Football supporters target election candidates over reforms

Richard Scudamore rejected Labour claims of reneging on a 2005 deal for grassroots funds

Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore (Getty Images)

Football fans were on Tuesday night urged to use the last day of campaigning for Thursday’s general election to push for a commitment for better governance of football, after disappointing levels of support among political parties.

Labour has emerged as the party with most affinity to the sport constituency in this election, by producing manifesto proposals committing to improved football governance if it comes to power. The Conservative manifesto delivered nothing, despite previous commitments from MP Damian Collins’s private members’ football bill.

The Football Supporters’ Federation has been seeking through its Votefootball campaign to get supporters to petition constituencies.

The Federation wants fans to urge parliamentary candidates to sign up to changes by which football club boards must be predominantly committed to the interests of supporters, rather than shareholders. The FSF is seeking legislation overturning responsibilities enshrined in company law which make the prospect of a club’s sale to financially irresponsible new owners more likely. It issued a list of 100 constituencies which received none or only one message from fans. So far, 566 constituencies and 3,461 candidates have been messaged by representatives of 129 clubs.

It became clear on Tuesday night that the relationship between any Labour coalition and the Premier League may be a challenging one, as shadow sports minister Clive Efford produced 10-year-old correspondence suggesting that the league’s chief executive, Richard Scudamore, had promised former Labour sports minister Richard Caborn that the league would pay 10 per cent of any TV income to causes outside of the top flight. The Premier League strongly rejected Efford’s claims that it had reneged.

The Scudamore letter, dated 16 December 2005 and seen by The Independent, commits to the re-distribution of TV income “for the development of the game at all levels outside of the Premier League”. Scudamore tells Caborn that the Premier League board had agreed to pay “net distributable TV income (after Professional Footballers’ Association, Football League and other distributable income) up to the value achieved in the previous contract (2004-05-2006-07), £1.1bn – 6 per cent of this amount will be contributed”. It then goes on to say that money received will grow to 7.5 per cent of income if the value of the TV deal is between £1.1bn and £1.4bn and 10 per cent for everything above £1.4bn.

The letter was written when the European Commission was considering an appeal from the Premier League to be allowed to sell its TV rights in packages of matches. Efford said that the backing of the then Labour government had allowed the Premier League to convince the Commission that the income generated from the TV deals would benefit the wider community, in particular football fans.

“The letter removes any doubt that the Premier League were obliged to put significant sums of money into grassroots sport in order to gain permission to maximise income from the sale of their TV rights and that they have failed to do so,” Efford said on Tuesday night. “On the current deal the rate of 10 per cent alone would mean that £360m should be going to grass roots over three years.”

But the Premier League robustly rejected Efford’s suggestions that it had reneged, stating that Caborn had never responded to Scudamore’s offer, that the offer did not only relate to grassroots sport and that the commitment had been fulfilled in both percentage and cash terms, in any case.