Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Wood of Anfield and Lord Addington

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be brief, partly because dinner is fast approaching and partly because this is an amendment to probe the Minister’s response to a good existing clause, Clause 48. This clause is about preventing home matches being relocated. The amendment is to probe whether the provision is sufficient to meet widespread fan concerns about possible exceptions.

There is increasing discussion about domestic football games being moved overseas. We have seen statements from the chairman of my own team, Liverpool, and broadcasters such as NBC are talking about relocating Premier League games abroad. The FIFA working group is reviewing its policies to allow this. There are all sorts of stories, rumours and plans afoot to possibly allow Latin American domestic games to be played in the United States. There is historical evidence showing that the Premier League once proposed an additional 39th game to the season, which would not be played at the ground of a Premier League club. We also see countries such as Saudia Arabia that have intervened—let us put it that way—in sports properties, buying them and moving them around, for golf and boxing. There is reason to think that this is not a very remote possibility.

The Bill sets out to prevent clubs relocating matches away from home stadia without the approval of the regulator. I hope that enjoys widespread support; it is welcome and important. The point of my amendment is to probe the idea that the clause is not quite as watertight as it should be. The concern is that the current wording is based on the relocation of matches which are already designated as home matches. What happens if the competition organiser allocates games directly, before the season’s fixtures are issued, to Riyadh, Los Angeles, Singapore, Paris or wherever? They could claim that no home game is being relocated and say, for example, that weeks 10 and 20 are weeks in which games are played elsewhere. What if the 39th game proposal, so widely reviled by fans, is revived? That is not about the relocation of a home game; it is an extra game.

The new clause addresses this by placing a requirement on the regulated competition organisers to seek approval from the regulator before moving a domestic game overseas. That way, there is no longer a need to define what a home game is to bring it in scope, and it ensures that as part of the assessment of this request to relocate a game, the regulator must specifically consult UK-based fans of the clubs involved in the relocation. Importantly, this does not rule out the relocation of a game; it requires any additional fixture that is part of a competition to be subject to consultation in the way specified in the Bill.

I would welcome the Minister’s observations on this amendment and her assessment of two questions. First, what happens if the competition organiser allocates games directly to an overseas location? How will the existing clause protect against that? Secondly, what happens if the competition organiser creates a new format, such as another 39th game that cannot easily be defined as a home game? The amendment tries to cover those extra, niche cases. With that in mind, I beg to move.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I am assuming that this is a probing amendment. Other sports—not British sports—do this, such as American football. Is it the Government’s intention that the regulator will make sure that such games are played at home? If the Minister can say that that is the intention, we are all comparatively happy; if not, we have a real problem.