Blackpool Supporters' Trust: Is white paper a pivotal point in football history?

It is a sign of how much popular opinion around the game has hardened in the last five years that it is being received with very widespread approval.

When Blackpool Supporters’ Trust first petitioned Parliament for an independent regulator back in 2018, we may have been genuine visionaries but 15,000 or so signatures seemed a poor reward for our efforts.

This is, in part, a situation driven by money and who has it in the English game.

A couple of weeks ago, journalist Oliver Holt wrote a coruscating piece about the state of the game, when he pointed out – again – that the current distribution of revenue is grossly distorted.

The 20 EPL clubs and the five who get parachute payments will, this season, share 92 per cent of the TV money, while the other 67 clubs in the EFL are left to share the other eight per cent.

Even at the lower end, a Championship club gets 10 times as much money as one in League Two. It is a largely self-selecting elite, created almost by stealth.

Money is not the only issue, important though it is.

There are some good owners in the English pyramid, who pour amazing levels of time, money and energy into making their clubs a sustainable part of the local community.

There are others, particularly in the Championship, who are prepared to bet the house on the dream of making it into the EPL.

Derby County are probably the most notorious example of this, but the division has numerous clubs within it who spend almost two pounds for every pound that they take in.

It is madness on an epic scale and built upon a false premise – namely, that being in the EPL is a licence to print money.

Taking Brighton and Aston Villa as examples, these are clubs who have lost nearly a billion pounds between them in the last decade or so.

They rely solely on the generosity of a rich benefactor, who will not be around forever.

The interests of fans get completely lost in all this. We rarely know very much about the way in which our club budgets, and are very lucky indeed if our club involves us in long-term business planning.

For a club like Blackpool, and an owner like Simon Sadler, there is currently a very finite limit to how much we can achieve.

Being a small club in our division, we are squeezed by the way the TV money is split and by the fact some clubs can get crowds more than twice the size of ours.

However well we are run, and however well our team is coached, the playing field is stacked against us.

The current proposals are, therefore, very welcome.

We are not being offered everything that BST asked for when we responded to the Tracey Crouch review, but we are being promised most of the important things: independent regulation, protected rights for supporters, new and tougher tests for owners and directors and a licencing system.

The big uncertainty remains how the TV money cake gets sliced up, as the EFL and the EPL continue to drag their heels on a new and fairer approach.

One of the things we feel must happen is that the independent regulator will have the power to impose a settlement if the two big leagues can’t – or won’t – agree one.

What is being proposed is the biggest shake-up the game has experienced in more than a century.

It has come about partly because of failures at clubs like Bury and certainly, in part, due to the fiasco of the European Super League.

It is also, in large part, due to the power of fan activism.

We are very lucky in England that so many sets of club supporters up and down the country are prepared to get organised to fight for themselves and for the institutions they believe in.

The White Paper shows that the Football Supporters Association (FSA), acting on behalf of us all, has comprehensively won the battle of ideas about how the game should look in years to come.

The test now will be to turn those ideas from Government policy into law that delivers what is intended.

The ability of fans to achieve this rests, in part, on our ability to organise ourselves – as well as the mandate that we draw from having people signed up as members of the FSA and the supporter groups that go to make it up.

If you want to be part of this revolution, joining your club’s Supporters Trust gives you a democratic stake in your club’s future and that of the competitions that it plays in.

If that sound appealing, contact us at [email protected] Why does BST attach such importance to all of this? There are three central pillars supporting everything that we do.

We want what is best for our fans, we want what is best for our football club and we want what is best for our local community

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bring in change that brings benefits in all three of these vital areas.

Football clubs are a part of the fabric of local communities.

Prosperous and competitive clubs that are financially sound bring great social and economic benefits.

This is just a beginning but, if you care about football’s future, this is an important moment.