Football Governance - Culture, Media and Sport Committee Contents


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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© Parliamentary copyright 2011
Prepared 29 July 2011