Up and down the country, football clubs have been at the heart of communities for generations. In Reading, home to one of the oldest clubs in the country, families have enjoyed football together since 1871. In recent weeks, I’ve heard from fans who proudly trace their blue-and-white blood as many as five generations back, and are heartbroken to see their club at the brink of collapse.
Since 2012, Reading Football Club has been through multiple owners and, in the last five years alone, Reading fans have not only seen severe financial mismanagement of their club, but an overwhelming lack of transparency from the owners. The club has slid towards insolvency over the past few years. Staff have been paid late, multiple winding-up petitions have been issued by HMRC, and staff have been forced to endure redundancies and late wage payments on multiple occasions.
However, Reading’s struggle is not isolated. The NGO Fair Game report that over half of clubs currently in the top four tiers of English football are technically insolvent, and you don’t have to cast your mind back far to see the recent gravestones: Bury, Macclesfield, Maidstone… the list goes on.
Football is all about winners and losers – fans love to see their team win, and many love to see their rivals lose – but it should never be a fight to the death. We can and must do more to protect fans, staff, and communities from the threat of reckless ownership. This is why on Thursday I’ll be leading a debate in parliament on football sustainability, having lobbied for it at the backbench business committee.
At the moment, football for most EFL clubs is broken – but not beyond repair. To fix football, we need a strong football regulator – equipped with the powers it needs to support the whole pyramid. That means more equitable TV deals, proper enforcement of the Owners’ and Directors’ test, and a parachute payment structure which ensures long-term sustainability and the fair competition that fans love. Fixing football should never be about stifling competition, but enabling football to flourish in a way that is pro-pyramid, so that the majority of fans who watch clubs outside of the top 20 to 25 can continue to follow the team they love.
I’m confident that the government will bring about a strong and independent football regulator, but we must ensure it has the powers to hold owners to account. After months of delay by Conservative peers in the House of Lords, I look forward to the Football Governance Bill reaching the House of Commons. The bill will do a great deal of good for clubs going forward, but it won’t come soon enough for the clubs in crisis now. That’s why I called for this debate on football sustainability, and why I launched a petition calling for a parliamentary inquiry into Reading FC’s absent owners. The petition, which I launched jointly with fan groups Sell Before We Dai and the Supporters Trust At Reading, reached 10,000 signatures in just one week – and I will present a paper version in the chamber next week.
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