Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Written Evidence


Memorandum submitted by the Professional Players' Federation

  1.  The Professional Players' Federation (PPF)[1] is the national organisation for the professional player associations in the United Kingdom. The 11 player associations in membership represent over 15,600 professional sportsmen and women. The PPF is dedicated to promoting, protecting and developing the collective interests of these players.

  2.  We are grateful for the opportunity to provide our views on the European Commission's White Paper on Sport to the Committee and are pleased to highlight the following issues for your consideration.

OVERVIEW

  3.  The PPF felt that the White Paper struck a relatively sensible balance between recognising the specificity of sport whilst ensuring that professional sportsmen and women were still protected by employment laws, human rights legislation and the ultimate recourse to the European Court of Justice.

  4.  It is important to recognise that professional sportsmen and women are also employees. Whilst a few high profile names earn superstar salaries the majority of professional players have more precarious careers, often on short term contracts and always just one bad injury away from losing their job.

  5.  The need for all European sportsmen and women to remain within the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice is essential. The case law that has developed in the ECJ suggests that the courts are capable of recognising the special nature of sport when considering specific cases. Any suggestion that sport should be granted an exemption from European laws needs to be treated very carefully. Past experiences have shown that sports bodies can not necessarily be trusted to protect the rights of players.

  6.  The experiences of the anti-trust exemption for baseball in the United States suggest that there is little benefit from such exemptions particularly when compared to other American sports that do not have such an exemption.[2]

SOCIAL DIALOGUE

  7.  We support the view within the White Paper (Paragraph 5.3) that disputes within sport are best handled through social dialogue between recognised player associations and employers. Given that the Commission's White Paper shies away from introducing any new legislation then the PPF believes that promoting social dialogue should be one of the principle areas where national and European Governments focus their actions.

  8.  The agreement in football between FIFPro and FIFA about the revised transfer regulations after the 1995 Bosman Ruling shows the benefits that social dialogue can bring. A sensible alternative was agreed which balanced the rights of individual footballers with the need to protect the specific nature of professional football. The professional player associations in all sports have repeatedly proven that they are capable of acting to safeguard the long term interests of their sport whilst ensuring players are treated fairly.

  9.  A number of sports struggle to engage in meaningful social dialogue due to difficulties in organising a player association or obstructive employers. The situation is sometimes even worse in the rest of Europe, especially in the new member states where player associations are almost unknown.

  10.  The PPF is actively involved in moves to establish a cross sport European players' federation (European Elite Athletes Association) as part of a social dialogue in sport initiative funded by the Commission. The player associations in the UK are supportive of such an approach and applaud the Commission for providing funding to help the formation of the new association.

  11.  The player associations in England are some of the best and longest established in the world. This is an area where we lead Europe and have also taken an active role in developing international player associations. Anecdotal evidence from the EEAA suggests that the more effective and involved the player association is within the sports family then the less the courts need to intervene.

  12.  The PPF would welcome the Committee's support in encouraging HM Government to establish a domestic cross sport social dialogue group.

TRAINING

  13.  The quality of training for young players must be an important element of any successful sports policy. The White Paper recognises this in Chapter 2.3 (Enhancing the role of sport in education and training) though it appears to be more concerned with the education sector as apposed to coaching.

  14.  The PPF welcomes the Commission's study into the training of young sportspeople and looks forward to the final report. The benefits of focussing on sports coaching are perhaps best demonstrated by the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) in the UK.

  15.  Back in 1996 the PGA recognised the need to improve the education of golf professionals if Britain was to be at the forefront of world golf. The PGA radically improved its training programmes and invested in a national academy. All would-be professionals are now required to take either a three year foundation degree in Golf Studies or BA (Hons) in Applied Golf Management Studies awarded by the University of Birmingham.[3] This is supported by a Continuous Professional Development programme which ensures PGA professionals follow a lifetime of learning in the golf industry.

  16.  We would contend that the PGA leads the way in the training and development of its coaches, who in turn develop the players. This is something that could be usefully copied by other sports and should form a model for both HM Government's national coaching policy and any developments by the Commission.

  17.  Whilst improving coaching will go a long way to developing world class British players there remains a problem in many team sports. If good trainees are to develop into successful professionals then they need regular first team experience. This requires clubs and managers to take a long term approach to developing new talent—something that the competitive nature of professional leagues (with the ever present threat of the sack for managers) does not foster. All too often clubs will bring in fully developed overseas players as a short term solution, whilst the long term health of our national teams suffer.

HOME GROWN PLAYER RULES

  18.  The PPF is supportive of moves to promote opportunities for home grown players. We believe that this is one of the biggest issues facing professional team sports in the United Kingdom.

  19.  The current application of complete freedom of movement within the Single Market is starting to impact upon the success of our national teams—particularly in the less popular professional sports like ice hockey, polo and basketball—and the failure of the English football team to qualify for Euro 2008 suggests that even our national sport is starting to suffer.[4]

  20.  The effect of the application of Freedom of Movement within the Single Market has been dramatically increased by two factors:

    (a)  Trading agreements giving workers from countries outside the single market the same rights as European nationals have greatly increased the number of players exempt from work permits.

    (b)  The different naturalisation regulations within Europe and relative ease with which some countries grant nationality (often dual nationality) further increase the pool of players protected by Freedom of Movement.

