Written evidence submitted by Bristol
City Supporters Trust
THE GOVERNANCE
OF PROFESSIONAL
FOOTBALL CLUBS
(1) With the aid of Supporters Direct, Bristol
City Supporters Trust launched as an industrial and provident
society in November 2005. While many trusts are set up as a means
of opposing disliked owners of a football club or in response
to a financial crisis, this was not the case at Bristol City.
Our club was then and remains now in the hands of an owner generally
admired and appreciated by the supporters and, thanks largely
to his deep pockets, was not in need of any form of financial
rescue. The Trust was set up, rather, to represent the fans in
dialogue with the club, to raise funds to help the club to be
successful, to help position the club as a hub of the community,
to improve the supporter experience and to position fans as financial
stakeholders in the club.
(2) In just over five years since then, we have
made some very worthwhile progress.
(3) We have: improved fans' access to the club
chairman by - with his support - holding regular Q&A sessions,
especially for exiled fans; gained a representative place on an
observer basis at club board meetings; purchased shares in the
club, thus giving our members a tangible financial involvement;
held events to honour past greats of the club; played an active
role in re-opening the "popular end" of the stadium
to enable fans who had been asking for years to be allowed to
return to their traditional "home end" to do just that;
revamped and reinvigorated the annual player of the year celebrations;
produced numerous publications; conducted surveys of thousands
of fans on matchday preferences and - at the chairman's request
- on their wishes for a proposed new stadium; helped the club
to design a new "membership" scheme, emphasising the
need to base this on "loyalty"; re-enacted the club's
only FA Cup Final in 1909 100 years ater at the same venue, Crystal
Palace; funded a plaque to eight famous past players; liaised
with the club and police to give fans greater freedom in their
choice of travel to certain games; and raised tens of thousands
of pounds toward erecting a statue in honour of the club's most
famous player.
(4) We have also challenged the club over ticketing
allocations for major games, successfully intervening to have
proposed allocations revised to achieve a fairer distribution
for loyal supporters, and have reflected the criticism of some
fans in relation to certain aspects of the proposed new stadium
design, successfully achieving the inclusion in a revised design
of a number of changes to take account of these concerns.
(5) On the face of it, therefore, Bristol City
Supporters Trust has a good working relationship with the football
club and has achieved much for the benefit of supporters and,
indeed, also for the club in improving its rapport with the fans,
which the chairman and executives frequently acknowledge. And
yet…
(6) And yet, like fans up and down the country,
we feel ill at ease. We still feel like outsiders looking in on
our club, even though many of us have had an emotional bond with
Bristol City for far longer than any of the board, senior executives,
administrative staff or transient football personnel. Like many
football fans, as we travel up and down the country we often feel
exploited through ever-rising prices and kick-off times set to
suit TV schedules rather than match-going supporters. We love
our football, but we don't feel that football loves us.
(7) There is no affinity any more between the
fans and the players. Fans cannot identify with multi-millionaires
in baby Bentleys. When England fans booed Ashley Cole a year or
two ago, it was not because they specifically disliked him, but
because he stood for all that they despised in the modern footballer:
someone who was so incensed by being offered "only £80,000
a week" that he nearly crashed his car. And yet when the
odd player does try to show an affinity with the fans by approaching
them to celebrate a goal, he gets rebuked by football officialdom
and booked by the referee! Where did the passion and the bond
between fans and players go?
(8) While the players coin it in, fans up and
down the country are asked to pay more and more to go to matches.
With ticket prices at some London Premier League clubs approaching
an outrageous £100, we should maybe consider ourselves lucky
that matchday prices in Bristol are still mostly below £30.
However, not a lot lower and for young adult working-class fans
that can soon be too much - especially when what they see on the
pitch are spoilt millionaires, who in their eyes are not "giving
their all" for the club. Long gone are the days of blue-collar
fans turning up in their droves and paying a modest admission
price to provide vociferous support from the terraces for their
local heroes. All-seater stadia, the increase in ticket prices
and with it the gentrification of football have driven out the
poorer and especially young adult fan - the core of vocal support
- and replaced them with well-heeled, genteel folk in the hospitality
seats, who can readily afford the high prices but contribute nothing
towards creating a vibrant atmosphere inside the ground - hence
the "library" feel in many modern stadia.
