Before all eyes are drawn towards the World Cup in Qatar, we take the opportunity to here post as an open letter a note that has already been passed on to the ministerial team responsible for sport in the UK.
It encourages the new Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport – Michelle Donelan MP – to stick with implementing the Fan Led Review despite all the recent political turmoil and policy distractions.
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FIFA Ethics and Regulations Watch,
London
Dear Secretary of State,
Congratulations on your reappointment. DCMS as a department makes decisions that have a tangible bearing on people’s lives and affect the livelihoods of many people in multi-billion Pound industries.
It may help to offer first a brief introduction about the campaign. FIFA Ethics and Regulations Watch (FERW) is an independent organization that observes and reports on the ethical standards and corruption-free execution of the sports business, with a focus on football and its main body FIFA. Because the sports sector is constantly in the public eye, it’s bearing the major responsibility of being a positive role model. FERW considers it its duty to monitor this responsibility, which is why we are writing to you today.
Earlier this year, the Conservative Party set out its support for two particular developments in sports policy. We are writing today to encourage you to ensure that these continue to be pushed forward in the coming months.
Following the fan-led review, in April the Government indicated that it endorsed the establishment of an Independent Regulator. Both the PR disaster of the putative European Super League, and separately the collapse of Bury FC, demonstrated that significant weaknesses exist in the self-policing approach that has operated to date.
We understand that the white paper, originally planned for this summer, reviewing the establishment of such a post is intended to still come out in a few weeks, and would encourage this to proceed.
Secondly, we hope that the department will take the opportunity to recharge its batteries over many of the other observations drawn from the fan-led review. Football is of course a massive industry, but the scale of the potential financial rewards occasionally distract management away from the founding spirit of individual clubs, and especially away from the amateur and communitarian format in which the sport began.
The free market has worked fantastically in the past where it has enabled fans to buy into ‘their’ club. There have even been celebrity examples. Where the market can falter is where a club is seen merely as an asset or as a status symbol, or worse as a tool for ‘sports washing’. Thankfully this is rare, but examples have existed, and will do so again.
The Command Paper issued in April acknowledged and developed some of these issues, and we would encourage the department to continue to explore the solutions offered.
With best wishes,
FERW
