Premier League clubs could require approval from a government-approved independent regulator should they wish to play any home matches abroad, due to a clause inserted into the Football Governance Bill that was introduced to the UK parliament in March.
The possibility of taking one-off domestic league fixtures abroad has increased after FIFA were dropped from a landmark lawsuit by the U.S. events promoter Relevent, who in 2018 were thwarted in their attempts to take a La Liga fixture between Girona and Barcelona to Miami in the United States.
A five-year court battle has seen Relevent, founded by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, essentially accuse FIFA of acting as a monopoly and preventing fair competition. FIFA’s directive, issued in 2018, said that domestic games ought to be played in their home territory, but FIFA and Relevent settled on their case last week, with FIFA seemingly prepared to revisit its policies on this issue.
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The case was settled without prejudice, meaning Relevent reserve the right to reopen their litigation should FIFA not come up with a satisfactory reconsideration of their position. This has left many people within the football industry to believe that FIFA is stepping back from this struggle and leaving it to individual leagues, federations and confederations to tussle over the matter of whether domestic games can be played outside of a home territory.
In 2008, the Premier League previously tried and failed to introduce a 39th round of fixtures, which would have been played across the world, only to drop the plans in the face of a backlash from supporters and media.
Following the fallout of the Super League, where six of the Premier League’s richest clubs sought to breakaway from their continental rivals and set up a closed European competition, British politicians have pledged to keep a tighter leash on a band of owners who have widely been considered to have lost the trust of British football supporters.
Premier League fans protest the proposed European Super League (Rob Pinney/Getty Images)
As such, while FIFA may be withdrawing their opposition to games abroad, the Premier League would likely not be among the first movers to take games abroad, with Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A and France’s Ligue 1 far more likely to act sooner. UEFA, whose media rights are sold by Relevant in North America, are also seen as likely to seek to take one-off games for some of their competitions outside of Europe in the coming years.
UEFA have for example considered rebranding the Super Cup — played between the Europa League winner and Champions League — into an opening tournament, in which those two sides would be joined by the two clubs in Europe with the highest UEFA coefficient points. This is one example of the type of game they would consider taking outside Europe, should it be feasible.
The challenge for the Premier League may be even more considerable, however, because The Athletic can reveal a clause in the Football Governance Bill that says the proposed regulator must be informed firstly when there is a “reasonable prospect” that a team could “enter into arrangements” to play at a location other than its home ground.
It would then have to obtain the approval of the regulator before entering into an agreement. Approval by the regulator would then be contingent on two factors. The first is that it would not “undermine the financial sustainability” and the second, more crucial point to this debate, is that “it would not cause significant harm to the heritage of the club”, which is a highly subjective criteria that would likely be fiercely contested.
Saudi Arabia has hosted four of the last six Supercoppa Italiana finals (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)
Proposals for this to be included within the Football Governance Bill were encouraged in particular by the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust, who foresaw the potential of games possibly being taken abroad in the future and saw it is a key part of the club’s identity and heritage to keep the club’s competitive fixtures accessible to their fans in London.
The bill does not specify whether this approval would be only for domestic games, which opens up the possibility that English teams could also face major hurdles in playing their home games abroad should UEFA wish to take any of their competitions outside of European borders. It may be that a workaround is established if overseas games are additional, rather than replacing home games, or if organisers begin to designate games to a foreign territory in the first place.
This particular clause within the bill was initially centred around the concept of preventing football teams in England from being relocated for longer periods into different homes, rather than one-off fixtures, but the clause was broadened and language made more vague to encompass the potential for domestic fixtures abroad, following pressure from supporters groups.
The bill must still pass through parliament in order to come into effect.
Speaking before the development between FIFA and Relevent, Premier League’s chief executive Richard Masters said last summer: “The Premier League has come away from being a niche interest, as it was a decade ago. Now it feels mainstream and we are there really to take advantage of those opportunities and push us forward.
“But I don’t think we’re really any nearer a game abroad. I was here at the Premier League when the 39th game idea was launched. I’m very much aware of the reaction then and I’m not entirely sure that people’s views have changed.
“What is interesting in the States is that there’s a much more liberal view of what sports can do. You can move a franchise between cities — you can do all sorts of things. But football in this country has a cultural reference point and we need to be aware of that and respect it.”
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