It’s time to push for fan voting rights (but maybe not 50+1) in English Football
The European Super League was a very bad idea and good riddance. But what we're left with isn't great either - for Big 6 fans or clubs like Crewe.
The Super League breakaway shows the idiocy of football owners at the top
A lot has happened this week and I won’t bother telling you what the Super League was and why it was bad. Better writers than me got there first. For example, Grace Robertson, who wrote in her must-read newsletter:
“The vision of the Super League was football as nothing more than content, with teams little more than brands. It’s quite astonishing, then, that they didn’t have the first clue about how to brand themselves. It told no story about how it fit in with football or how it spoke to what we want to hear right now. It made no attempt to understand the desires of the fan of tomorrow it courted so desperately. It had nothing except an obvious attempt by a handful of rich men to turn football into a cartel.”
The biggest and most powerful takeaway from this week for me was truly how disconnected ownership at the big clubs are. The leaders of the Super League are just little boys throwing stones. They failed, and now they’re in that weird little losers café from The Apprentice before they head back to the boardroom.
The last place Joel Glazer was spotted.
These men are the main powerbrokers of football in this country, and most of them don’t live here. They are incredibly out of touch with the game, but their wealth shields them from any accountability. After this week, that has to change, for the benefit of all football fans – from Arsenal to Yeovil.
The effects of a Super League wouldn’t have just broken up the English football pyramid, it would have broken it all
While it was heartening to see other football fans uniting against the greed of Super League proposing owners, there was still a large chorus of “let them leave”, with little consideration the financial reliance clubs lower down the pyramid currently have on the Premier League. The Premier League itself would have hugely struggled to continue. A successful Super League breakaway would have also ruined the current financial model for the English lower leagues, which is already precarious.
Before COVID-19 was even affecting English football, the lower leagues were still highly reliant on Premier League money. 15% of the Premier League’s revenue (importantly this is the league itself, not the teams) is shared with lower league clubs. This figure should be higher, but it’s still a massive amount of cash.
To use a practical example, in the 2019/20 season, Crewe Alexandra (then in League Two) received £1.26m in grants from the Premier League. It’s a drop in the ocean for every current Premier League club, but it was around 30% of Crewe’s revenue for that year. Importantly, this wasn’t anything to do with selling players to Premier League clubs, or receiving loan players. It was for running costs.
Though it’s difficult to state exactly how much Crewe relied on Premier League cash in more recent times, I’m sure that the Premier League provided far more than 30% of Crewe’s revenue since lockdowns began last year. For better or worse (well, worse), the Football League needs a fully functioning Premier League as things stand. Unity among fans of the 92 clubs, and the non-league as well, is important to promote. Most issues facing fans affect us all.
There is now an opportunity to use this failure for something positive
With a groundswell of collective football fan unity, and the government announcing a fan-led review into football ownership, there is a clear opportunity to ensure better football clubs.
The Athletic’s Manchester United reporter and Twitter meme king Carl Anka, says it best:
After the sheer volume of news and emotions in the last few days, it’s time to start thinking constructively about what a new, better football model could look like in England.
For a start, AP news has reported that the UK government is exploring adopting the 50-plus-1 rule from Germany that gives fans the majority of voting rights, nominally to protect clubs from being controlled by private investors. Well firstly, what is 50+1?
German football clubs were not-for-profit organisations controlled by voting members until 1998, when the German Football League allowed clubs to welcome in private investment. The only condition was that the original parent club retained 50% of the voting shares in the company, plus one share[1]. The “50+1” rule therefore ensures that a club’s members, in other words the supporters, always hold majority voting rights and prevents external owners a majority stake.
The model has been largely effective in Germany. Ticket prices are low, the quality of stadiums is high, and the matchday experience is unparalleled. German clubs are mostly financially stable, and well ran. While the Bundesliga is some way behind the Premier League in TV and overall income, the clubs spend more sensibly and generate more sustainable local sources of commercial income and sponsorship. They don’t rely purely on TV contracts, rich owners, or dubious sponsorships to prop them up. At least on paper, it works.
50+1 is far from perfect
The reality of 50+1 in England is probably far different though. If executed, 50+1 would kill most opportunities for clubs to suddenly rise through the leagues and would further distort differences between ‘big’ and ‘small’ clubs.
The current ‘big 6’ would have by far the biggest fanbase to draw investment from. 50+1 would further cement their position at the top of the Premier League for a long time to come. More broadly, it seems that the football pyramid would be ordered by ‘size’ of club fanbase, rather than how well the club was running. This has certainly been the case in Germany, where Bayern Munich have won the title 8 times in a row. It can be boring, and it leads to status quo.
Also, as explained above, it came about in Germany to bring in private money, rather than get rid of it. It will be a very awkward and potentially hugely expensive, messy process to introduce fan ownership (and by extension take out private ownership) of the clubs at the top of the game.
