Welcome to this sitting of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. We are joined by David Kogan OBE, the Government’s preferred candidate for chair of the new independent football regulator established by the Football Governance Bill, which is currently going through the House of Commons. A very warm welcome to you, Mr Kogan. Fittingly, we have 90 minutes for this match. I am afraid there will be no half-time break or swapping ends at half time. I encourage you to keep your answers quite brief, because we have quite a lot to get through. Everyone has burning questions for you. As is the Chair’s privilege, I will kick us off—I will be littering this sitting with football puns; I do apologise. Can you start us from the beginning: the choreography of how you applied, why you applied, and how you went through the process of becoming the preferred candidate?

I am pleased to do so. I am delighted to be able to put on the public record the story of my candidacy, because I have not been able to comment on it until this point. Before I get into the points relating football, it is worth saying that this is not my first public appointment. I was on the board of the Foreign Office trading fund for eight years, appointed under both Labour and Conservative Ministers; I was chairman of a further education college very close to here, in Vincent Square, working with Labour and Conservative Ministers; and three years ago I was appointed by Mrs Dorries, a Conservative Secretary of State, to the board of Channel 4. So I have been through public appointments processes before under both parties. When, in April of last year, DCMS advertised for the post of chair, I did not apply. On 16 May last year, the day that applications closed, I received a phone call from the permanent secretary of the Department asking me why I had not applied. The reason she phoned me, apparently, was that a number of putative candidates that they had approached had said that they thought I would be a better candidate. The reason I had not applied was that I had written two books on the Labour party and I was on the board of LabourList—those things had already happened when Mrs Dorries appointed me to Channel 4, by the way, so I was known to have had that background. But in the intervening period I had also given money as a donor to a number of parliamentary candidates. I said to the permanent secretary, “I am not entirely sure that a Conservative Government would necessarily welcome my candidacy.” She said, “Actually, your professional background is such that we think we would like you to be a candidate, but I will go and check.” She went away, and, at 10 o’clock that night, called me again and said, “You are clear to run.” I do not know who she talked to, but I had been given absolute clearance to run as a candidate—rather admirably, actually—by the Government. They reopened applications for me. I duly applied that weekend and then flew off to America to what I thought was going to be the big political event of the following week—the Trump-Biden debate—for my client CNN. Little did I know that Mr Sunak was going to call the election the following Wednesday, and the whole process went into abeyance. There was a suspension of the process over the following months—an interminable wait. It got to the autumn and I was still nominally a candidate. I had heard very little from the Department in that period. A number of things happened. The first, in my professional life, was that the presidential election was taking place and I was spending a lot of time in America. The second was that another client of mine is The New York Times, and I am heavily embedded in the issues of AI and copyright in America, and I had been taking a lot of time to do that in America. The third is that, on behalf of the Women’s Super League, I was negotiating their media rights deals and had been heavily immersed in trying to create a future for the league after the 3 o’clock blocked slot had been denied to us. Dr Huq might remember that because she asked both the Premier League and the EFL 14 months ago why that slot had been denied. I was heavily involved in all those other issues. There was also a lot of noise going around about Labour donors, as you might recall—not about the sort of donor I was, namely a donor to local parliamentary candidates, but different types of donations. I decided that it had gone on too long, and I was too busy, and I withdrew from the process. That was last autumn. In March this year, the permanent secretary called me for the second time in my life, this time under a Labour Government, and asked me whether I was prepared to be a candidate again. This time, the election was over in America, AI was continuing, and the Women’s Super League deals had been done. I was much more free, but also I was much more interested in the job, because as time has gone by, the job has become more pressing and more important to the world of football. So I said I was available. I then had to go through—and was happy to go through—the full process, as other candidates had done earlier in the year. The panel that interviewed those candidates was reconvened to interview me. I became the preferred candidate, and I sit in front of you now.

To be clear, you had not gone through any of the interview process the first time you applied.

No, because the process had been suspended originally by the election being called, and then I withdrew. I do not know when the other interviews took place, but it was already six months after I originally applied, which for me was rather too long.

I have never met you before, but you do not strike me as the sort of person who does things just because someone asks you to or tells you to. What made you want to apply for this?

Let’s be clear about the importance of this role and the role of football. Since I first got involved in football in 1999—I am very happy to talk about my professional background in football, which is extensive—football has gone from being an important part of this country’s culture to a critical part of this country’s culture. It works on a series of levels—on the level of sporting competition, and on a series of business levels—and it has grown and developed remarkably as a business. One of the interesting things about League One last weekend was that of the six teams that are now being promoted and qualifying for the play-offs, five are owned by very vigorous overseas owners. That would have been inconceivable 20 years ago. Football as a business is radically changing, but football as a community and as part of a town’s soul has become almost more important. Looking at clubs such as Southend, which has survived 18 HMRC winding-up petitions, or what happened to Bury, I think the job is incredibly important, and I think I am qualified to do it. I am not, as you rightly say, somebody who is prone to being asked or ordered to do things—I am highly independent—but I do believe that it is a really important job. The regulator is an extraordinarily important institution that has got to be—to quote you, Chair—up and running and addressing the issues pretty quickly.

What makes you the best person for this job?

I spent 26 years working in the world of football. I have worked for the Premier League, I have worked for the Football League, I have worked for the Scottish Premier League, I have worked for UEFA, and I spent the last six years working for the Women’s Super League. I do not think many people in the world of football have all those points of the compass. I understand football finance. I understand as much as anybody can understand the politics of football, which change all the time. I am resilient. I also come with an extremely detailed background in corporate governance. That is part of my biography that you may not have picked up on. I have been on and chaired public boards, and I have chaired private companies. I have a very extensive business background, which includes setting up companies, so I understand how start-ups work. When you marry those different skills—the one thing I do not have is any background in regulation, but we can talk about that—I think they are necessary and make me a viable candidate, if not the best candidate.

The need for a regulator has grown out of Tracey Crouch’s fan-led review, which was driven by the fact that fans had been excluded in so many cases from important decisions about their clubs and the way their club’s heritage has been treated. Why, from a fan’s perspective, are you the best person for this job?

I have spoken to Dame Tracey twice in the last two weeks, once verbally and once on WhatsApp, and had lengthy conversations with her about the fan-led review, which was published in November 2021—it feels like an age away. I have also had lengthy discussions with Kevin Miles, who I sat next to during the parliamentary debate last Monday, which was pleasant for both of us. I really do think that the tenets of the Crouch report, of which he was deputy chair, stand out even more now than they did then. In the Bill, there are considerable regulations and provisions made for fans to engage with their clubs. That is critical for understanding the financing and the nature of the ownership of a club, because without the fans the clubs do not exist but, more importantly, because the fans act as a firewall and a brake on what owners are doing. If you are going to regulate and to understand the future of football and where the clubs and the spirit of the clubs are going to go, you must have the fans involved. Although I have never worked in fan organisations, I am a fan myself and, moreover, I understand the nature of where this all came from. I believe that fans will be absolutely critical to the future of all this, as will the whole pyramid. The regulator is not just for the Premier League; it is a regulator to work with and protect 116 clubs. All 116 of those clubs have fans embedded in their heart and soul.

Which club do you support?

Tottenham. Sorry, please don’t tell.

That will endear you with Dame Tracey.

Yes. I seem to run into nothing but Arsenal fans these days, but I have been a Tottenham fan since 1964. I was at the FA cup final in 1967—the Frank Saul final. When we look at the issue of players in the ’60s and ’70s suffering brain injury—I am of an age with that generation—I think of Mike England, a great Tottenham centre-half, and the way he would head the ball. His is the is the image that comes into my mind.

