LINKS
Sites covering broadly the same topics:
- Changing Scottish Football
A blog from Supporters Direct Scotland, so much the same topics except in Scottish football
- futebolfinance
English version of Portugal-based website
- Responsiball
“Football clubs are more than just businesses; they are cultural institutions.“
- Soccernomics
The economics of football and other sports
- Supporters Direct and their blog
- Wyn Grant’s The Political Economy of Football
Legal/financial matters:
- Companies Court Winding Up List – latest list
- London Gazette – comprehensive current and historical database of court appearances. Use the Advanced Search option to find listings for specific clubs.
The UK government has a useful section on debt and insolvency on its BusinessLink website. This website contains useful guides to Administration, CVAs and pre-packaged Adminstration, but be aware however that it was produced by an insolvency practitioners.
A useful Q&A guide produced when Portsmouth went into Administration can be found here, and BBC Newsbeat offers this guide.
Reports
Christian Aid’s Blowing the Whistle: Time’s Up for Financial Secrecy
South Africa’s Institute of Security Studies’ Player and Referee, Conflicting Interests and the 2010 Fifa World Cup
A better way altogether
Wikipedia has a reasonable overview on Supporters Trusts, with links to many individual ones, and also on Industrial and Provident Societies, the legal form of business advocated for them by Supporters Direct.
Another format is the Community Interest Company. This link describes such companies this: “Community Interest Companies (CICS) are limited companies, with special additional features, created for the use of people who want to conduct a business or other activity for community benefit, and not purely for private advantage. This is achieved by a “community interest test” and “asset lock”, which ensure that the CIC is established for community purposes and the assets and profits are dedicated to these purposes.“ English football clubs and football organisations adopting this format include:
Bishops Lydeard Association Football Club, Somerset
Canterbury City Football Club C.I.C., Kent
Chapeltown Football Youth Development Centre Community Interest Company, West Yorkshire
Eastbourne Borough Football Club CIC, East Sussex
FC Clacton CIC, Essex
Hatcham Minority Football Association Community Interest Company, Greater London
Merseyside Independent Junior Football Leagues Community Interest Company
Prescot Cables Football Club CIC, Merseyside
South Rushden Junior Football Club Community Interest Company, Northamptonshire
Spirit of Football Community Interest Company, Bristol
Yo Football Club Community Interest Company, Norfolk
The first senior British club to adopt this format was Scottish League Division 2′s Stenhousemuir Football Club Community Interest Company, Falkirk. They have since been joined by Scottish Third Division side Clyde FC. [Many thanks to James Proctor of Supporters Direct (Scotland) and Neil Stretton for keeping me straight on this Scottish dimension]
The European agenda:
Increasingly the reform agenda is being driven from Europe.
The European Commission has a comprehensive section on sport which is well worth exploring. Its blueprint for sport, with strong implications for football, can be viewed here (section 4 is particularly relevant to English football).
UEFA has a bafflingly large website. For management issues, a good starting point is here. The section on Financial Fair Play is of particular relevance, as are those on the Professional Football Strategy Council, Team Sports and Supporters. In each case, clicking on ‘More’ in the News box is recommended.
English football governance:
(Links are to the best starting point from a football management perspective)
For links to leagues further down the pyramid, use the remarkably comprehensive The Pyramid.info website or the Non-League Paper portal.
Other stakeholder websites:
The Professional Footballers Association
The League Managers Association
The Football Supporters Federation
National Association of Disabled Supporters
FIFA Media Releases
For an alternative view of FIFA, see Andrew Jennings’ Transparency in Sport website
Miscellaneous:
- Play the Game
- John Beech’s Research Blog
- Centre for the International Business of Sport (CIBS), Coventry University
- SURGE (Applied Research Centre in Sustainable Regeneration), Coventry University
Please feel free to notify me of broken links or suggest additions via a Comment.
Peter R. Hansen said
Dear Dr John Beech
I just made this blog about the football industry. Therefore I thought we could share links:)
best,
Peter R. Hansen