Liverpool for example are valued at around £3bn. If fans became major shareholders, they would need to raise at least £1.5bn, or artificially lessen the value of the club through government subsidies (hugely unlikely and still vastly expensive). Even as a huge club with a global fanbase, raising £1.5bn during a crushing global recession just doesn’t happen overnight.
Further, teams like RB Leipzig and Hoffenheim in Germany have found workarounds, and teams in England might do too. While deeply unpopular (particularly in Leipzig’s case) both teams have had success without meaningful fan ownership or voting rights.
Leipzig are also an interesting example of how private ownership off the pitch can support better football on the pitch, when used successfully. Ralf Rangnick, a key figure behind the rise of both Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig, said in 2016 that “the short decision-making processes at clubs like RB Leipzig or Hoffenheim suit me.”
Julian Nagelsmann – the former Hoffenheim and current RB Leipzig coach – has followed in Rangnick’s footsteps.
“I am a young manager and it appealed to me to work at a club where the structure is clear, where there are not 20 guys all with an opinion that takes you in different direction…Here, I can decide, and things happen quickly because the vision is the same across the club.”
As any member of a collective, political party or co-op can attest, they can be slow moving and divisive beasts. Consensus isn’t normally possible, and compromise is messy. If you trust your club’s owners and decision makers, bringing in 50+1 just ties their hands behind their back.
5 Fan group approval on key non-football decisions may a ‘happy medium’
While fans should be emboldened by their pressure (partly) leading to the European Super League being scrapped, I also suspect there isn’t a widespread desire from fans to wade into the bureaucracy and tedium of many day to day decisions that football clubs make.
Many clubs do have decent ownership. And many fans (including until very recently, myself) don’t have the £££ to invest even a small amount in return for decision making at a club.
There may be an easier route, which is non-financial but is instead legislative. If government wanted to, I think there would be popular support for legally binding fan group ‘approval mechanisms’ which would act as a custodian for clubs. Fan groups wouldn’t be owners or even shareholders, they would be more like regulators (haha this is getting boring now, right??)
An independent fan group for each club, which would work like a co-operative and members within it would have voting rights, would need to provide sign off on key non-footballing decisions that clubs make, such as:
Large infrastructure projects – buying, renovating, or selling stadiums, training grounds, community investment projects, buying other clubs abroad etc.
Appointments, resignations and terminations at board and CEO level within clubs.
Joining or leaving any competitions
Changes in season ticket and matchday ticket prices
Critically, each fan group would become members of the Football Supporters Association (FSA), to ensure a collective fan voice. The fan groups could also lead community actions in the name of the club, such as:
Work in the community – with charities, food banks etc
Supporting the growth of women’s and grassroots football
Safeguarding of children and vulnerable people
Anti-racism and LGBTQ initiatives
This aspect of fan groups, as a meaningful pressure group and a force for good, has worked particularly well at Crewe. Without The Railwaymen supporters society, who have had a financial stake in the football club since 2020 (after raising £250,000 from fans), and have an equal board vote on key issues, the club would have been much slower to move on from its horrific past involving child abuse. Fan ownership and voting doesn’t always stop these things happening, but it opens up transparency and accountability to deal with them.
This kind of example can be applied more widely. If current owners of clubs don’t like a newly proposed (and government legislated) model, they are free to sell their clubs to other private owners, fan groups, or shareholders. Until then, they must comply for their clubs to be allowed in any competitions or receive work permits for players. These measures, both proposed by the government in recent days, are good proportional punishments. Points deductions must also be considered, though haven’t worked well as a punitive measure for poor ownership in the Football League in the past.
I think it’s also important to understand and outline what fan groups shouldn’t control. For example, I don’t think they should be consulted for footballing decisions (team selection, transfers, managerial changes, football staff etc). The Leipzig example is interesting particularly when considering how bureaucracy and fan short-sightedness could interfere with a well ran football club.
To use a Premier League example, if you polled Brighton fans during their slump, would they have sacked Graham Potter, despite most meaningful evidence pointing to a good performing side that would turn around in fortunes? Probably. There is an emotional aspect of football fandom that can veer into irrationality and encouraging this might be step too far.
While Germany has the 50+1 rule in place, there are individual examples there which circumvent the literal 50+1 ownership, while retaining its spirit. These case studies are the most workable when considering 50+1 or similar systems in England.
The key example are Dortmund. The “Borussia Dortmund GmbH & Co. KGaA” (a limited company) is listed on the stock exchange and the “Borussia Dortmund e. V (the fans/the original club).” only has a 5.53% stake. Crucially however, the fans retain majority voting rights. I don’t think it’s a co-incidence that they seem to be the best ran club in Germany, and among the best fan experiences in the world. The fans still have the strongest say, but they aren’t the major shareholders.
Most owners wouldn’t want this arrangement (providing the cash and not the decisions), but there has to be a middle ground. Whether through 50+1 or (I think preferably) a watered-down model, we need to seek ways that fans can become active members and supporters of their clubs, rather than just passive customers buying the ‘product’. The failing of the Super League must not be followed by a failure to change a broken system.