I guess that what still puzzles me a little is why you want to put yourself through this. This role is often described as a poison chalice. Already a cohort of people are willing you—not you specifically but this whole organisation—to fail because they did not want the regulator in the first place. Others see you and the Football Governance Bill as the silver bullet for all the ills that have impacted football in recent decades. Why on earth would someone like you want to put yourself through that? You do not need this in your life; why do you want to do it?

That is a very good question and one that, I have to say, my wife has been levelling at me for the last three weeks. There is a professional answer and a personal answer. Let us deal with the professional answer first. I am fully aware that there are people who do not want this regulator to succeed or exist. There has been an enormous amount of noise around this matter because it has gone on for so long, but I believe that noise, from the Premier League and others, will recede once the regulators are up and running. The route to get to the regulator may well turn out to be more difficult than running the regulator itself. In a year from now we will be able to judge it. I live with confidence that in the world of football, and indeed in the world of politics, people will come behind the regulator once it exists and once people see that we are doing our job properly. From a personal position, I have a professional career going back 46 years that has been filled with complexity and difficulty. I am hired professionally to do difficult jobs that involve high levels of pressure, analysis and strategy. That is what I do professionally. All of those things tie into this role, but I really want to do it because, at my somewhat advanced age and level of experience, I can give the regulator elements that it needs to do the job properly. I am ambitious, interested, and hungry, and I believe in football. I have spent 26 years benefiting from working in football. I have been in football but not of football. I have never worked for a football organisation, though I have been hired by them. I think the time has now come to use those skills and knowledge to the benefit of football and, frankly, to the benefit of myself. This is an absolutely critical and fascinating job, and at my age it is not often you get offered jobs like that.

You have operated at a very high level across football but not with particularly high profile. How will you deal with the inevitable media attention that will come with this job?

You may have heard me on the “Today” programme repeatedly over the last three years, talking about these very issues. I am sort of their go-to guy. I do an enormous amount of media. I have done media about politics, having written books about politics, and I have done quite a lot of media about football. Having come out of the media industry, I am very used to being in and dealing with the media. I have no concerns about that. I think that being in the public domain, being on public platforms and being held to account by you is a necessary part of the job, and one that I am, I won’t say comfortable doing—how could anybody be comfortable?—but perfectly professionally capable of doing. I have a long track record of appearing on public platforms and in media and being able to handle that, so I have no concerns about that.

There is a big difference between popping up on the “Today” programme from time to time and the kind of in-depth media and social media intrusion into your life that potentially will come with such a high-profile and contentious job. Are you really ready for that?

Yes, I really am. As it happens, I am not on any social media, so whatever social media has been saying over the last few weeks, I have not read it; I am quite immune to that sort of pressure. In terms of intrusion, of interest in what I am doing, and of being any sort of public figure, inasmuch as the chair of the football regulator will be a public figure, I am perfectly prepared to ride whatever that means. I think that what people will be focusing on is the work of regulation. You have to remember that I will be a part-time chair, not the executive chair. There will be a chief executive of this institution, once we get around to appointing one, and a board, and there may well be advisory committees that include people such as fans. There will be a lot of people involved in this, and a vast number of stakeholders. To refer to something that you mentioned earlier, the levels of expectation around the regulator—this is an issue that concerns me, with mission creep on the one hand and expectation on the other—is something that we are going to have to manage and mitigate pretty early. But I have no personal concerns about being in that kind of public eye.

Over the last few days—the last week or so, since we learned that you were the Government’s preferred candidate—a number of people have approached me with their opinions on you. It was unrequested on my part, but people came up to me at social events. The thing that has come up time and again is, “He’s a great guy, but he’s not a regulator.” You say that yourself; you have never been a regulator. How credible is it that the person in charge of establishing and leading a new regulator has no regulatory experience?

Well, I don’t know about the “great guy,” but thank you. As far as being a regulator is concerned, I have never been a regulator, but I have been subject to regulation; I have been on the other end of regulators. To go back to one thing I said earlier, I am involved in extraordinarily complex stuff regarding AI and intellectual property in America, which actually comes very close—in many cases, legally—to points of regulation.. No, I have not been a regulator, but, as I said, we will have a chair, who may bring some series of skills. We also have a board to appoint. There is apparently a long list of candidates for the board. I do not know who is on that list; I have not been made privy to it. We also have a chief executive to appoint, who clearly needs to bring in a series of skills that I do not have, including a background in regulation. Finally, I am told that, there are people appointed to the shadow regulator who come from regulatory backgrounds. It seems to me that what the world of football requires, and what you require, is a balance within the organisation between skills that are about regulation, knowledge of football, and knowledge of the way in which the regulator is going to develop, with all of the tasks that are laid out in this document. This document is very precise about the task that the regulator has to carry out, and I hope that we will have the chance to talk about some of those in the course of this discussion. Though I may not be a regulator, I am a leader of teams, I have created businesses, I know how to put together teams with very disparate skills, and I am used to dealing with pressure in all sorts of ways. So while I may not be a regulator or even a great guy, what I am is somebody who is extremely battle-hardened in creating organisations that work, and work to last. To do that, you have to bring about a marriage of skills, and obviously a large part of those skills will be from a regulatory background.  

Okay. Let’s talk about the practicalities. If you take on the position, what role will you play in choosing and appointing the CEO and the board? How will you bring together expertise?

I will play an extremely active role in both. As I said, my understanding is that there are seven board places. I assume the same panel interviewed me and the other candidates for chair, but I am not absolutely sure. There has been a set of panel interviews of candidates, and there is a list. As I say, I do not know who is on that list. Obviously, I would have the ability to bring other people on to the list if I think there are skill gaps that we need to fill. As far as the chief executive is concerned, part of the concern I have about all this is just how much time we have to do everything we have got to do. Appointing a CEO and getting whoever it is in place, on whatever notice periods they may have, wherever they may be, it is job that may take some time. I will be highly active in that recruitment process. Clearly, the board ultimately has to be approved by the Secretary of State. The CEO is then appointed by the board and by me. That will all happen. I think the sequencing will be: we will appoint a board, do a search simultaneously for CEO, and appoint as quickly as possible so that you do not just have to endure me and, in subsequent examinations of the regulator, there will be a highly skilled and talented team as well.

What sort of timescales are we looking at?

You have to understand, Chair and the Committee, that I do not know what the budgets are for the regulator, I do not know what the staffing is for the regulator, I have not seen an organogram for the regulator, and I do not know what provision has been made to do fast recruitment. I hope that I give you the impression that patience is not one of my great human qualities. I am extremely impatient to get in there and make appointments and move as quickly as possible, because if we do not do so, all the consequential effects on the work we then have to do will slow up. I want to get moving on this as fast as I can, but clearly that is subject to whatever views you have of me as a consequence of this meeting.

Which other regulators will you look at and take lessons from? Who will you model yourself on as the football regulator?

By happy or unhappy coincidence, I have been appointed by Lord Grade, Conservative peer and chair of Ofcom, to be on the panel for the Channel 4 chair, which meets tomorrow, funnily enough. So I have already advanced to Ofcom, which seems to me a sort of relevant organisation. In terms of when it was first created—in the last 20 years or so—it is also quite a recent regulator. I have asked Lord Grade and the chief executive of Ofcom when I can meet them and get deep briefings about the lessons they have learned and what they have been able to do. When we start the recruitment process—I understand that within the regulator there are already one or two people with regulatory experience—I would expect to talk to as many regulators as possible. In one sense, one needs to bring in the information and the fact-finding about how regulators operate. But also, within the Bill, when we look at the licensing regime, fan engagement and the state of the game report—all these things that we have to do—it is pretty prescriptive and clear about the work we need to carry out. It is a mixture of learning about how other regulators operate while simultaneously appointing people to do it, while equally simultaneously starting to carry out the work.

If you meet Ofcom, you might want to suggest to them that we would prefer if they did have an opinion on whether the Department for Culture, Media and Sport should be eliminated. We met them yesterday and they were they were fairly ambivalent about the entire future of the Department.

