Football still speaks the language of community.

Supporters say our club. Clubs display local names, local colours and local history. Owners sell shirts built around inherited loyalty. Broadcasters depend upon packed grounds, rivalry, songs and the appearance of belonging.

But the people who sustain that identity usually have little control over the institution carrying it.

The wealth in football does not belong to the supporters whose loyalty created it. Yet those supporters are expected to trust owners and governing bodies over which they have almost no democratic control.

That is the central problem in modern football.

What happened?

Professional football has become enormously valuable.

Premier League clubs generated £6.8 billion in aggregate revenue during the 2024–25 season, according to Deloitte. That was an increase of 8 per cent on the previous season.

The money comes from broadcasting, sponsorship, match-day income, commercial partnerships, merchandise, international audiences and competition payments.

This commercial development has brought real benefits. Players can earn properly from short careers. Stadiums are generally safer. Training, sports medicine and playing standards have improved. Matches can be watched around the world.

The problem is not that football contains money.

The problem is that the money increased without supporters receiving corresponding power.

Who created football’s value?

No single owner created the cultural value of an English football club.

That value accumulated over generations.

Supporters attended when clubs were unsuccessful. Families passed allegiance from one generation to the next. Volunteers ran local organisations. Communities gave clubs their names, histories and identities.

A club’s commercial value depends partly upon assets, players and future income. But it also depends upon something that cannot simply be manufactured: a population of people who care what happens to it.

This loyalty is unusually durable.

A supermarket customer can change supermarket. A television viewer can cancel a streaming service. A football supporter is often tied to a club through family, place, memory and identity.

That makes supporters commercially valuable. It also makes them vulnerable.

A club can increase prices, change access arrangements or prioritise broadcasters while knowing that many supporters will not simply transfer their allegiance to a competing business.

Football markets loyalty while treating the loyal as customers.

Who controls football’s wealth?

The legal and financial control generally belongs elsewhere.

Depending upon the club and competition, power may sit with:

  • private owners;
  • investment groups;
  • national or foreign companies;
  • leagues;
  • national associations;
  • UEFA and FIFA;
  • broadcasters;
  • sponsors and commercial partners.

Supporters may be consulted. They may sit on advisory panels. Some clubs have strong supporters’ trusts, fan directors or protected rights.

But consultation is not ownership.

An organisation can listen to supporters and then do the opposite.

The Football Governance Act 2025 recognised that football clubs should not be treated only as financial assets. It created an Independent Football Regulator and established legal protections concerning club sustainability, ownership, heritage and supporter engagement.

The legislation requires meaningful supporter involvement before certain decisions. It strengthens scrutiny of owners, protects club heritage and creates a licensing system intended to improve financial resilience.

This is a significant change. English men’s professional football can no longer claim that ordinary corporate self-regulation is enough.

However, stronger consultation does not generally transfer control of clubs to their supporters.

A voice is not necessarily a vote.

Who can inspect the decisions?

Supporters are expected to trust decisions about:

  • ownership;
  • debt;
  • ticket prices;
  • stadiums;
  • broadcasting;
  • sponsorship;
  • competition structures;
  • disciplinary processes;
  • club heritage;
  • tournament governance.

But much of the information needed to evaluate those decisions remains difficult for an ordinary supporter to obtain or understand.

The legal owner of a club may be visible while the complete financial structure is not. Loans may sit between connected companies. Stadiums and training grounds may be held separately. Commercial confidentiality may prevent publication of important agreements.

Governing bodies also ask supporters to trust processes they cannot fully inspect.

This does not prove that a particular owner, referee, tournament or match is corrupt.

It establishes a weaker but more defensible conclusion:

Football asks for unusually strong emotional trust while providing unusually weak democratic control.

That combination creates suspicion.

When decisions are controversial, supporters are left to choose between official reassurance and speculation. They rarely possess the documents, voting rights or independent investigative powers necessary to settle the question themselves.

Why money changes the risk

Football did not become corrupt merely because it became rich.

But increasing wealth changed the value of controlling football’s decisions.

Ownership decisions can determine access to broadcasting and commercial income. Tournament decisions can affect sponsors, host cities and political interests. Refereeing and disciplinary decisions can carry major sporting and financial consequences.

The more valuable an outcome becomes, the greater the incentive to influence it.

That does not establish corruption. It establishes a corruption risk.

The risk becomes more serious when large financial interests meet:

  • private decision-making;
  • conflicts of interest;
  • weak disclosure;
  • internal investigations;
  • limited supporter power;
  • inconsistent sanctions.

The correct response is not to declare every disputed result fixed.

It is to demand systems capable of earning trust.

Supporters still have some power

Supporters are not completely powerless.

Sustained campaigning helped produce the Premier League’s £30 cap on away tickets. The policy was introduced for the 2016–17 season after coordinated campaigning by supporter organisations and has since been extended.

That example matters.

It shows that supporter power is most effective when it is:

  • organised across clubs;
  • attached to a precise demand;
  • sustained over time;
  • directed at the institutions able to act.

Supporters did not win the cap by individually making better consumer choices. They acted collectively.

What language conceals the issue?

Modern football uses the language of community while operating through the structure of private control.

Supporters become:

  • customers;
  • match-day attendees;
  • content audiences;
  • engagement figures;
  • data;
  • markets.

A stadium becomes an asset.

A club becomes a brand.

A match becomes content.

A supporter’s loyalty becomes recurring revenue.

None of those descriptions is entirely false. The concealment occurs when the commercial description replaces the social reality.

A football club is both a business and a community institution.

Owners often receive the protections of private property while relying upon supporters to supply the loyalty of public belonging.

Who benefits and who pays?

Owners, broadcasters, players, sponsors and commercial partners can all benefit from football’s growth.

Supporters also benefit from higher-quality competition, improved facilities and wider access to matches.

But the costs are unevenly distributed.

Supporters pay through:

  • tickets and memberships;
  • television subscriptions;
  • travel;
  • merchandise;
  • rearranged fixtures;
  • reduced access;
  • the risk that reckless ownership leaves a club damaged or insolvent.

The deepest cost is political rather than financial.

Supporters create much of football’s enduring value without receiving an equivalent share of its authority.

What could change?

The immediate answer is not to remove all private money from football.

It is to convert supporter loyalty into enforceable rights.

That could include:

  • democratic supporters’ trusts;
  • elected supporter directors;
  • protected votes over club identity and stadiums;
  • greater financial disclosure;
  • first refusal when clubs or significant shares are sold;
  • limits on owners using clubs as security for unrelated risks;
  • supporter representation within governing bodies;
  • stronger regulation of pricing and ownership.

The next article in this series examines how such a transfer could work.

The central principle is straightforward:

The people who created football’s social value should possess meaningful power over the institutions that profit from it.

Until that happens, supporters will continue calling clubs ours while somebody else holds the vote.

Evidence, limits, and TWIS reading

The financial figure in this article concerns recorded club revenue, not profits or cash available to owners. High revenue does not mean every club is financially secure.

Not all clubs have the same ownership, supporter engagement or governance arrangements. Some have meaningful supporter representation. Others provide little more than consultation.

The Football Governance Act establishes stronger regulation and supporter protections, but its practical effect depends upon implementation, licensing and enforcement.

This article does not claim that modern football as a whole is corrupt. The TWIS reading is narrower: concentrated wealth, limited transparency and weak democratic control create avoidable corruption risks and weaken trust.