(9) And football's money problems - as is well
known - are not restricted to the players' salaries or fans' ticket
prices. The entire funding of the sport is a time bomb waiting
to explode. At Bristol City, most fans are happy that the club
is currently bank-rolled by a local man made good and don't like
to think of what would happen if he was no longer around. But
when losses are running in the double-digit millions there is
nevertheless an underlying unease about what the future might
hold. Like so many other clubs and so many other chairmen, are
we chasing a dream that may turn into a nightmare? As a Championship
club the "dream" should be promotion to the Premier
League. Yet many fans wonder out loud if that would be such a
good thing? Why? Because the playing field there is so uneven
that we would have no realistic chance of success and because
the gulf between the haves and the have-nots in that league is
so immense that, if a club such as ours pushed the boat out to
try to compete, there would be a huge risk of breaking the bank
and going bust. Better then, perhaps, to stay in the relative
financial safety of the second tier. Although such resignation
cannot be healthy for the game, can it?
(10) So despite our relative success in achieving
a good working relationship with our football club and being able
to represent fans in our dealings with the club's management and
owner, we recognise that all is not well in the state of football.
There must be another way.
(11) One other way that we view from afar with
some envy is the German way. There, it appears, the fans feel
a genuine part of their clubs, are truly appreciated, have a controlling
vote in the general meetings, pay prices for their tickets that
even the apprentices in blue-collar trades can readily afford,
can choose between standing and cheering or sitting and supping,
regularly come face to face with the players at fan events before
and after games and in everyday life in and around their own communities
and can vote out any general manager who is not doing a good job.
Ah, but we hear the Premier League executives say, you can't have
the best players and the best league in the world unless you pay
the highest salaries, and that means high ticket prices. But what
constitutes the "best league in the world"? The one
with TV rights that can be sold for the highest price in Asia
or the one that creates the greatest passion and sense of belonging
for its domestic audience? Going into the 2010-11 season, the
fans of only three Premier League teams could have any expectation
of winning the league based on the results of the previous 15
years. In that time, nobody else had ever won it. In Germany,
in a more equally balanced league, twice the number of fans could
realistically entertain such hope. And because the league is more
open, and because they control their clubs, and because they can
buy a ticket to stand at the top game of the day for around 15
euros (c. £12), and because they don't despise the players
for earning obscene amounts they turn up in their droves, with
game after game on a Bundesliga weekend sold out. And - German
clubs never go bust.
(12) So how do they do it? What can we learn
from the German model? Brains cleverer than ours will, no doubt,
be making submissions to your committee with suggestions in this
regard. Suffice it for us to say the following:
(13) English football unfortunately sold out
to the filthy lucre over 100 years ago. While clubs here and in
Germany were all largely formed in the latter years of the 19th
or very early years of the 20th century, most English clubs stopped
being clubs just a few years later and transformed themselves
into limited companies. In Germany they remained clubs. Just like
your local tennis or hockey club. A members' club run by the members
for the members. Often running not just football teams, but also
swimming, gymnastics, athletics and all sorts of other sports
teams. And they remained that way for some 80 or 90 years. Then
in the late 1980s, as first-team football became more professional,
the German FA allowed clubs, if they wished, to spin off their
first-team football operation into a limited company - but only
on the proviso that 50% of the voting rights in that company,
plus one further vote, remained with the parent members' club
(the so-called 50+1 rule). Thus, two historic exceptions aside,
the members of all German clubs retain to this day control over
their professional football operations. And as no Russian oligarch,
American asset-stripper or Arab sheikh apparently has any interest
in owning a club that they cannot control, unwelcome foreign investors
- indeed unwelcome German investors - have been kept out of the
German game, which has remained firmly in the hands of the people
who care about it most: the fans.