I hardly think you need me to deliver messages for you, but also I wouldn’t dare get involved in that issue.

You would be poacher turned gamekeeper in your role. I am going to be quiet for a second and pass you on to Paul.

The right decisions are decisions that have a direct effect on action. The regulator has to be highly proactive. We need to be extremely goal-focused and actually do the things we say we are going to do. I also have a strong view on how the regulator should work with clubs such as Rochdale. One of the things that one has seen when other regulators have operated in areas of the arts relates to when you are a very small organisation with very few staff and you suddenly have a regulator bearing down on you. We talk about the proportionality of budget and of the levy; actually, the proportionality of bureaucracy is another really big issue in the world of football. I was talking to Mr Pearce of the National League about that two days ago. When we talk about the right decisions, I mean decisions that are actually going to be effective and that are going to have a direct impact on making sure that the very clear train lines that are set out in the Bill are met. As we go along, it will be about being able to demonstrate in a completely transparent way to you, to your constituents and to fellow members of the supporters’ trust of Rochdale AFC that we are doing the right job. There will be bumps along the way—there always are—but a rigorous sense of achievement, delivery and transparency will be what I regard as the right set of decisions.

Can I say a couple of things about the levy process that I think might be helpful? As you are aware, at the moment the Department, via the Treasury, is paying the costs of the shadow regulator. I do not know what those costs are, but one of the interesting things is that the levy is there not only to provide future moneys for the regulator, but to pay back the Treasury—the Government—for what has already been spent. I have no idea of the scale, because I don’t know what the numbers are, but I believe the proportionality is built into this, and it is clear in the legislation that you cannot get to the point of levy without having gone through the licensing regime. The levy is defined as being levied on all 116 licensed clubs, and you cannot do the levy until you have done the licensing, so we are going to go through the process of licensing 116 clubs under the Government’s football governance statement and the regulator’s corporate governance statement before we even reach the point of applying the levy. How we then decide to levy is a matter of public negotiation—as you are aware, it all has to be done through public consultation, and the levy has to be proportionate and sensible—so it is a bit early for me to say how we will do that, seeing as we have not even started to license clubs yet. I have no doubt that as we do it, you and others will be asking that question repeatedly, and the more evidence and knowledge we get, the more precise an answer we will be able to give.

It is not me who is stressing proportionality; it is the Bill. As you know, it is implicit and explicit in the Bill. I suppose what you are really asking me is whether I agree with the premise of that. I do.

I spent 26 years in football agreeing and disagreeing with people and negotiating. I am a negotiator by training and by trade. As I said earlier, I have noticed in recent statements and briefing notes put out by the Premier League that the Premier League and its constituent clubs clearly have a view about the regulator and regulation. One of the interesting aspects of the Select Committee session in January 2024—I think Dr Huq and the Chair are the only ones who were members of that Committee—is that when you watch it, as I did on Sunday for two hours, two things emerge. One is the statement by Richard Masters—this was January 2024—that it was the first and top priority of the Premier League to reach an agreement with the EFL on future financing of football. Well, here we still are. You have not asked about the backstop, but when it comes to agreements about the levy in the world of football and among the various football leagues, while there has been a lot of thinking and talking about it, nobody has been prepared to act. That is because it has taken as long as it has. Once the regulator exists, that changes the paradigm, and I look forward to the discussions with the individuals involved. I have the advantage of knowing Mr Parry, Mr Birch and Mr Craig from the EFL, and Mr Masters and his colleagues at the Premier League. I look forward to the discussions we are all going to have together, and I am sure that rational thinking will pertain.

I hope not but, as I said, the levy has a number of potential components, and we do not know what they will be. Obviously, there is the cost of the regulator, and the historical costs—what has already been spent; I don’t know what those are. The regulator has been designed to be light touch, but more than that it has been designed to be a relatively lightweight bureaucracy and structure. I was very interested to read the FA’s annual reports recently, in which one of the risks that the FA identifies is the rising tide of legal action in the world of football. Every decision taken by the regulator as a consequence of the Bill is no doubt going to have a multitude of potentially litigious clubs and lawyers looking at what we do, so we have to be absolutely watertight in what we do. But we may have to bear costs of legal actions that we cannot forecast. There are different elements, some of which are potentially provoked by the world of football, that I hope we can mitigate before we run into problems.

I cannot stress enough how delighted I am that you have asked that question. One of the things I have said consistently in this process is that not only do I want the burden of regulation on small clubs with few employees to be as minimal as possible, but I want the regulator—I don’t think they had thought of this—to have a help desk built within it. For those of us who have run businesses, one thing I am personally obsessed about is what used to be called the three-ring rule, when somebody phones your business and the phone is not answered after three rings. These days it is the three-email rule: if somebody sends an email and gets no response for a week, it drives them crazy and it drives me crazy. I want the regulator to be able to have a help desk and ways whereby we are not seen as a cop in the world of football, but as an asset to the world of football. That way, when we are asking perfectly legitimate questions about three-year business plans, financing, liquidity and the role of the owners—that is the burden we will put on clubs in terms of licensing—at the same time we are saying to clubs such as Rochdale, “If you do not have the accounting practices that allow you to answer this, we will supply those to you. If you do not have an understanding of what we are trying to do, we will send a team to you.” One of the interesting bits of journalism that I picked up on when preparing for this role was a really interesting article about Lincoln City. A team from the shadow regulator went to Lincoln City three or four weeks ago to talk to them about how a regulator would work with Lincoln City. It is very interesting that someone—I think it was Mr Scully, the chairman—talked about how refreshing it was that they had regulators there who were learning how a club like Lincoln City could work with the regulator. I think that is a model, first in terms of outreach and consultation, and also of the way we should be working. I would hope that in a year from now you will all have stories about how the regulator, instead of imposing itself on clubs, has assisted clubs to allow us to do our work properly. Of the 116 licences, I am hoping that most will be extremely smooth.

Earlier you mentioned a few things—politics, governance and commerce—in terms of how you look at the role and the responsibility for football governance. What measures you will use to evaluate the success of the regulator—both the professional appraisal and your personal view of what success should look like?

I mean what I am about to say in an entirely serious way, but in one sense the less you ever hear of the regulator, the better. In a strange way, a tribute to the success of any form of regulation is that it is pretty much invisible and inaudible—clearly, given the length of my answers, being inaudible is not one of my personal qualities, but hey. When we look at and go through the various tasks that have to be carried out, the role of licensing, as I said in answer to Mr Waugh, ought to be—and I want it to be—seen as something of assistance to the world of football. It is testing financial resilience and the ability of clubs to continue, and not to have the problems that Southend has had. Southend is a real story, over the course of the last 10 years, of what we are trying to avoid. First, on licensing being relatively straightforward, the state of the game report—which you may wish to ask me about later, so I will not talk about it now—is a critical manifesto for the regulator and a critical piece of analysis that will give everybody a vision of where football is going and where it is today. Then we have the backstop. Again, I do not want to pre-empt any of your questions, but the world of football needs to find its own solutions. Although the regulator has the authority to get involved in all sorts of ways—owners and directors tests and all sorts of other things—the less it does, the better. What we want is for the world of football to find its own solutions, and we are there to help to get that. The answer to your question—about how I judge success—is really by achieving the goals set out in the Bill in a timely and effective way. I also would judge it by the regulator not having to use its powers to intervene in ways that are difficult or problematic, because if we do not have to do that, it means football has found its own solutions.

The Chair mentioned public scrutiny. When I asked you about politics, governance and commerce, I should have added community, because football is public property—we are talking about community assets. You will not be given a lot of time to get this role working in the way you want, in many respects, because of the public ownership of football clubs and community assets. What do you think will be your biggest frustrations in the first 18 months of the role?

