Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 16th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, will be unsurprised to know that I oppose these two amendments, which I will do briefly.

If the gambling industry is pouring money into football, I would say that that is a good thing. Anti-gambling commentators talk as if this were drug money coming from the Mafia. The whole tone is moralistic. We have already heard mention of match-fixing and cheating, as though it is all incredibly sordid and terrible. But let me just remind the Committee that betting firms are legitimate businesses. What, so they use their sponsorship to increase their market share—what is wrong with that? Is all football sponsorship beyond gambling to be forced to pass an ethics test—some kind of purity test? This is football, not some puritan revival movement.

Let us be honest: lots of football clubs need and appreciate this sponsorship money. It is all well and good that the Premier League has collectively agreed to withdraw gambling sponsorship from the front of clubs’ match-day shirts. That is a voluntary measure—it is up to it—but the truth is that, as we have ascertained in these debates, the Premier League can afford such lucrative virtue signalling, as I consider it. For the lower-tier and lower-league clubs and for the EFL, however, such sponsorship money is often invaluable. The Bill aims to help clubs become more financially sustainable, so the last thing it needs is external parties or legislators turning off one financial tap. This would mean that some cash-strapped clubs would face ruin if deprived of such revenue.

The Bill has been put forward in the name of fans and, whatever my reservations, I do not doubt that people have the fans at the heart of their discussions, whichever side they are on. But I remind noble Lords that millions of fans are less bothered about what logo appears on a player’s shirt or on advertising boards than they are about the quality on the pitch. There is more than a whiff of nanny state when they are patronisingly told by anti-gambling advocates that the ban would be for their own protection. It seems that anti-gambling campaigners do not trust fans to make their own decisions and make the right judgments about how they spend their own money.

Writing on this issue, Jon Bryan—who is an excellent commentator on the whole issue of gambling, which he posits and reminds us is a pleasurable leisure activity—says that it also undermines any notion of fans’ agency. The notion is put forward that, as soon as fans see a logo on a football shirt, they will rush off and place a bet, as though they are being groomed and just one punt away from addiction. This treats adult fans as children, and it is infantilising. It is often posed—

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

On that last point, is the noble Baroness aware of the amount of in-game gambling that takes place through television and, of course, mobile phones, where the betting companies encourage fans watching matches to bet during the game on who will get the next corner, whether somebody be sent off, whether there will there be extra time in a cup tie and so on? Is that not interfering with the normal cut and thrust of the game in a way that is potentially dangerous, not least—I would like her to answer this point—to young people, particularly children?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

First, I would make a distinction between children and adults. Secondly, as somebody who is from a large, football-obsessed family, I am more than a little aware of all the encouragement that football fans have to put on a bet. But not all of them do when they are encouraged and, what is more, even if they do, they do not necessarily become problem gamblers, which is what is being posited. It can be something that they enjoy.