Following the government’s welcome announcement on 25 April that it would seek to implement the recommendations of the Crouch Review – a “Fan-led Review of Football Governance” – there is now finally momentum in the need of reform for the country’s most loved sport.
The issue with the various reviews into football, including the Crouch Review, is that they fail to distinguish between those problems which are truly unique to football and those which are endemic throughout our society and economy. By failing to acknowledge this distinction between the true idiosyncrasies of football and endemic issues, the reviews are missing a trick. We need not overcomplicate the revolutionisation of football regulation when there are already ways in which to address those issues which are not truly unique to the game.
This is now a great opportunity to incorporate the idea of B Corp certification into a revolutionised football governance landscape. Football can borrow a tried and tested framework, a model for responsible capitalism, rather than trying to create its own bespoke solution for a universal problem. Benjamin Thomas and Louise Harman discuss in detail how football can be revolutionised and provide their view on how it would work. You can download the article below.