As I think I said to the Chair earlier, my frustration—or not so much that, but my concern—is about the following. We saw in the debate in the House the other day that there is a huge amount of expectation around what the regulator might do, most of which is not, in fact, within the regulator’s power. There is this burden of expectation that everybody will have, given the build-up since the Crouch report in 2021, of seeing whether the regulator will get involved in all sorts of issues. When we do not, part of my concern is that we will have to handle, in a public way, why we have not been able to do things. That is the first bit. My second concern is about resourcing and budget. The reason why I come back to this is because the best way we can work with communities and clubs is by being resourced effectively enough to do the jobs quickly and effectively. If we do not have the resources to do what is laid out in the Bill properly, things will stack up and get delayed, and no one will accept the excuses—nor should they. My frustration is actually more about our ability to do what we are being asked to do properly, which would allow us the bandwidth to go to communities, fan groups and clubs and work with them to find the right solutions. That is a serious concern. The fact that this process has taken as long as it has should be a concern to everybody—the deadlines are not getting any longer; they are getting shorter. I completely agree with the need to hit the ground running—to quote something said in the House the other day—and it is my primary concern.

The purpose of the Football Governance Bill “is to protect and promote the sustainability of English football.” We talk about community; I have been working with the club that I represent, Southend United, and the Shrimpers Trust, and they have done amazing work trying to safeguard the future of the club. What does sustainability mean to you?

Sustainability means a club has liquidity and financial resource, wherever that resource may come from—perhaps I will come back to that point in a second—and the stability, which is the key word, to see a future that is not prone to chaos and mismanagement, its assets being stripped and its fans being denied their ability to have their football club, as fans in Bury were, and indeed the fans of 60 clubs have been since 1990. To me, sustainability, which is embedded in the Bill, is critical, alongside stability. When I look on the positive side of this, as I said right at the start, and at the levels of international and domestic investment in clubs, which has spread throughout the pyramid, reinforcing the clubs and the pyramid, I think there are very good and optimistic signs. But we all know there are signs of where that has not happened—where clubs have not had good owners or the right management as an asset. I believe that sustainability is about getting those basic things right. The old joke in football is “How do you make a small fortune in football? You start with a big one.” Well, how do you start with a club that survives? You cannot just rely on people such as yourself or members of the Shrimpers Trust supporting a club; you have to have ownership, asset management, a plan and a vision. I do believe that that is what the licensing regime is about, and what sustainability will be about in the longer term.

You mentioned—this is the only time I will mention it—that you are a Spurs fan. Those words will not leave my lips again.

And you are a West Ham fan, I understand.

I am, yes.

I come from a long line of West Ham fans.

Brilliant. Sustainability means something very different to a top six Premier League club, whereas the club I represent, Southend United, is a tier five club, and sustainability looks very different to them. Do you feel you will be able to empathise and have the right structures in place, so that you can look at the governance of football not just through the lens of a Premier League club but also through that of a tier five club such as Southend United or Rochdale?

I absolutely do. I hope you will invite me to Southend and we can have this conversation directly with the people who are now running the club. I actually think part of this job is to broaden my outreach and my knowledge of clubs that I don’t have particular knowledge of. With 116 of them, it is going to involve quite a lot of travel, but there you go. To answer your point seriously, look at what we have seen in the last 26 years since I have been involved in football. Bear in mind that I spent 10 years working with the EFL, I spent six years working with the Scottish Premier League and I actually spent six years working with the Women’s Super League, so I have seen this from every conceivable angle in terms of size of clubs, sustainability of clubs and financing of clubs. Empathy is an important issue here. I think you have to have understanding, but I also think you have to have a knowledge of when you need to be empathetic and when you need to be supportive. That is indeed what the regulator will do. To come back to your point, what we have seen develop within the world of football are a series of cliff edges within the financing of it. We all know about the top six clubs in the Premier League—they are getting moneys not only from the Premier League, but also from the European competition. We have that cliff edge between those and the other 14, and we have a cliff edge with those clubs that have been promoted and then relegated. There are the parachute payment issues within the Championship, and then you have the Championship and the rest of the clubs in the Championship, going down to leagues further down the pyramid. You have a series of fiscal cliff edges, all of which have become sharper and more stark. But if you believe in the pyramid—if you believe that English football is all about that big base leading to the pinnacle, and that is what it has always been about—then you have to believe that Southend has a right to be sustained and supported as much as West Ham and even, dare I say it, as much as Spurs. You cannot go into the role of creating a regulator—this is exactly what was implicit in the Crouch report—without not only understanding fans and communities, but understanding the base of the pyramid: it is indeed a pyramid, and has to be regarded as such. Pyramids that start from a narrow base collapse; pyramids that start from a wide base survive. Our job is to have the pyramid survive.

Earlier, you mentioned mission creep and the expectation. If a club files for bankruptcy, will you see that as a failure of the regulator?

If a club has gone through the licensing regime, where we have had our questions answered, and we have financial information that indicates that there is potentially a problem—we will be getting that financial information: as you know, within the Bill we have the power to intervene, to get more information and to come to a clear view about the sustainability of the club—and if we have gone through all those checks and balances about owners and directors and all those checks and balances in talking to the relevant league, and we are talking to the relevant league and the club still goes bankrupt, I would say that the system that we have created has a significant flaw in it. But starting from scratch, I would remind everybody that no one has done this before. There has been no football regulator anywhere in the world. We are starting entirely with a new entity, and it is going to take us time to build up. I think the question is a reasonable question, and I would like to give you a much more reasoned answer after we have been through a licensing regime with 116 clubs. That licensing regime is the early warning system: it is the risk tripwire, and if that risk tripwire hasn’t worked, then yes, I would say that there is actually a problem in that system and we have to correct it.

There has been widespread concern, since the announcement of your appointment, about your close ties to the Labour party. What reassurances can you give this Committee that the regulator will remain completely independent of Government?

I am very glad that that question has been asked, and I am glad to put on the public record my personal independence of individual groups within football and my absolute independence of political control. I have been a donor to the Labour party—I have been utterly transparent about that. In fact, I have been transparent to the point that things have been written about me—some have been accurate, and some have been wholly inaccurate—but they have not actually discovered all that I have done as a donor to the Labour party. I am prepared to declare now on the public record that five years ago I contributed very small sums of money to the campaigns for the leadership of the Labour party of both Sir Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy. That has not been discovered by the press, and I am happy to declare it now. But I did those donations to individual parliamentary candidates, none of whom were MPs, in the belief that having a leadership battle within the Labour party with two seasoned candidates was a good thing, not a bad thing, and that you want good parliamentary candidates to fill good parliamentary seats. I have never actually been particularly close to any of the individuals to whom I donated money, so I have total personal independence from all of them. I also think that the regulator itself guarantees independence. You will know that clause 11 of the Bill says that a football governance statement has to be produced by the Secretary of State. That football governance statement determines the remit of the regulator and cannot be revisited for five years unless there is a general election. I am governed by that football governance statement, and there is no wiggle room for any politician who wishes to put me under any political pressure. The Chair referred earlier to my lack of regulatory experience. People have a view of me. One thing that she might have been too polite to point out is that I am pretty well noted—this comes through in quite a lot of the press reports—for my independent, slightly tricky character when people try to put pressure on me. I have been involved in many jobs involving significant levels of pressure, whether as an international journalist running Reuters television, in running Magnum Photos or in the commercial work that I do. I am not really susceptible to any pressure, including political pressure. My so-called ties to the Labour party are, in fact, far less than have appeared in the public press.

Are you concerned that your appointment and perceived political bias will undermine the regulator before it is set up?

Well, I don’t know who is perceiving that political bias but, no, I don’t believe it will. It is obviously a judgment call that you will have to make, rather than me, in consequence of this meeting. I hope that I have demonstrated in this meeting my professional capabilities, my interest in football, my sense of where the regulator should be going and the fact that there is now a need to get going with things. I do not believe that I have undermined that by my history of writing books about the Labour party, being on the Labour List board and being a donor, but clearly that is a judgment call that others may need to make, rather than me.