  21.  These factors have led to a large increase in the number of overseas players working in the UK and this has inevitably been at the expense of opportunities for players who are qualified to play for our national team. This effect has been compounded by changes in the work permit system for non EEA nationals. This has generally made it easier to work as a professional sportsman in the UK.[5]

  22.  Therefore the PPF supports moves to ensure a minimum number of home grown players in each team. We believe that when the percentage of non-domestic players in a sport's premier competition exceeds a certain percentage (say 50%) then quotas could be a proportionate response to protecting the importance of national teams. Indeed, a legal opinion has been received by one of our members which gives support to the application of a proportionate quota (though we recognise that this is not a view necessarily shared by the Commission and that it will ultimately need to be decided by the ECJ).

  23.  Whilst we believe that quotas will be helpful, they may not be sufficient to ensure the promotion of home grown talent. The recent experience of voluntary quotas within professional ice hockey in the UK shows that unless there is strong support for the principle behind quotas that there is a danger that teams will undermine the system. Discussions with the Ice Hockey Players' Association suggests that some squads contained British players who got very little ice time and were effectively there to make up the quotas whilst foreign nationals continued to dominate the sport.

  24.  The PPF believes that unless the professional leagues take an active decision to support the national teams then any moves to promote home grown talent will be fatally undermined. The PPF is unclear how much importance the top leagues in some sports give to the success of their national team.

  25.  The Committee may wish to ask the professional leagues how important to their sports they consider the success of the national team to be.

  26.  The situation in domestic cricket, where the ECB funds the counties partly according to the number of players that are qualified for the national team, is one which the PPF supports. We would welcome any support the Committee is able to provide in protecting and promoting such an innovative system.

ANTI-RACISM

  27.  The PPF was disappointed that racism was grouped together with violence within the White Paper (Chapter 2.6). We are strongly of the opinion that racism is such a major issue that it needs to be treated separately. Obviously, players must be entitled to carry out their job without being subject to racist abuse, but there is more to anti-racism in sport than this. The PPF would like to see greater emphasis given to the use of sport to promote racial tolerance within society. This is especially important within the new member states where there would appear to be serious issues that need to be addressed.

  28.  Players have a high profile and can often lead the way in promoting racial integration and tolerance. The success of both the Kick It Out and the Show Racism the Red Card campaigns in football and other player led initiatives as in cricket shows the benefits that working with players can bring to anti-racism programmes. The knowledge gained through Kick It Out over the last twelve years means that the UK is well placed to take the lead on this issue in Europe.

  29.  The PPF is keen to promote a cross sport, European-wide anti-racism campaign through the members of the European Elite Athletes Association. We would welcome any support the Committee is able to provide in making the case for funding to support the dissemination of programmes using sport to promote racial integration and tolerance.

AGENTS

  30.  The PPF is aware of practices that are of concern amongst agents in their dealings with players and clubs. However, we remain to be convinced of the need for any action by the Commission on this matter.

SOLIDARITY MECHANISMS

  31.  The member player associations and PPF are supportive of solidarity mechanisms for the redistribution of television monies both to the grass roots of sport and amongst the professional clubs. We are particularly supportive of the Football Foundation which has been set up in such a way as to ensure that the Professional Footballer's Association is involved in the distribution of funds.

  32.  The PPF believes that players should be entitled to a share of any collective media agreements. This would depend upon who owns image rights and the details within each player's contract. A collective approach administered through the player associations could provide funding to support players' accident and healthcare insurance, education, re-training and benevolent funds. The benefits of such an approach have been demonstrated by the arrangements in English football.

IMAGE RIGHTS

  33.  It was reassuring that the Commission's White Paper recognised that "A growing part of the economic value of sports is linked to intellectual property rights".[6] Disappointingly there was little other mention of this important area. Admittedly, intellectual property rights are complicated but this is an area which could benefit from on-going dialogue between sport's employees, employers and government at a European and national level.

BETTING

  34.  The PPF was disappointed that the Commission chose not to include any reference to sports betting within its White Paper. We were supportive of the proposals with the Independent Sports Review for a formal funding mechanism between the betting industry and sports.

  35.  It is recognised that there is a view that such a system may have legal difficulties but we consider that players (as opposed to clubs or leagues) may have a stronger legal case for recompense for the additional restrictions that sports betting markets place upon individuals.

  36.  The PPF is strongly of the opinion that there is a need for a consistent European-wide approach to sports betting. The current arrangements mean that bookmakers can relocate to other European countries to avoid any national legislation they dislike. This situation means that bookmakers, especially internet and telephone based operations, are perilously close to being outside the law unless there is a consistent European policy.

CONCLUSION

  37.  We are grateful for the opportunity to submit our views on the Commission's White Paper on Sport. Should the Committee consider it helpful, the PPF and its members would welcome the opportunity to expand upon any of the points raised within this paper.

January 2008






1   Prior to May 2007, the PPF was called the Institute of Professional Sport. Back

2   Baseball has been exempt from American antitrust laws since 1922, when the Supreme Court ruled in its favour in the case of Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v National Baseball ClubsBack

3   The degree course is modular and mixes both theory and practice. Students work for a minimum of 30 hours per week in a golf environment, employed by a recognised PGA professional, and study via distance learning. In addition to the assignments and exams, students attend a one-week residential course at the National Training Academy at The Belfry each year. Back

4   The PPF strongly endorses the findings of the PFA's research into the number of English nationals in the Premier League-Meltdown published in December 2007. Back

5   Many of the issues raised in the 2000 Education and Employment Select Committee Inquiry into Work Permits for Overseas Footballers are still relevant today. Back

6   EC White Paper on Sport, Page 11 Chapter 3.0. Back


 
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