Why football-mad Keir Starmer has Premier League bosses raging

LONDON — On every available metric, the English Premier League is the richest and most-watched league of the world’s most-popular sport. 

England’s top league, and even the lower leagues, have drawn vast amounts of international capital that dwarfs Europe’s other major footballing countries like Spain, Italy and Germany.

It is a major British soft power success, contributing more than £8 billion a year to the stagnant economy. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is himself a lifelong, season-ticket-holding Arsenal fan who has spoken of his “intense love” for football.

And yet, Premier League bosses now fear the government is about to choke off investment and threaten the industry’s world-leading status.

Legislation to create a new independent football regulator will likely pass through Britain’s parliament in the coming months — and may be in place for the 2025-26 season.

Ministers say they are trying to safeguard the future viability of professional football clubs across the country by creating greater oversight of their financial positions.

But topflight clubs have spent the past year aggressively lobbying ministers in a bid to get the legislation watered down or scrapped altogether, with last-ditch efforts set to continue up until the legislation passes parliament.

And while some minor concessions were made through amendments last week — including a mandate that the regulator must consider economic growth as a “secondary duty” — the key elements of the regulator are set to go forward.

One football executive, granted anonymity like others quoted in this piece to speak freely, said: “We’re being told don’t worry it will be light touch, but if it’s light touch then why step in?”

“The government should be dealing with systemic risk that relates to the whole system and not idiosyncratic risk of bad choices made by individual clubs,” they said.

“I guarantee it will scare away new investment.”

Moving the goalposts

The path to a new English football regulator began in April 2021, when proposals for a new breakaway European Super League infuriated football fans across the continent.

The plans by 12 major European football clubs, including the six biggest teams in England, prompted a vicious backlash across the United Kingdom and led to protests from football fans.

The plans by 12 major European football clubs, including the six biggest teams in England, prompted a vicious backlash across the United Kingdom and led to (sometimes violent) street protests from football fans. | Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images

Clubs involved — which included Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal — quickly U-turned under supporter and political pressure, with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson launching an immediate fan-led review into football governance. 

Fan anger at the time was directed firmly at overseas owners, including foreign states, who they accused of putting profit above local supporter bases.  

Football pundit Gary Neville captured the mood of the nation during the crisis when he said the clubs involved were motivated by “pure greed” and that the “time has come now to have independent regulators to stop these clubs from having the power base.”

However, it quickly became evident Johnson’s review would not become a vehicle to address these issues.

Successive British governments have given tacit, and sometimes explicit, approval to foreign states and overseas billionaires to buy up English football clubs.

Ministers from Johnson’s government even helped broker a deal for Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to buy Newcastle United.

And while the regulator will strengthen tests to assess if investors are fit and proper owners, government officials concede this is intended to ensure financial stability — not to stop foreign states or American private equity firms from snapping up Britain’s cultural assets.

The new regulator will largely focus on increasing financial viability testing and will help facilitate some financial redistribution from the richest clubs to the poorest.

The current Labour government believes the regulator is instead needed to stop unscrupulous, or simply incompetent, owners from bankrupting football clubs and severing a key part of many English communities.

The financial mismanagement of clubs like Macclesfield Town, which was wound up in 2020, and Derby County, which almost followed the same path, are often cited as examples by government figures.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told a recent meeting of executives from across professional football that Bury FC’s 2019 slide into administration was powering her efforts on the bill, according to one person in attendance.

Seeing red (tape)

However, Premier League clubs are still furious at attempts, in their opinion, to overregulate a booming British industry.

One issue causing concern among owners is the government mandate that Premier League clubs will be forced to cover the majority of the new regulator’s operating costs, which could be well over £100 million over the next decade.

The financial mismanagement of clubs like Macclesfield Town, which was wound up in 2020, and Derby County, which almost followed the same path, are often cited as examples by government figures. | Gareth Copley/Getty Images

One football industry figure said the lack of clarity around these sums and how they will be levied is creating an uncertain climate for potential investors.

The club executive quoted at the top of this article said the liquidity tests required by the new regulator, along with other financial reporting requirements, will scare away investment at all levels of professional football.

They complained it would also make it more difficult for clubs to spend money on transfers to chase trophies and higher revenues.

The executive said: “What the government is doing on football is really at odds with Keir Starmer’s current path of  less regulation and not more.

“Starmer is really saying the only sector that is not subject to such a deregulation initiative is football. Why?”

The U.K. prime minister has indeed embarked on a deregulatory agenda during the early months of 2025 as he tries to speed up infrastructure projects and reduce red tape across the economy.

Starmer said in a recent speech that “we’ve created a watchdog state,” which is “unfit for the volatile and insecure world that we live in.”

“Politicians chose to hide behind a vast array of quangos, arms-length bodies and regulators, you name it. A sort of cottage industry of checkers and blockers,” he said.

A government official countered that the new regulator was not at odds with Starmer’s overall approach.

“It’s definitely not the intention, and wouldn’t be in the scope of the regulator, to start introducing loads of red tape,” they said.

“It will be super light touch.”

Kieran Maguire, a Liverpool University academic and expert on football finance, also said he didn’t buy the argument that the current proposals would freeze investment.

“The regulator has been proposed for a few years now and we saw Jim Ratcliffe buy a quarter of [Manchester] United and we saw Everton sold to Friedkin,” he said.

“I end up on a lot of Zoom conversations with potential buyers … the issue of the regulator has never been a cause for concern.

“A bigger issue is that potential investors are seeing their portfolios taking a hammering [because of the current market chaos caused by Donald Trump’s tariffs], which will damage their ability to convert stocks into cash.”

Whose side are you on?

Another key bone of contention is the regulator’s role in overseeing financial redistribution payments from Premier League clubs to lower-level English Football League clubs.

The English Football League represents the three leagues that sit below the Premier League.

Payments from the top of the so-called football pyramid to the bottom are supposed to be agreed by the Premier League and the English Football League, but there is an ongoing stalemate between the two parties.

The government has said the football regulator will be forced to step in and decide the level of payments if no deal is reached between the two football bodies.

This “backstop” has been fiercely contested by the Premier League, with owners worried the regulator will instinctively favor the smaller English Football League clubs and dent profits of topflight clubs.

A figure close to the English Football League said sport is “not a normal market” and that “sport requires a regulatory framework.”

“We’re all in favor of growth of football. But what does it mean? It doesn’t just mean growth right at the top and more money flowing into the Premier League,” they said.

The person added: “If the regulator doesn’t have the ability to be strong and to step in when there are problems, frankly, what’s the point in having it?”