Did you discuss your application with any members of the current Government?

No. Obviously, I was first approached by the previous Government.

You seem a little perturbed or puzzled by the suggestion of political bias, Mr Kogan. You have written two books on the Labour party, you have been chair of Labour List and you have donated over £30,000 in the last few years to Labour candidates. You are effectively Labour party aristocracy, so I do not think it is an unreasonable suggestion that you might be accused of having a perceived bias. I guess what I want to know, which is pertinent to Liz’s question, is this. That perception of bias is out there. Whether you like it or not, it is there. What are you going to do to address it? How are you going to settle it down and make sure that from day one—we have talked about hitting the ground running—you get rid of any allegations that you are in the pocket of the Prime Minister, that you are in cahoots with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and that somehow you are the puppet of the Labour Government?

If I appear to be puzzled or dismissive of your question, that was absolutely not my intention—quite the contrary. I am glad you asked it, and it has to be addressed. I completely accept that. Just to be clear, I have never had a one-on-one meeting with Keir Starmer. I have never met Keir Starmer since he has become Prime Minister—I have literally not been in a room with him. I met him a number of times—[Interruption.] I don’t know whether that often happens on mention of the Prime Minister. Shall I continue?

You carry on. It is just a musical accompaniment.

It must be tractors, I suspect. I must say that I have never in my life been described as aristocracy of any type, let alone Labour aristocracy, so I am not entirely sure how to respond to that. But I recognise that there is a perception—let us be clear: it is not bias; it is a perception of bias—and the way to correct a perception is by action, by delivery, by being transparent and by being held to account. All those things, I absolutely pledge to you, I will be. I absolutely am happy to be accountable to all of you and to come back to this Committee as frequently as you wish. If you get any sense of political prejudice coming through in any of the decisions I am taking as chair of the regulatory authority, I have no doubt that they will be highlighted by you and by everyone else. Simply, I have to give you my personal assurances. That is really all I can do, to give you a personal assurance: that will not happen. You asked why on earth I would want to do this job. But why on earth would I want to do this job if I thought that my life was going to be dogged by accusations of political bias, and that actions carried out would reinforce that? That is the last thing in the world I would want. I want to do this job properly, I want to do it effectively, I want to be held to account for doing so, and I am very happy to be held to that account.

On operational independence from the sector itself, how will you set up and sustain the image and reputation of that independence from within the football sector?

I have already had conversations with Mr Pearce of the National League. I have already talked to Kevin Miles of the Football Supporters’ Association. My understanding is that Mr Parry and his colleagues at the EFL have given me support—they have certainly given it to me in private, but I understand that they may have done so in public. The Premier League has yet to make any comment. Actually, I do not think that my previous relationships with any parts of football have been anything other than helpful. Their understanding is that I am without any particular bias in any of their particular directions. It comes down to the questions you were asking about sustainability and about the pyramid—basically, I will have to be committed to 116 clubs. I do not really think I am perceived to have a prejudice or bias in terms of the way football itself operates. Within the regulator itself, as I say, we have a lot of work to do, on some very clear tramlines, with some very clear deliverables. Objectivity, clarity, transparency and accountability are all going to be critical parts of our regulatory mission. I am absolutely committed to all those, as well as to the deliverables.

Before I start asking my questions, I should declare that I once had dinner with Mr Kogan. Do you think that the role of the regulator is widely and accurately understood by all stakeholders? [Interruption.]

By all stakeholders? I am sorry—this is now getting quite noisy. Yes, as I said earlier, I think everyone—but let us talk about who the stakeholders are. Obviously, a whole range of stakeholders are within the world of football—fans, clubs, leagues—but also in the worlds of politics, the public and in some ways the media. There are countless stakeholders. They all, I hope—if they have read the Bill and understand what it is about—will have a clear sense of what the mission of the regulator is going to be. My suspicion is that many people will want the regulator to do many things that are not in the Bill or its mission, and that would get us into a debate about what in future the regulator should be. I think there is a high level of understanding and, really, a high level of anticipation, because it has now been nearly four years. Everyone is sitting here waiting for this mythical creation to take place. Stakeholders have a clear idea of why they want it. They may not have a clear idea of what it is going to do, but I hope we will be able to deliver that message quite quickly.

You said earlier, perhaps in your opening, that you believed that the noise from the Premier League and others might recede in time. How will you manage opposition and engender co-operation across all football, in particular among those who are resistant to regulation?

I don’t know about the noise from the Premier League, but it would be nice if the noise from the tractors stopped. There are always public pronouncements. The whole point about football, and about chairmen and chief executives in football, is that everyone has an opinion about pretty much everything pretty much all the time, in my personal experience of the world of football. Obviously one reads lots of public commentary about lots of things, but that is not the same as going through a mechanistic approach to the things we have to do that are laid out in the Bill in a very precise way. On the one hand, private conversations, discussions and negotiations about the future of football obviously lead us into a direct discussion of the fact that 2019 was the last time that the Premier League and EFL did a deal about future football finance. A year and a half ago, at the Select Committee, it appeared that the Premier League and EFL were at the point of doing a deal. There is a lot of detail that came through in that debate about where they had got to, and 16 months later, here we are, nothing has happened and the regulator is about to be created. I suspect that there is a more active discussion going on in the private rooms of clubs and the Premier League. I see that the Premier League has now appointed an executive with a very large budget to deal directly with regulation. I would like to take it that that is a positive step, rather than that they are necessarily fighting everything we are going to do, but until we are created and I am in post, we need to test it.

On the topic of fighting anything you might do, do you anticipate many legal challenges to the regulator? How would you manage them?

I absolutely hope not, but as I said earlier, you have to prepare for the worst. In this instance, with very wealthy clubs and a very wealthy league, the regulator has to be geared up for legal challenge. The way it does that is by doing its work properly, going through the full accountability process and being as watertight as it can about what it is seeking to do. Then, if you get legal challenge, you have to have the financing to be able to meet that legal challenge.

Beyond legal challenges, do you have any worries about taking the job?

No, actually. Possibly it is the perverse nature of my personality, but the more I have been through the experience of the last two or three weeks—particularly sitting for five hours in the debate the other day, as I did—the more I believe that in public life and public posts you have to accept a certain degree of pressure. The more I have been involved in it and the more work I have done to prepare for it, the more committed I am to doing it.

It feels quite a schizophrenic position for you to be in: on the one hand, some critics say they are concerned about regulatory mission creep in the role of the regulator and, on the other hand, others say that the regulator will not have enough teeth to tackle the well-documented issues. How do you see yourself navigating that path between those two conflicting views of how the regulator will pan out?

Let’s talk about teeth. I think the regulator has quite a lot of teeth. As I keep saying, this is a Bill that lays out a number of things the regulator has to do. It has the power to intervene, in the final instance, in a whole series of things: the owners and directors tests, if it has to, and the backstop, if clubs activate it—we have not talked about that, and we may or may not wish to do so. I am comfortable about the fact that, in what is laid out in the Bill, the regulator has enough authority and control to do its job effectively. If I did not think that, I would not do it. On what everybody is asking us to do and mission creep, part of that is about having an open discussion. That is not for today, because we are creating this thing from scratch, but over the number of years ahead, the Secretaries of State who have responsibility for this Bill and the regulator may well decide that other things need to be included within its remit. But it is far too early to tell now. I am not sure that it is a schizophrenic position; it is a consequence of people wanting the regulator to do things. As you saw, in the debate there were incredibly important speeches about things like dementia in football. We all feel very strongly about that, but it is not within the purview of the regulator. People talk about women’s football being included—women’s football is obviously a subject that I know a fair amount about—but that is not included within the purview. Who is to say what will happen in the future? At the moment, there is more than enough work to be done, and there are enough regulatory teeth, in the final instance, for us to act. As I said to Mr Alaba, I think the best regulator is the regulator you hear about the least.

