Lord Knight of Weymouth
Main Page: Lord Knight of Weymouth (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, even though he plays in blue.
I declare an interest as a lifelong supporter and current season ticket holder at Arsenal Football Club. I know only too well the unique bond that exists between a supporter and a club. Often it brings frustration and despair, but also the greatest moments, such as winning the Cup at Wembley. This bond is a commitment for life and the power of football in people’s lives can bring many positive things, including a focal point for community pride. But we must remember that without fans football is nothing. Most cynically put, fans are vital wallpaper and ambient sound for lucrative TV coverage.
Until recently I was a director of the Arsenal fan-share scheme. This is a pioneering scheme that enabled Arsenal fans to buy a part share in Arsenal. As the price of one share is now £15,000, the scheme allowed fans to come together to own an affordable part of a share—called a fan-share. The FSA-regulated scheme was successful at its launch and hailed by many, including the FA, the Premier League, Michel Platini of UEFA, and Jeremy Hunt and Hugh Robertson, who were Secretary of State and Minister for Sport respectively at the time, spoke positively of the scheme as a model for football clubs to follow in terms of supporter ownership-engagement.
The scheme quickly secured almost 2,000 members and collectively they held 120 shares in Arsenal. That meant that 2,000 more fans had a small share in the club’s ownership and there were 120 places to attend the AGM and hold the club’s directors to account. Holders of fan-shares received the club’s report and accounts, and all the information that chief executive Ivan Gazidis sent to Arsenal’s supporters.
Arsenal has benefited greatly over many decades from maintaining stability in its ownership structure, and from having supporters who own shares and are actively involved in this structure. Plurality of ownership has served Arsenal well, and is the best way to ensure that the necessary checks and balances are in place to protect the club’s long-term future.
Sadly for the fan-share scheme there was a takeover of Arsenal Football Club by Stan Kroenke during the scheme’s early days. This changed everything. Despite many attempts to engage him, Mr Kroenke has refused to meet anyone from the scheme and to support its development. With him buying up all the shares during the takeover, the scheme has struggled to find new shares to buy and was unable to market itself to new members. It is now facing closure. A final plea for Mr Kroenke to issue new shares to the scheme has been refused.
In this regard it is a great pity that the DCMS has taken so long to establish its expert group on football ownership, as recommended to it by the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust. If it had done so, it might have found ways to provide more support to schemes such as fan-share. While Ministers spoke highly of it, they regrettably offered no tangible support when it mattered. As the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust advised the DCMS Select Committee, there are legislative barriers, such as those contained in the Financial Markets and Services Act, that make it more difficult to promote the scheme. I welcome that there is now finally a group to look at these barriers.
We need to go further. We need to discuss how supporters are given a greater say in the way that clubs are run. That is why I welcome the proposals put forward by my honourable friend Clive Efford in the other place and by my party to have fans elected to the boards of football clubs. In my opinion, and that of many other fans I meet, clubs such as Arsenal are too important to be controlled by just one person, and these measures would address that.
It could be achieved by legislation. It could also be achieved by the Premier League and the Football League making changes to their rulebook. The Arsenal Supporters’ Trust has argued that the rules should require supporters at all clubs to be treated in the way they would be if they held equity in the club, even in cases where they do not, and to be offered things such as financial reporting in a format similar to that required under the Companies Act and twice-yearly meetings between representatives of supporters and directors and executives of the club.
In conclusion, I hope that the Government can make progress on these issues with the recently announced expert working group. I also hope that they will correct their omission of not including any representatives from Premier League clubs that face these engagement barriers. But their track record to date is not encouraging. For real change, we have the proposals from Labour and that is why my advice would always be to support the team in red.