages our club.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  Well, also, the idea there's one coherent, consistent fan view is of course, is of course absolutely absurd. I mean, I can't remember how many fan groups there are for Sheffield Wednesday. There were a lot. How much they agreed on anything, they all hated the owner. Fine, and who could blame them? But beyond that, solutions, very different views. So I think you're right. I mean, one of the things that actually people haven't asked about in terms of state of game is the stuff we've done on corporate governance and the way that we are going to ensure that fans have a greater voice and are heard by the boards of their clubs and the way in which, you know, corporate governance within clubs is changed. So actually, I think our job is to give the

• 36:08Speaker 03

  the average fan group or the average sort of fan in himself, the ability to be heard and the ability to actually force their way into decision making by actually having a relationship with the board that allows them to have a voice and have a vote. Now, that isn't.

• 36:26Speaker 00

  What about the German model?

• 36:27Speaker 03

  People always talk about the German model and fan owned clubs and I I'm not sort of, I don't have an answer to this question. Would the Premier League have been as successful as the institution it has been for the last 40 years if all those clubs have been owned by fan groups as opposed to commercial owners who are trying to push the boundaries?

• 36:45Speaker 00

  We don't know.

• 36:46Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't know. Exactly. The problem with this is everyone has got the theory predicated on others, other examples. When we look at English football, you know, the success of it, the success of its broadcasting rights, the success of its product, the success of it being a global kind of expansion of what it means in some ways to be at the core of, you know, you know, the English game and and being English in some ways, actually, certainly is is so profound that I'm not sure the model of somebody switching to fan owned clubs would necessarily meet that.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  How many of the Premier League clubs are currently owned by by British institutions or people?

• 37:24Speaker 03

  Well, you could probably argue, I was gonna say.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  Small percentage of some clubs, like Crystal Palace. Is it double? Is it double figures American now?

• 37:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, yes. American clubs, American clubs own more more than 10 of them. I suspect.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  So, so I mean, I get what you're saying.

• 37:42Speaker 03

  But then, actually, let me give you a more interesting example. Last last year, the top of the top six clubs in League One, only one was owned by English. I mean, that in one sense is a is a more interesting, you know, point, is the same point.

• 37:55Speaker 00

  A lot of clubs are for sale.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  Well, there have been, I think we said in the report, there have been, there were 78 ownership transactions in the last five years compared to five over the previous 10 years or something. You know, there's a hell of a lot of of traffic going on in terms of transactional work and very little of it is some English money. Most of it is overseas.

• 38:14Speaker 00

  Right. And when I'm doing the rest of this policy, I'm very, very internationalist. I'm very, very European. I think Brexit's been a disaster, including for football with the work permit issue and all that stuff. But I just wonder whether one of the things that's been lost in our football is the the sense that it's become so international. That the Premier League and as you say.

• 38:32Speaker 03

  The Premier League is a triumph though, isn't it?

• 38:34Speaker 00

  It's a total triumph. I'm not knocking the Premier League. I'm just saying whether whether we don't, part of your role is actually not to try to get more British concerns to understand the value of it.

• 38:42Speaker 03

  Okay, fascinating. How do you suggest I do that? I mean, I mean, in all seriousness, what is it? Should we be, are you saying that we should be saying that an English a bidder who bids half of an American hedge fund should be allowed to win it just because they're English, as an example?

• 38:57Speaker 00

  No, I'm not necessarily saying that, but I think, but I think we should, I think we should be at least having a debate about whether we just go with the flow of internationalism right across the sector.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  Well, that's where, in theory, the fit and proper person to apply to new owners and directors comes into play. But again, if you read the legislation under which we operate, I have no power to prevent anyone from buying clubs as long as they meet those financial criteria. And that would mean normally it would not be an English buyer because there haven't been English buyers coming down the track. And indeed, lots of clubs who are currently in the lower leagues who are currently owned by English buyers are looking to sell. And almost certainly, they won't be selling to other English buyers. So I'm afraid that's the trend that's been going on for 20 years. Probably starting with Abramovich, actually, in terms of the Premier League.

• 39:46Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, because that was seen as a great sort of positive move. But, yeah, well, okay, but I but I think you you maybe it may not have the power. You you can certainly argue for new powers.

• 39:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure. You know, we are currently working within the current legislation and I think issues, I mean, you know, I think if I were the government, I'd have been waiting to see whether we were reasonably competent. You have to ask them what they think.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  Can I see if you've got a view on salary cap?

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, we we are not in support of salary cap. We certainly don't have the powers to implement one. I think actually, one of the things that's so interesting about all of this is people always ask me about salary cap, what they don't ask me about agents' fees. You know how much agents' fees are?

• 40:26Speaker 00

  Agents' fees is a purge for game.

• 40:28Speaker 03

  Over £500 million.

• 40:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  It's half a billion pounds, not a, and you know, frankly, would I object to that money being spent on players rather than agents? Hell, I'd much prefer it to be being spent on players. But the fact is, that to me is a is a much more profound point in terms of transfer debt, which is rising dramatically. It's the other really big issue that some people have picked up on, but most people haven't. The amount of money owed by clubs to other clubs, Man City to other clubs, is huge. It's billions of pounds. And so when you look at the economy of all of this, everything is connected to everything else. But we're not in support of a salary cap because.