The reason I asked that question was that in your questionnaire, when asked about the risks you think the regulator will face over its time in office, you highlighted two risks—the reduction in media revenues and the impact of other international competitions—that are not directly linked to the role of the regulator.

I understand—in the vast amount of paper I have in front of me, I have managed to put the questionnaire right at the bottom, so I will not reach for it now. The fact is that when we look at the future analysis—where football is going and what the risks are for football, as opposed to the regulator—in football, there are the known unknowns and unknown unknowns. At the moment, the EFL has done a remarkable job—far better than I ever did—of getting £960-odd million from Sky for its media rights over the next four years, including £40 million for marketing. That is a far greater sum than I was ever able to get for it. In the world of media and of football finance, those media revenues, which are dramatically high, may over the course of time not be as high. When you look at the media industry now and the way that it is responding to media rights, one of the key components of the success of English football has been the money coming from the sale of media rights, which is something that I have been heavily involved in. I was trying to highlight that, in the future, although the regulator would have no responsibility whatsoever for media rights, the consequence of that money not happening leads you to the question of sustainability, which then leads you directly into the purview of the regulator. There are a consequential set of effects that we have to take account of. When we get to the “State of Game” report, I am assuming that not only will we be describing the state of the game today, but part of the role needs to be about doing some analysis of what the potential risks are going forward. Those risks go to the point about sustainability and accountability—that is what I was trying to do.

That is helpful. Thank you for clarifying.

It is interesting that you said that this regulator is light touch and lightweight in some respects. What do you think are the main challenges that the football industry is facing over the next 10 years? Are you satisfied that the Football Governance Bill does everything it can to manage those challenges?

If a week is a long time in politics, then 10 years in the world of football is sort of like dog years—who can tell? As I tried to allude to in my questionnaire answer, when you look at the wider ecology of football, it is constantly changing. It is constantly changing in terms of the nature of owners, in terms of the financing, in terms of the risk and in terms of litigation. If you were looking at this as a normal business and you were doing a risk assessment, you would be building all those in as risk. Part of the other issue, as the Chair just alluded to in one of my answers, is that when you look at the way FIFA is now doing its world club competition and the way UEFA has been developing its European competition, all of those are factors that have a direct impact on English football, and on broadcasting slots and financing. All of those are risk factors, or factors that have to be taken into an account of the future sustainability of English football. At the regulator we have the ability to make judgments on those when it comes to the “State of Game” report, and no doubt in the public consultation lots of people in football will have views on all those subjects. On how much we can get involved in any of those things, actually our powers to do so are pretty restricted. I do not particularly like the term “light touch”, but I think our remit is specific here. We are very specific in terms of things we are able to get involved in, and everything else we really can’t. Whether in the future that is something that Minsters and Secretaries of State will think is still appropriate is really a matter for them. But as we start building this from scratch today, we have enough to be getting on with.

You are very knowledgeable on women’s football. The Bill provides for the Secretary of State to include it in the regulator’s remit down the line. Do you think it should have been included now, at this stage?

I will give you a well-rehearsed answer: my role today is to talk about what is in the Bill, rather than what is not in it. Clearly, the Secretary of State was relying on the Carney report, which said that women’s football should not be in it. That is the position that we are in today.

Given that many women’s clubs are financially dependent on the financial management of men’s clubs, what impact do you think not including women’s football will have on their finances?

I really do not think that I can talk about the future financing of women’s football in this forum when I am here as the potential chair of the football regulator—it is not part of my purview.

Okay. You talked about sustainability, but without a clear mandate to monitor and sanction clubs for financial fair play breaches, many people are questioning the actual impact on that. Would you agree with them?

No, I would not. The regulator is not involved in competition issues. Of those competition issues, the PSR within the Premier League is a matter for the Premier League and the way it works with its own clubs. It is not part of the purview of the regulator. What is part of the purview of the regulator is the consequential effect of whatever action the Premier League is taking over PSR. As we have seen with a number of clubs over the last two or three years, if the actions that the Premier League is taking have a direct bearing on the financial resilience and stability of individual clubs, that falls into exactly the purview of the regulator. But we are not there to be involved in competition issues, and those competition issues have not been declared as PSR or financial fair play. It is not part of what we are able to do.

A case study example is Reading. Damian Green, who used to be on this Committee, was a mad Reading fan and used to go on about it all the time. The ex-owners Dai Yongge and Dai Xiu Li took over when it was near the top of the Championship in 2017, but by 2021 Reading FC was spending over 200% of its annual revenue on player wages—the antithesis of sustainability. What role should this regulator have in ensuring spending? Would it be able to step in if an owner goes bad halfway through—if another Reading situation occurs?

As it happens, I have known Damian Green for over 50 years. One of the MPs currently involved in the whole Reading issue is somebody I have talked to frequently about what is going on at Reading. If the regulator had existed some years ago, before the Reading issue was coming up, as part of the direct consequence of the work that we are able to do in licensing, a lot of the issues that have come up with Reading about the ownership of the ground, the financing and the nature of the owner would have come up through the powers within the regulator. The owners and directors test is far more extensive with regulatory powers than the one within the EFL. That is why the EFL has now dropped its owners and directors test and is going to take the regulator’s. We have access to much greater knowledge and a much greater ability to intervene. If you look at the issues of ownership of grounds—that is absolutely part of the heritage of clubs—and the way in which the regulator can judge the heritage of clubs, all of those are tripwires that would have come up in any discussion of Reading if we had existed six, seven or eight years ago, or whenever the first Reading issues came up. But it is no longer an issue for us—it is an issue for the EFL board. I understand that they are currently dealing with it. I do not have insight into that.

Two months ago, the EFL said that Dai Yongge had failed its owners and directors test and threatened him with expulsion, but nothing has actually happened. I guess someone is waiting for a sale to take place. In the event that an owner fails the fit and proper test, are you confident that this regulator would have the power to force people to sell shares?

We do not necessarily have the power to get people to sell shares, but we do have the power to investigate and ask clubs and owners to both meet our owners and directors test and give us the details of what they are doing with the club, which will allow us to act. In the case of Reading, I do not know what discussions have taken place within the EFL board. There is all sorts of speculation, as far as I understand it, that the previous owner of Wycombe may be a potential buyer, but that is not an issue for me and not an issue on which I am particularly well informed. The whole premise of the work that the regulator can do within this Bill is that you start off with a licensing regime, which gives you the basis of knowledge and risk assessment, which allows you to get involved in a whole series of issues to do with the way that the clubs are planning their future and, at the same time, to assess owners and directors in terms of all sorts of provisions, including knowledge that we can get from things like the National Crime Agency, their actions overseas, and all sorts of other stuff. We will have knowledge that I do not believe the football authorities have had access to and that allows you to take a judgment about what you can do. Ultimately, we have the power of intervention.

Would that be taking over a club temporarily?

I cannot specify what an intervention might mean, because we have not set up the system yet.

I think that these things should be addressed to stop people saying that it is toothless and pointless.

Since it does not exist yet, I can understand why people might believe it might be toothless and pointless.

So now is the time.

What I would say is that we have a very clear road map within the Bill that allows us to define pretty clearly what we will start off by doing. If we ever have to get involved in stuff, we will get involved. I have no doubt that others will then review whether we have been effective or not. My view is that we will be effective, but I am hoping we never have to be—you would expect me to say that. At the moment, we are starting off with a pretty much clean slate of paper because the regulator has not existed. You have relied on the boards of the different leagues, which deal with their own individual clubs, either through competition or ownership issues. Clearly, by the very nature of the Crouch report and what has happened since, need is now felt for a regulator who can take greater and more effective action. I am not sitting here pre-judging that when I have not even got involved in knowing what the regulator’s process will be, because I am not in place yet.

