Football Governance Bill requires clubs to show equality, diversity and inclusion efforts

Equality campaigners have been vocal about how any new legislation must do more to tackle under-representation in men’s professional football.

The proposed bill, first tabled by the Conservative government in March and continued by the new Labour government, includes the introduction of an independent football regulator. The regulator is to be established for men’s professional football across the top five leagues in England. The regulator is expected to be given new powers to provide effective management relating to finances, fan engagement and ED&I issues.

Studies have identified a range of potential ED&I issues across the men’s professional game, including significant differences in proportion of people from minority ethnic backgrounds being in player positions compared to in managerial and other senior roles. Data from the Black Footballers Partnership (BFP) found 43% of Premier League footballers are black, however, only 4.4% of management positions are occupied by black ex-players, dropping to 1.6% in executive, leadership and ownership positions.

There are still calls for ethnicity pay gap reporting to become a legal requirement to emphasise the difference in pay between ethnicities. Further, there is a recruitment and experience gap for many minority ethnic groups which creates a “broken step” on the career ladders across the UK’s workforce.

Whilst the new legislation and regulatory body is to only focus on men’s professional football for the moment, Women in Football are currently campaigning for at least 30% representation of women in senior-decision makes roles. They have identified a severe lack of representation for women in senior positions within the Premier and Champions Leagues compared to FTSE 100 companies – 10% versus 35% respectively. Given FTSE 350 companies are generally setting targets of 40% female representation on their boards, this only further highlights the lack of representation.

Regulations have been requiring organisation to commit to ED&I for some years now.

The Pensions Regulator recently added such commitments to its regulations. The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has had ED&I considerations embedded for a while now and are now starting to see results. The FCA requires listed financial firms to report on their ED&I policies and practices of their senior management team. The FCA has also been clear that non-financial misconduct, such as sexual harassment, is misconduct for regulatory purposes.

The regulatory body has seen some improvement already. Since signing the Women in Finance Charter in 2016, female senior leadership team (SLT) representation has risen from 29% to 45.3%, and then again to 49% in the last year. Minority ethnic SLT representation has slightly increased over the last year, now at 14% from 13.9%, as well as an increase from 1.3% to 2.5% for Black SLT representation. Figures for all pipeline grades have also increased from 15.3% to 18.3% at manager level, 18.3% to 21.9% at technical specialist level, and 31.7% to 32.8% at leader/senior associate level.

It is hoped that the new football regulator will allow for similar positive impacts to been seen across English football, with other industries also encouraged to take note.

Co-written by Frances Wagstaff of Pinsent Masons/Brook Graham.