English Premier League Football

Lord Bates Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Bates]

That this House takes note of the international economic and cultural contributions of English Premier League football to the United Kingdom.

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, it is an immense privilege to kick off this debate on the English Premier League. In securing this debate, I am grateful still to be able to declare a Premiership interest as a supporter of Newcastle United Football Club. I have learnt to cope with the disappointment over the years, but it is the hope that I cannot quite handle.

My purpose in seeking this debate was to highlight the incredible contribution that Premier League football makes to UK plc week in, week out. It is by far the most watched league in the world: 212 countries broadcast the Premier League, compared with the 193 member states of the United Nations and the 204 countries that sent teams to the Olympic and Paralympic Games last summer. That is a real penetration rate. Some 1.46 billion people follow the Premier League around the world—70% of the total population of the televised sport market.

That market is growing fastest in a corner of the world where our economic interests are growing fastest: in Asia. Asia now accounts for 31% of the viewership of Premier League football. The Prime Minister, on a recent trade mission, mentioned the first time that he enrolled the substantial figure of the Premier League trophy as a member of his trade delegation. When he turned up to a dinner in Kuala Lumpur, he saw businessmen from all over east Asia, and he later said:

“I thought … all these people coming to have dinner with me, I must be such a big draw”.

He then realised that in fact they all just wanted to be photographed with the Premier League trophy. It is an immense draw and an immense asset for British business and diplomacy.

If we are in a global race—and we are—the Premier League represents a massive home advantage for British business and diplomacy: it is our Stretford End and our Kop. It is not surprising that the Premier League is at the heart of the GREAT campaign to sell British goods, services and culture around the world. When last year Monocle Magazine carried out its global survey of national soft power capital, the UK was ranked at number one. The Premier League was the driving force behind that extraordinary performance. When Populus carried out an international survey asking respondents to rank what made them view Britain more favourably, the Premier League out-polled popular music, the BBC and even—dare I say in the week of a royal birth?—the monarchy. Showing no hard feelings, Her Majesty awarded to the Premier League the Queen’s award for enterprise in international trade.

When the 22 first division clubs met on the morning of 27 May 1992 to resign en masse from the Football League, thus breaking with 104 years of tradition, not even they could have anticipated the global phenomenon that the Premier League has become. In its first season, it earned £46 million. Last year, it earned £1.28 billion and generated a further £3 billion for clubs through television rights. That is more than double the income of the Spanish and Italian leagues combined.

Part of what makes us British is that we sneer slightly at commercial success, believing that culture cannot really be culture if it is also popular. We slightly look down our noses at players with few or no qualifications earning £100,000 per week. However, the salaries simply reflect the success of the business in which they deploy their sublime skills. In that they are no different from those in any other enterprise, such as investment bankers or hedge fund supremos, except for the level of joy which they give to the public as they ply their trade. Furthermore, Premier League clubs also paid in excess of £1 billion in tax to the Exchequer last year.

With wealth comes responsibility, of course, and support for organisations such as the Football Foundation are a vital way of growing the game for the future. It would be good to see how more of that wealth at the top could trickle down to the grass roots and help new talent to grow.

People around the world do not just watch Premiership football, they also come to see it. VisitBritain announced in October 2012 that 900,000 football tourists came to the UK in 2012, contributing £706 million to the national economy. This compares favourably to the 590,000 people who turned up for the Olympics and Paralympics.

It is not just the staggering commercial success and sheer entertainment value through which the Premier League makes its contribution to the reputation of the UK around the world. It is also through its international engagement. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, chairman of the British Council All-Party Parliamentary Group, for pointing out to me the British Council and Premier League’s partnership through Premier Skills, which has helped 2,300 coaches and 400,000 young people in 20 countries around the world, including Afghanistan. It is no coincidence that the British Council has paired up with the Premier League—they both recognise that the Premier League’s global audience is earned because it is globally accessible. Clubs are owned by Russians, Chinese, Americans, Indians and Arabs, with managers from 11 nations and players from 65 nations, and they are all watched in 212 nations.