Let me say a tiny bit about fans. Countries such as Germany have rules that ensure that they are represented at executive league level—they are on the board and stuff—so they have a proper say in decision making. Is that a model that you would like to see adopted?

The sections of the Bill that relate to fans, which I am sure you will know, are interesting because—I think pretty much for the first time—they give fans an absolute right for owners of clubs to regularly get involved in a whole series of issues that affect fans within their clubs. The key word here is “regularly”. Those are issues about ticket pricing; the ability of the owners to get involved in the heritage of the clubs; and the business of the club and the way it moves forward. That is the first time that fans have been giving the backing to be given information about their own clubs, which allows them to take a judgment call. That is a pretty remarkable step forward, backed by a regulator who will ensure that clubs are under that sort of level of assessment. I have not got a view as to what they may lead to over the future in terms of individual clubs wishing to appoint fans to their boards, or anything else. It is not part of the statutory powers of the regulator, though.

I am pleased that you talked about ticket prices, because I have my private Member’s Bill going through. Would you work to ensure that there is fairness for fans in ticket prices?

It is not a matter for the regulator to set ticket prices for individual clubs. It is a matter for the regulator to allow fans to have a view on those ticket prices. That is what the regulator is there to do. I have no power to intervene on ticket prices. The regulator has the authority—it is not my personal power, clearly—to get involved in the sustainability and financing of clubs. Part of that review will be the way in which ticket prices are being applied, but we have absolutely no ability to affect a club and the way in which it charges for its tickets.

Lastly, it turned out that Todd Boehly of Chelsea is on the board of, and has a major financial interest in, Vivid Seats, which is a ticket reselling site that is pretty extortionate and rips off fans. Is that a conflict of interest?

I am afraid I am just not across the detail, and I cannot answer that question. I do not know.

Quite often people say, “We will get back to you,” but I suppose you are not in post yet.

I am merely the preferred candidate; I have no status whatsoever.

Can I take you back, as the preferred candidate, to Chelsea for a second? The Premier League cleared Chelsea FC for the sale of two hotels to a sister company, which kept them compliant with the profit and sustainability rules. The profit and sustainability rules as enacted by the Premier League at the moment are just not fit for purpose, are they?

I am afraid that is not a matter for the regulator and I cannot comment on it.

You must have an opinion, as a football fan and someone who clearly has a lot of knowledge and understanding of the game. It may not come under the purview of the regulator, but clearly you have an opinion on this.

Part of what I have learned in the last few weeks is that opinions about football—or having any sort of involvement in opinions, or political opinions—are a dangerous thing when you are applying for this sort of role. I am afraid that you are interviewing me as chair of the regulator and not as David Kogan, and whatever opinions I might have I will allow to sit over there while I sit in front of you as a prospective chair of the regulator who has no involvement whatsoever in PSR.

But the clue is in the title: profit and sustainability rules. I mean, part of the remit of the regulator is the sustainability of football.

Yes.

And you still do not have an opinion on that basis?

I have an opinion on the sustainability of clubs, which will come out of the objective licensing rules that we are going to put on those clubs that will allow us to understand whether clubs are, in fact, sustainable. That is entirely different from the Premier League’s PSR rules, which are about competition between clubs. They are actually more about competitiveness between clubs than they are about sustainability. As I say, I think one thing leads to the other. If there are clubs that fall foul of the PSR rules for whatever reason and that has an impact on their ability to be sustainable entities going forward, then it becomes a matter for the regulator that will come out of the licensing regime. But in terms of what has provoked that situation, which is the PSR rules, we have no opinion on that.

You do not have an opinion on how this would impact their spend—their capacity for spend—and whether or not what you might call this kind of creative accounting is acceptable?

Clearly, Chair, you have an opinion on this and you are able to give that opinion, but I do not believe that I am, as chair of the regulator, given that this is not part of my future remit.

That is interesting, thank you.

I am for a number of reasons, but the main reason is this. When you are being asked to do a “state of the game” report and you are trying to do an analysis of the kind of ecosystem and the econometrics behind that ecosystem, clearly the parachute payment issue is one, as you have just highlighted, that has a very significant impact. You cannot really do an analysis of the overall state of football that holds any water at all unless you include parachute payments. When you look at the deal that was done in 2019 and you look at the £1.6 billion that the Premier League talks about distributing throughout the world of football, one can break those numbers down into a different set of component parts and they are all absolutely relevant. They are also relevant, I assume, to any future relationship between the Premier League and the EFL over any future distribution arrangements. So, you absolutely have to include them as part of the analysis. Now, what conclusion you reach from that analysis is too early to tell. As I said, it was very telling and interesting to rewatch the Select Committee from 16 months ago, when—I had forgotten, even though I watched it live at the time, mainly because of women’s football, actually. What I had forgotten was just how much detail both Mr Parry and Mr Masters had obviously gone into in order to get potentially close to a deal. It is quite clear—they talked about percentages of moneys being distributed. Specific percentages were mentioned. And here we are 16 months later. At that time, the Chair was clearly showing signs of frustration with them; it was quite evident. I think that there has got to be, in some way, a sensible discussion. And you have got to include parachute payments within that.

No, because, as you know, the way that the backstop, which is the ultimate sanction, has been created was actually initiated by the leagues; it was not initiated by the regulator. There is a whole, ornate structure around how a mediator is brought in, an external committee is appointed, and ultimately the constituent leagues that are involved in not agreeing both have to put forward their positions, which is then decided in a completely binary way. The regulator, in some ways, has quite little to do with that, apart from creating the structure of getting you to those two binary proposals. People talk about the nuclear option of the backstop, but I prefer to think of it more as a sort of tactical weapon. You do not use nuclear options; if you do, you will die. You can use tactical weapons, so I think the backstop is a tactical weapon, but it is one that I would absolutely urge the world of football not to invoke. We have time. I would just remind you of this, because I do not think people have realised it: you cannot essentially enact the backstop until the “state of the game report” has been produced, written and consulted on. There is an 18-month window in which to do that, but in reality it is probably shorter because you have to go up for public consultation. Therefore, from the moment that we are commissioned in secondary legislation, there is probably at least a year where there is time for the world of football to agree among themselves. The more they agree among themselves, and the less we have to be involved, the better. Clearly, we will see where we get to.

The legislation has set the clock ticking—I have not.

I believe that they can absolutely go hand in hand.

Is there any way in which you would like to change the Bill?

I am very happy to accept the Bill as it has been produced. I am not an expert in the parliamentary process, but I understand that the Bill is going into a Committee stage where, presumably, there may be other amendments made to it. My job is to take what has been done and to apply it, and that is what I intend to do.

There are no amendments that you would like to see.

I do not have an opinion. Not being a parliamentarian, and not having been involved in the process of creating the Bill, I do not think it would be appropriate for me to come up with stuff on the fly.

I expected you to have a lot more opinions today.

You mentioned your commitment to parachute payments, which is welcome. We understand your priority is obviously ensuring that the pyramid is stable and set up the right way, which is again welcome. We have 10 tiers of football in this country. I am not saying that you oversee all of them, but there is an ecosystem that is really important, and sometimes that is lost, even with regards to the progression of players out of youth clubs down into the pyramid, as well as coaching staff and players going up and down. Sometimes, I feel that is lost. We have spoken about mission creep as well, so I am mindful of that, and you cannot take everything on with this role. Do you see a way in which you can maintain a meaningful and collaborative relationship with the sixth to tenth tiers of the football system and their management?