(14) Practically everything else that is good
about the German model flows from this 50+1 rule. Because the
members control the clubs it follows that they are directly represented
via the clubs on the executive organs of the German FA and national
league operator, the DFL. Because the members control the clubs,
ticket prices are kept at affordable levels. Yet, at the top end
- for guests who want the full VIP treatment - premium prices
are charged, too. The range is simply far wider than in England
(for example c €15-80 compared to c. £27-30 at a typical
Championship club). And while the 50+1 rule is part of the articles
of association of the DFL and could be changed by its member clubs
if they so wished, on the odd occasion that this has been put
to a vote the clubs have voted overwhelmingly to retain it, recognising
the stability that it brings to the German game and the affinity
it creates with the communities that the clubs serve - reflected
not least in much higher advertising and sponsorship for clubs
from local businesses within their communities than is the case
in England. They simply see it as their social duty!
(15) And to keep German clubs on the financial
straight and narrow, there are strict licensing procedures in
place. Every spring each club has to submit financial statements
to prove it will be able to trade throughout the coming season
with no liquidity problems. And then they have to submit interims
again mid-way through the season. Failure to satisfy the auditors
in the spring can result in the refusal of a licence and automatic
relegation to amateur-level football, while failure mid-season
can result in an immediate points deduction. The result of such
strict procedures is that no German club has gone into administration
mid-way through a season in the entire history of the Bundesliga.
Ever!
(16) While the 50+1 principle is responsible
for much that is good about football in Germany, it cannot help
us here. We can't turn the clocks back. The genie is out the lamp.
Our clubs sold out a hundred years ago. They are clubs no more.
They are limited companies for which, in most cases, only money
counts. German financial licensing controls, on the other hand,
certainly could teach us a thing or two.
(17) So can we win back the game for the fans?
The thousands who, given the chance, would be the clubs' real
sub-paying members? It would clearly go against all notions of
fairness to disappropriate any shareholdings in football clubs
from their legal, rightful owners and nobody, we feel sure, would
propose such a policy. However, there are no doubt ways being
put forward by, as we said earlier, brains cleverer than ours
by which the balance between owners and fans can perhaps be addressed,
by which, where the owners have palpably failed, mechanisms can
be created to give the fans an opportunity to step in and where
all clubs can be required to act within strict financial parameters.
We therefore initially offer the seven following recommendations:
(a) If a club goes into administration, the administrator
should be obliged by law to favour a rescue package involving
participation by a recognised supporters trust of at least three
years standing.
(b) Clubs trading successfully should be required
to put in place a mechanism whereby supporters trusts can invest
over time in the football club.
(c) Any supporters trust holding or speaking
for at least a 5% shareholding in a club should have a right to
a seat on the board.
(d) All clubs should be required to submit financial
statements to an FA auditor prior to 31 March each
year showing their ability to trade solvently through to the end
of May of the following year without the club's total debt during
that period exceeding a multiple of turnover to be specified by
the FA after consultation with fans' representative organisations.
Failure to satisfy the audit requirements should trigger a reasonable
deadline to submit revised figures. Failure to satisfy the requirements
with the revised figures should result in automatic relegation
by one division.
(e) Prior to Christmas each year, all clubs should
be required to submit financial statements to 30 November to show
adherence to the commitments made the previous March. Any deviation
beyond a set level should be punished by a points deduction.
(f) All clubs should be required as part of their
licence for their respective league to employ on a full-time basis
a fan liaison officer, whose duty it is to liaise with all fan
groups and as many individual fans as possible, to relay the views
and concerns of such fans to the management and to act internally
within the club as the fans' champion. The minimum salary for
this post in each division should be set each year by the FA.
Selection of the individual to fill this post should rest with
the club, however where a supporters trust is in existence the
trust should have a veto over any appointment it regards as inappropriate.
(g) The football authorities should give their
full backing to Don Foster's bill on safe standing and subequent
to its passing clubs should be actively encouraged to install
standing areas within their stadia to foster a livelier matchday
atmosphere and make football more accessible to young adults and
the less well-off.
(18) The above may not put right all of football's
failings. But these measures would in our view represent several
good steps in the right direction.
(19) We hope that this submission has given you
a taste of how we in Bristol feel about the state of football
today - sad and disheartened, in many ways - and that coupled
with all the other submissions you receive it will help you to
mould a better, brighter future for the whole football family
- for football's big society.
January 2011
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