For those of us of an internationalist persuasion nothing warms our soul quite like the sight of sportsmen of many different nations and cultures playing on the same level playing field, under the same rules, demonstrating the same purpose and commitment, working together as a team in pursuit of common goals. We have Argentinean and English, Greek and Turk, Iranian and American, Ukrainian and Russian, Serb and Croat, Japanese and Korean, who all play in the league, for the same teams, demonstrating the unifying nature of sport and confirming—whatever the politicians or clerics might tell us—that we are all human first. It is the ultimate meritocracy as it matters not a jot whether you are rich or poor, educated or uneducated, gay or straight; it does not matter how you look—as Wayne Rooney can tell us—but only how you play and what results you deliver.

The league is also becoming more religiously diverse. We are all familiar with the crucifix-kissing and heavenward-pointing finger of Christian players’ goal celebrations, but more than 40 Muslim players now play in the league, and when Demba Ba struck a thunderous volley for Newcastle against Manchester United, I almost converted on the spot. Seriously, however, that is why it is vital that that the Premier League is ruthless in ensuring that racism and all other forms of prejudice are trumped by respect for all those on the field and off, for that is the Premier League brand. All are welcome, worthy of respect and are subject to the same rules.

The Premier League is a great success story of which we can all be proud. It can be an immensely powerful resource for British business and diplomacy around the world, not just because of the game itself but because of what it says about how we believe the game should be played.

I am very grateful to so many noble Lords for registering to speak in this debate and I look forward to their contributions—and, in the spirit of the game, I will forgo my extra time and pass it on. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, I think that the Standing Order and the clock permit for a few minutes of post-match analysis of this debate. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part. I particularly thank my noble friend Lady Garden of Frognal for the very comprehensive way in which she summed up the debate, responding to the points raised.

As I sat and listened to the debate, I felt that if Alan Hansen were here, he would say, “The thing about that debate is that there was quality everywhere you looked on the pitch”. There was immense, rich experience coming through: the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, with the Football Foundation; the noble Lord, Lord Birt, with broadcasting; the noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, with the Kick It Out campaign; the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, with the National Football Museum; the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie; and my noble friend Lord Taylor of Warwick, who is still playing. I felt that it was an excellent debate from that point of view, and it brought out into the open passionate football fans from all different corners, from Southampton to Forfar Athletic, the team of my noble friend Lord Lyell, to recognise the national game.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, gave us a little tutoring on how the Scots are worried about the performance of England at a national level. I believe that we should take that advice with a little caution. Some of us were watching last month when the English national team gave a fantastic performance in the Maracana in Rio against Brazil to draw 2-2. The truth will be found out next month when Scotland comes down to Wembley for the 150th anniversary game.

Several noble Lords referenced community value and community ownership of our clubs and what this evokes within each of us. I was drifting away on the melodic tones of the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, when he talked about “wor Jackie” and the Newgate Street Co-op—I was dragged back to my roots also.

I will make just a couple of brief points. As a fellow-member of the Olympic and Paralympic Legacy Committee I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for raising the evidence given by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, to that committee. We were all quite shocked to hear her observations about how inaccessible many Premier League football grounds are. I encourage the Government Front Bench to consider dispatching the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, to each of the Premier League football grounds to carry out an audit; if that would not sort them out, I do not know what would.

Some unbelievers crept in for the debate, perhaps ahead of the debate that will follow on atheism; the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, embarked on a heresy, but made a very valuable contribution to the debate, as did my noble friend Lord Addington. I will make a brief point about the number of players, which is that yes, 30% of the players who play in the Premier League are from England and eligible to play for the English national team. However, that does not reflect the true picture. If you take into account the Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh players, we move up to 40%. If we followed the example of rugby and the British Lions and had a team of that nature, we would be on par with what is happening in Germany. Perhaps we ought to look at that. Why do the national teams not succeed? That is another debate, and I do not want to embark on it. It is probably because we over-obsess about past glory in 1966 rather than future glory, and perhaps also because for some of the players the greatest pinnacle of success is winning the Champions League medal rather than a World Cup medal. Again, we shall see.

I will make one factual correction for the record. Noble Lords will not be surprised, from my stature, to learn that I will not be running 500 miles for Save the Children’s work in Syria, starting in London on Saturday and finishing in Enniskillen on 9 September, but will be walking it—and at a measured pace. However, that pace will be sprightly during the first half of the walk because I have to get to Manchester for 17 August, when Newcastle plays Manchester City in the opening game of the season. How I perform thereafter will very much depend on that game. This is a good-news story for Britain.