• 41:06Speaker 00

  There is a way to stop the agent's payments.

• 41:08Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 41:09Speaker 00

  Or to limit it because it is truly absurd at the moment.

• 41:13Speaker 03

  What's the way?

• 41:13Speaker 00

  The way is that only the player can pay his agent.

• 41:18Speaker 03

  But the problem I have is that agents are controlled by FIFA.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  Indeed, I'm talking about in general here. I'm not, I'm not saying you can come in and fix that, but that is the answer to it because at the moment, that is not the case. And in some cases, you've got the buying club, the selling club.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  You're right.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  Both players. And then they tell their player, oh, it's all right, we'll get the club to pay.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  I mean, the fact is that whether you started off two years ago, believing a regulator should exist or not, I think actually, I mean, this very conversation actually proves it to me in many ways. The idea that somebody should be sitting there actually beginning to look at these issues and the profound effect, what we, what I keep saying to my, my colleagues is, you know, we, we shouldn't be looking at the next six months, three years. I mean, clearly we've had to work like hell to get the last year and a half, get up and running. You know, actually creating a new regulator is not a, is not a simple task. Forget it about it being in football, which is actually is even less simple. But I would think we're going to get to a point a year from now where we should start looking at the much broader picture, the sort of issues you're raising. At the moment, we are literally just trying

• 42:25Speaker 03

  to get the building blocks in place so that, you know, people understand the problem. I think we've now shown them the problem in the state of game report. People understand what we're going to cost football when the levy, when in a year, in a week or so from now. And then when we start licensing, we are able to go into clubs and start dealing with the granular issues. Once we get beyond all of that, then we start looking at the wider picture. And if government then wants to talk to us about wider powers, we'll have that conversation.

• 42:51Speaker 00

  Final question. Unless you've got one. You can have one as well.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  Sorry, I'm very generous, even on my own podcast.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  I feel like a referee.

• 43:01Speaker 00

  Final question from me. For you, what would you see as success?

• 43:08Speaker 03

  You know, I've done a lot of interviews with you and you're the first person to ask me that question, which is kind of interesting. Weirdly, somebody said to me when I first got this job, the best regulator is one you never hear from. So weirdly, success is my not being invited back by you in three years' time to ask how we've messed it up. I actually think if we get to the point in what a year from now, when we've licensed every club, we've really gone through those clubs and understood the problems they've got, we've been able to take some effective action in dealing with them at a granular level, you know, a club day by day, no clubs have gone under. I'd regard that as a pretty big step forward in our ability to work with football. We are not there to be a traffic cop. We are

• 43:52Speaker 03

  there to be a support mechanism for this institution. And 116 clubs is a lot of clubs. You know, you've got to remember, we deal with Gateshead as much as we deal with Arsenal, in fact, probably more. So we are looking at all of these issues with having to work with them on a sort of day by day basis. A year and a half from now, I'd like to be able to stand back and say, okay, we've got degrees of security in here. There's a new funding deal in football, which is helping that security. What's next?

• 44:21Speaker 00

  But most of these Premier League owners, particularly now, a lot of them, you know, from as you say, American hedge funds and American, we talk about uber capitalists here.

• 44:29Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  In the main. So, and we're living in a market economy.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  We are.

• 44:33Speaker 00

  Right. So is it not unrealistic to think that actually in such a competitive environment, some of them might go under?

• 44:41Speaker 03

  Well, if they go under, after everything we're trying to do and everything they're trying to do, they'll go under. I mean, there's, I'm not here to, you know, ultimately, we can only do what we can do. And I, I, I would hope. And actually, when I, I did, I did an investor conference. I mean, I think it's just worth making this point. All the investors we have talked to, all of them, without exception, believe in us regulating the game. Investors want a regulator who's going to bring some degree of security and sanity, where you haven't got 60% of the clubs in, of 116 who don't have a business plan. Actually, they want to know that their competitors are secure. They want to know they're cash flowed enough. They're still going to be competitors. So actually, most investors see this, see us

• 45:22Speaker 03

  as being a help to capitalism. The way in which we preserve that and the way we keep getting inward investment into football is by making it look as though there's a stable and solid process by which things will work properly. And I think we're going to do that. Whether that is enough to prevent clubs from going bust, ultimately will come down to those owners. And we deal with owners who sometimes just wish to do their own particular form of funding mechanism, which they only they understand, and it goes wrong. And I, I can tell you, there'll be plenty of examples of those coming down the track.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  David, thank you very much for your time. I wish you absolutely every success with it because it is.

• 46:03Speaker 03

  Have me, have me back in 18 months and I'll find out how it went.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  We'd love to. We'd love to see, see how, so our progress is made. Maybe you can work on Tottenham as well, because.

• 46:11Speaker 03

  Ah, so happy you didn't mention Tottenham.

• 46:14Speaker 06

  I went to Burnley when you were talking about parachute payments. We've got them, but we're still down there.

• 46:20Speaker 03

  Right. Exactly.

• 46:21Speaker 00

  You are.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 46:37Speaker 01

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