Earlier this week Arsenal chief executive and Tim Payton, a board member of the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust (AST) gave evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media & Sport (CMS) as part of its enquiry into governance and ownership in football.
Select committees are cross-party groups of back-benchers who monitor the work of Government ministers and departments, often holding inquiries such as the current football probe, taking evidence from people working in the field, experts and stakeholder. The CMS will produce a report and recommendations. Government ministers will be required to respond to the CMS report. There will be a debate on the report’s findings and recommendations in parliament.
Conservative MP Hugh Robertson – appointed sports minister in the Coalition government following the general election back in May and the agreeing of a parliamentary pact between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats – has made it clear that he thinks the governance of our game is broken and needs fixing. I agree.
As ever at Arsenal we’re again on the cutting edge. I can think of no other Premier League club where the senior executive and a supporter representative would give evidence to a parliamentary inquiry together. We also broke new ground at the start of this season with the launch by the AST of the Arsenal Fanshare (AFS) scheme with the full packing of the board and all senior shareholders. It was AFS which the CMS Select Committee was particularly keen on hearing about. The sports minister made specific reference to it when replying to a House of Commons adjournment debate on football ownership and governance recently.
In the interests of full disclosure I should remind you that I’m a founding life member and former board member of AST. I’m also a subscribing member of AFS, as well as a personal Arsenal Holdings plc shareholder.
Whilst I agree with most of what the AST has to say in its evidence, I don’t think AST goes far enough in some areas. The evidence resists the idea of direct government “intervention”. I disagree. Football’s governing body, the Football Association, has proved entirely incapable of reforming itself in to an effective guardian and regulator of the game at all levels. Vested interests too often win out over the broad interests of the entire game.
Likewise on supporter ownership. I think the Government needs to step in to ensure that football’s rules are changed to require professional clubs to provide an opportunity for supporter investment where fans at any club show that they want such a scheme.
AST criticises the actions and standards of corporate governance and ethical conduct at clubs like Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. They’re right. Whilst both clubs have the form of ownership which I prefer, that of a one member, one vote “civil association without the objective of profit”, they play footloose and fancy-free with financial prudence and ethical conduct all too often.
The regulation of professional clubs’ off-field management and conduct by the RFEF (Spanish FA) and LFP (Spain’s equivalent of the Premier and Football Leagues) is entirely inadequate. If you think the game has financial problems here, just look at Spain. The game there is threatened by a tsunami of red ink. In 1990 the Spanish parliament the cortes generales approved a government bill which required all professional football clubs whose debts weren’t in check to convert compulsorily from “civil associations” to “sports limited companies”.
Only four clubs had their debts sufficiently in check to remain as member-owned clubs – Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, Osasuna and Athletic Bilbao. The rest all became companies limited by shares. To cut a long story short, debt at the clubs which were compulsorily converted have increased in real terms by a factor of ten. To take one example, Valencia is struggling under €500 million (around £430 million) of debt. The four clubs that remained as civil associations have debts but they’ve remained (relatively) in check and controlled.
Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, Spain’s two football giants are massively assisted in this by the fact that unlike here in England & Wales, broadcasting rights are sold directly by the clubs and not collectively via the league. The two giants greedily gobble up most of the pie. La Liga is increasingly turning into the two team procession traditional in Scotland with the Glasgow “Old Firm” of Celtic and Rangers.
The same isn’t true of either Osasuna and Athletic Bilbao. Athletic is a particularly interesting case. They’re one of the few clubs left in the world that voluntarily declines the chance to sign and play foreigners. The only others that I’m aware of are both in the Spanish speaking world – Guadalajara FC, more usually known as “Chivas” (the Goats) in Mexico and El Nacional in Quito, the sports club of the armed forces of Ecuador. Both those clubs only field Mexicans and Ecuadorians respectively.
In the case of Chivas that’s because the current owner Jorge Vergara Madrigal wants to keep it that way. In the case of El Nacional it’s because the club statutes which have to be approved by the Ministry of Defence only permit Ecuadorian nationals to play for the teams it fields in football or the many other sports in which it enters.
To play for Athletic Bilbao you have to have been born in the Basque Country (including the portion over the Franco-Iberian border in France, or to have been born elsewhere in Spain of direct Basque descent). Even players of Basque descent from Latin America, of which there are many, aren’t eligible to play for Athletic. The rule about the Basque country including that portion of it which lies across the border in France means that “foreigners” have played for Athletic, most recently French international full-back Bixente Lizarazu, who as his name suggests is a French Basque.
If you’re born in the Basque Country you don’t have to be of Basque origin. The children of many immigrants from elsewhere in Spain and other countries have played for Athletic. The use of the English “Athletic” rather than the Euskara (Basque) “Atletiko” or the Spanish “Atlético” is a tribute to the British residents and visitors who brought football to the city at the end of the nineteenth century.
Why does Athletic have its almost unique player recruitment policy? Because that’s what the Athletic Bilbao members want and vote for. I don’t want to start a debate on this policy, merely to point out that being a civil association gives supporters a lot of power and influence at the club.
The problems of football in Spain are a failure of appropriate regulation, control and governance by the RFEF and LFP, not the ownership model. If anything, private company ownership in Spain is the model that has failed, not supporter ownership.
Coming back to Arsenal I think the giving of evidence by Ivan Gazidis and Tim Payton and the close mutual working between the club and AST in creating and running the AFS is yet example of Arsenal’s tradition for cutting edge innovation on and off the field.
It’s time to concentrate our visit to Tyneside tomorrow for our League game against Toon at St James’ Park. Three points please lads!
Keep the faith!
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