English football could be set for its biggest shake-up in decades after the Government gave the green light for an independent regulator in the new year.
Just over a year after the Fad-led Review into Football Governance was released, a white paper will be published next month with the proposal likely to become law by 2024. According to the Times, it will propose a statutory regulator that will be completely independent from football authorities.
This could impact Bristol City in two ways. The first being that the proposed regulator will take over responsibility for monitoring sales and checks on owners. Steve Lansdown is open to selling the club although it remains unclear if the family are open to a full sale or if they want to retain a significant stake.
In August, Lansdown revealed they were in talks with a number of potential investors although they had received nothing concrete. He said: "I would (sell), if it's the right deal but I'm not looking to sell the club, let's put it that way. I'm looking for people to come in and invest.
"Someone might want to come in and do the whole thing and that would be another discussion. We're not looking for someone to come in with a million pounds.
"They would need to come in with tens of millions to put in. It has to be the right number, we're looking for serious investment."
The incentive would help put an end to the prospect of dodgy, money-rich owners buying football clubs and running them into the ground. The likes of Birmingham City, Derby and Bury have all suffered immeasurably by borrowing huge amounts of money in order to achieve promotion and have ultimately racked up unpayable debts.
The regulator will add an "integrity" test to research their business links and previous business ventures.
An independent regulator will also oversee the financial disparity between the Premier League and Championship. Parachute payments are likely to be softened or completely scrapped while a soft salary cap will also be introduced.
Cash filtered into the Championship will also be based on a more merit-based system, meaning the funds will be dictated by where each club finishes in the league. EFL chief Rick Parry has called for 25 per cent of TV revenues in the top flight to be distributed to clubs down the football pyramid to make them more sustainable.
Parry said last month: “Sustainable means not dependent on owner funding, which is one of the greatest challenges we have. That doesn’t mean we want to stifle ambition or we’re preventing owners from funding clubs, that’s a complex debate, but we don’t want every club to be dependent on owner funding for survival.
“In order to make clubs sustainable it needs two things; redistribution of revenues and better regulation. We’re completely committed to both of those and the two are inseparable, you can’t have one without the other. You need redistribution to make the clubs solvent and you need better regulation to make sure they don’t waste the extra money.
“So what do we need to do? Our objective – and this is really important – is to halve the cliff edge so we don’t have a gap of £89m between top and bottom but we have a gap of around £44m or £45m. That’s what we’re trying to achieve.
"In order to get there we have to do a number of things. First of all we have to split TV revenues and share them 75:25.
“Secondly we have to look at the ratio from top to bottom in how we distribute money. At the moment, it’s very flat in the Championship. We are proposing a 2:1 ratio between top and bottom. We are also proposing a 2:1 ratio between top and bottom of the Premier League to match.
“We are also proposing an abolition of parachute payments."
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