Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Finkelstein Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

Noble Lords need to understand exactly what the previous speaker was talking about. It is about preserving our leagues. The fan base of a club is not 200,000 people in South Korea or 20,000 people in New York. The fan bases of these clubs are in this country. The unintended consequence of what is being proposed could occur very quickly, easily and suddenly.

I am quite appalled by the number of noble Lords in this House who have two or three football clubs. You should have one football club; it is the club you support. I do not have a second or third club. I have one club; I am indeed suffering for that pleasure at the moment, but I have one club, through thick and thin.

What is to stop someone setting up a supporters’ group for my club somewhere else, without honourable intentions but with the intention of doing my club some difficulty or harm? That is what muddies the waters and it is where you get all this involvement. The supporters are local supporters. The other supporters can be supporters but, if local groups are going to be set up, they should be there for 12 months or two years. We need to know their history and regulatory rights. They are not being set up by football clubs, because that is another way that this could be done—to set up your own shadow group that plays lip service to this.

Noble Lords know that football supporters have robust views, and chairmen who really understand that tend to meet them regularly. Lots of Premier League clubs do that; they go and meet their supporters—working-class people in areas and towns, who will give them their honest views, which the clubs usually do not like. United is now increasing the prices for all tickets, which is not going down well with all the United fans, but there is still a 10 or 15-year waiting list for a season ticket. That is why the club can do that, but it is not really supporting the fans.

Let us just bring it back from this existential conversation about Burke and the father of the son. Does that go into politics—“I was a Conservative so my son’s going to be a Conservative”? That is changing—we all know it is—and it is a reasonable evolution. If you are the son of a miner, you might end up a Conservative Minister. That is great, that is the opportunity that this country offers, and it should be the same with football supporters.

But football supporters support their own club and are very wary about suddenly involving any number of supporters, because the numbers then become detrimental to doing what we are supposed to be doing here, which is protecting the pyramid. It seems that these debates are all leading in one direction: “Leave the Premier League alone, let it run football, and the rest of you can have the crumbs off the table”. That is the feeling I am getting from these conversations, and that is wrong.

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

I have a slight fear that I may be intervening in the intervention on an intervention on the answer to an intervention, but still. Among my interests is that I am a director of Chelsea Football Club and director of its foundation. I also had the honour to be a member of the fan-led review committee.

I urge that the Bill and the debate should define “fans” as widely as possible. I am afraid that I think the noble Lord is completely wrong, certainly as far as my club is concerned. We have hundreds of thousands—indeed, millions—of fans all around the world. We care deeply for them and I am very much engaged in our fan mechanism, in involving them. I am committed to the principle of fan engagement that the Crouch committee laid out. We want to talk to our fans all over the globe and we have an interest in prospective fans, not only current fans.

Of course, the fans who attend Stamford Bridge, which is where Chelsea play at home—I feel that I have to explain that—are very dear to us and play a core part in the definition of who a “fan” is, but they are certainly not the only fans. It would be a mistake for the regulator to start its work thinking that that is how the Bill considers it.

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

Regulators do not define who fans are. Regulators define fans for the purpose of consultation in pursuit of their duties. I am a Liverpool fan. Wherever I go in the world—whatever I am doing—I always find the local bar, and there are lots of Liverpool people there to support the team when a game is on, and I make lots of new friends. Liverpool as a club should of course take those fans seriously in its commercial thinking, its tours and other long-term strategy, but the idea that the regulator should consult with the San Diego Liverpool chapter when it is considering issues to do with implementing the Bill is ridiculous. I do not think San Diego-based fans will want that either. The club should take those interests into consideration. We are talking about the connection between a regulator and the pursuit of its duties, and the issue of protecting communities.

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

Is the noble Lord saying that he thinks the club should not ask those people as well as other fans? If he thinks that, why should that not be part of the definition of the “fan” under the Bill?

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

I did not say anything about what the club should do. We should not tell clubs what to do about their conception of their own fans. I am talking about the relevant categorisation of what “fans” means for the purpose of the regulator pursuing its duties.