I would hope so, but in all honesty, it is going to be quite a big job keeping a collaborative and sensible relationship with the five tiers of English football that are within my purview. It is 116 clubs, all of which are obviously going to have an opinion about the regulator and the work that we are doing. Again, one of the interesting things about the legislation is that it includes a provision for one to create advisory committees beyond the board. One of the things that we need to look at is how we include wider football voices within the world of the regulator to give us advice on what we are missing. Part of the job of setting up anything new is not what you know; it is what you do not know and what you are missing. I think that creating mechanisms by which we are getting that sort of relationship with numerous tiers in football is pretty important. But to be absolutely honest with you, I think that getting the 116 clubs first is going to be a reasonably heavy task, and the sooner that we can start it, the better.

In your opening remarks, you touched on the importance of football to the country, and central to that are the fans up and down the country. Their passionate following of football clubs is crucial, and it has an economic impact, so it feels right and proper to end the session talking about the fans. My first question is: do you think the Premier League and the EFL have sufficiently enforced existing rules around fan engagement, because there has been a lot of conversation about how fans should be more involved with their clubs and football?

Obviously, individual clubs have had individual relationships with fans, supporters’ trusts and all sorts of other ways in which different clubs have interacted with fans. But what there has not been is a consistent application of fans’ voices within the way in which clubs are developed going forward, and the rest of it. That is exactly what this legislation allows fans to be able to do. Although there have been a series of relationships between clubs and their fans, depending on the club and so on, it has really depended on not just the clubs, but the individual owners in terms of how much they are prepared to engage and listen. We can all agree that there has been a pretty variable picture. I hope that what the regulator will bring is consistency and support to make this a much more stable and regularised process and that individual fans will believe and feel that they have an ally in the regulator, because that is the whole premise on which the regulator was started in the first place by Dame Tracey four years ago.

Thank you; that is really helpful. One of the things that is still sitting there as a concern is how you, as a regulator, ensure that consultations and engagements that involve fans—which are, as you rightly pointed out, stipulated in the Bill—are meaningful, and that they are not just clubs appointing a set of fans that they think will give the answer that they want to hear.

It is quite difficult for anybody to intervene with a club in terms of the fans it is appointing. If a club is actually appointing fans into board positions, advisory positions or anything, that is actually a very good first step. I do not think it is really for the regulator to say, “That is the right fan or that is the wrong fan”. What we must do is create the process by which that fan engagement is reinforced, and the legislation does that. There are a whole series of things that the fans have a right to ask questions about. We have not mentioned DEI in this conversation yet, but there are a whole series of ways in which a regulator has the authority and power to look at what clubs are doing, highlight their failures and highlight and publicise when clubs are not carrying out both fan engagement and issues relating to DEI and all the rest of it. That is within our authority. Part of that is holding clubs to some degree of account, but a lot of it will be having fans much more reinforced in their relationship with the clubs, and we will then know what is going on. That is actually a big step forward. At the moment, a lot of this is shrouded in mystery—we talk about Reading and other clubs. Transparency in football has been a fairly unusual kind of application, and a part of what we are here to do is to be that force for transparency.

At various points in today’s conversation we have touched on the fact that football grounds and clubs are community assets. We have also talked quite a lot about Reading, but I am going to come back to the story of Reading, because as part of an attempt to aid cashflow, it put the stadium up as collateral against a £50 million loan. That has made it very difficult to sell the club. What formal role do you think fans should play in these decisions behind key community assets such as this, because they are the cornerstone of the communities that football clubs represent?

An absolutely critical role. Part of what we have seen is that the first sign of difficulty, when you look back at the history of clubs that have gotten into trouble, is when an owner removes the key asset of a club—the stadium or the training ground—from the ambit of the club and places it in a different financial vehicle. Suddenly, what you have is essentially the fragmentation of the club’s key infrastructure. In some cases, that works perfectly well, and you get the owners of the stadium and the owners of the club working side by side, with the fans satisfied and so on, but often it is the first sign that there is some degree of use of an asset that may not necessarily be to the benefit of the fans or the club as a whole. That is an indicator that we are going to be able to pick up, through the legislation and through our ability to license. It is also something that, within the legislation, fans themselves have the ability to question. It is part of the heritage role, which is one of the three key indicators of what this regulator is about—protecting club heritage. There is nothing greater in club heritage than sensible decisions about grounds being either held by the club or transferred out of the club and replaced. I think it is a critical factor that we need to be fully accountable for.

My final question is about how you see the regulator’s relationship with fan organisations. You have talked a lot about fans in relation to their clubs, but I am interested in your perspective on the overarching picture.

Part of the conversation I was having with Mr Miles the other day was about exactly that question. I said to him, “What is it that the FSA”—there are obviously other national fan organisations—“requires from us, so you feel that you are getting input directly into the heart of the regulator, as we create policy and strategy?” I am absolutely open to those discussions from day one, to understand how we do it. As I say, we are going to look at different mechanisms. One might be an advisory committee; one might be having a representative of fan organisations on the board of the regulator. At the moment, I cannot comment on that because, first, I do not know who has applied to be on the board, and secondly, I am not in place. But it would be completely absurd to have gone through all this, from the day that Dame Tracey Crouch created her fan-led review, and not ultimately to end up with fans at the heart of the outcome. We need to figure out what the mechanisms are, but I am not in a position to do that yet.

On fan engagement, at Southend we had a situation where the previous owner pretty much wanted to move the club and the stadium away, and that would have put the club in a much more perilous financial situation. The new owners—COSU—Southend council and the Shrimpers Trust did quite a lot to unpick a very complex web of deals, and that helped to save the club. As the potential football regulator, what message would you send to fans and significant stakeholders in the 116 different communities affected by football clubs?

In terms of stadia or in general?

On stadia and in general.

I would say that the regulator has been created out of a fan-led review because, as the extraordinary growth and success of English football has taken place, so there have been exposures in the resilience and support of clubs throughout the pyramid—or throughout the skyscraper, as Mr Waugh referred to it. The regulator is there for fans, with the powers it is being given. Three key criteria apply to the regulator, in terms of financial resilience, financial knowledge and the heritage of clubs. All those are at the heart of the mission we have, which is to improve resilience and our knowledge of what is going on. To fans, owners of clubs and managers of leagues, I would say that the regulator is not there as a cop; it is there to help. It is there as an asset. But ultimately we are going to act to the benefit of football and fans, to keep this pyramid going. English football is a remarkable achievement. Over the last 150 years, and even in the last 20 or 30 years, English football has managed to get through a significant series of changes. Change is great—change is growth—but change is also potentially dangerous unless it is managed properly. We are there to help to manage it properly.

The community in Southend will look forward to you coming down to Roots Hall.

I very much look forward to seeing you there.

We are pretty much through our formal questions, and I guess we are now into extra time. My job is to ask a couple of housekeeping questions. In your questionnaire, when asked if you intend to fulfil your five-year term and seek reappointment, you said: “Yes. I would hope so, but five years is a long time in football!” I think you have repeated that again today. Have you got your eye on anything else?

Anything else?

Any other job?

No. As I said in my questionnaire, I have a continuing relationship with CNN and the New York Times, because issues of intellectual property and AI are of unbelievable importance. I am giving up my relationship with the Women’s Sports Group, which I co-founded, because clearly that is involved in football matters, which you cannot do when you are the regulator, and that is it.

In the papers we received from DCMS and your questionnaire, you noted that you have donated to local Labour party candidates and today you have fleshed that out a little bit by telling us that you donated to the leadership campaigns of the Prime Minister and the Culture Secretary—the two Ministers involved in your appointment. Before we finish and go into a private session to consider our report, is there anything that you have not told us or DCMS that you would like to put on the record now—so that we hear it from you rather than from the newspaper?

No.

Finally, if we did decide that you were not suitable for this job, would you still take it?

Yes.

Excellent. Thank you very much, Mr Kogan, it has been a great pleasure to meet you today. Thank you for answering all our questions.