THE IFR – A GAME CHANGING REGULATOR

Summer passed by in a state of frenzy: Eze to Arsenal; Donnarumma to City; Sesko to United; Grealish to Everton; Isak to Liverpool, how’s that working out lad?  Amidst this cornucopia of deals, fans would be forgiven for missing perhaps the most significant announcement of all: that, from next season, clubs in the top five tiers of English football, from the Premier League to the National League, will require at least a provisional operating licence from the new Independent Football Regulator [‘IFR’] in order to operate.

The IFR was established in July by the Football Governance Act 2025.  It is a formidable piece of legislation.  Across 101 sections and 12 schedules, it sets out the regulatory regime of the IFR, describing its investigatory remit, enforcement powers and even its appellate jurisdiction (the Competition Appeal Tribunal) in painstaking detail.  At times, it reads like a jigsaw, cross-references must be pursued over multiple sections: more intricate than the passing and movement of any of Guardiola’s Barcelona teams.

But there is one thing about which a reader can be left in no doubt: the IFR is a regulator with serious responsibility and significant powers.  The Prime Minister, a lifelong Gooner with a reputed sturdy presence on the five-a-side-pitch, has declared that the IFR will usher in a “stronger, fairer future for the game we all love”.

The IFR announced its plans for the licensing regime in September, the first act in seeking to achieve its three objectives, namely:

1. to protect and promote the financial soundness of regulated clubs.
2. to protect and promote the financial resilience of English football; and,
3. to safeguard the heritage of English football.

An application for a licence must include a personnel statement and a strategic business plan.  The former involves clearly identifying the club’s ultimate owners (as defined in section 3 and Schedule 1 of the Act) and setting out the precise contours of the roles of each of the club’s officers.  The latter must contain information about the club’s operation, including its operating costs, how those costs will be met, and the source of such funding.

When a licence is granted, the IFR will attach four mandatory conditions.

First, a club must submit a financial plan specifying how it is funded, the source of its funding, its expected revenues and expenses, and its plans for assessing and managing financial risk.

Second, a club must submit a corporate governance statement explaining how its operational activities are managed, its approach to equality, diversity and inclusion, and how it contributes to the economic and social wellbeing of its local community.

Third, a club must show that it has carried out regular consultations with its fans (i.e., with a group, elected or otherwise, that represents the views of its entire fanbase).  Fans must be consulted about the club’s strategic objectives, match-day issues including ticket pricing, and its heritage (which is said to include its name, home ground, crest, and home shirt colours).

Fourth, a club must make an annual declaration that it has, in the last 12 months, notified the IFR of:

1. any new owners or officers.
2. any changes in the circumstances of any owner or officer; and
3. any material change in circumstances relevant to the IFR’s functions under the Act.

All of this amounts to a heavy undertaking for the 116 clubs that will soon find themselves within the IFR’s licensing regime.  It would be all too easy to dismiss this as a Premier League problem: that the biggest clubs have the most complex financial arrangements, labyrinthine ownership structures and the largest fanbases.  But burdens depend on the broadness of the shoulders that bear them.  It may well be that it is the smaller clubs, which do not possess the luxuries of time, resource or money to get to grips with these measures, that find themselves in the IFR’s crosshairs.

That will not be a comfortable place to be.  Although, like all new regulators, the IFR will need time to find its feet (pun unapologetically intended), its CEO, David Kogan OBE – a media executive, with a sideline in history books about the Labour Party, who was the Premier League’s chief media rights adviser from 1998 to 2015 – has set out his intent in no uncertain terms: the IFR will investigate and intervene where it suspects clubs are being managed by irresponsible owners.

Indeed, in a recent interview with Martin Samuel of The Times, Kogan envisaged there would be two types of club that might encounter issues complying with the licensing regime: (i) those that haven’t got the resources (and, interestingly, he suggested the IFR would step in to “do it for them”); and (ii) those that have “got owners who basically don’t want to reveal what’s going on”.  Samuel, who is no fan of the concept of an IFR, was clearly impressed by Kogan, a pragmatist first and foremost, who sees his role as to “try to help football plan for the future.”  Samuel concluded: “if football needs a regulator, David Kogan might be exactly the regulator it needs.”

Clubs should therefore expect the IFR to be quick to flex its statutory muscles.  Discretionary conditions are likely to be attached to operating licences, which can impose requirements relating to debt management, liquidity, internal controls and financial reporting.  At the extreme end of the spectrum, the IFR has the power to prevent prospective owners from taking over clubs and could even force incumbent owners to sell, something which might have saved Sheffield Wednesday FC from going into administration and incurring a 12 points deduction just a few weeks ago.  It will also have the power to disqualify individuals from owning a club in the future.

And finally, to boot (last one, we promise), the IFR’s investigatory regime is reinforced by criminal offences.  As part of its investigation into a club, the IFR is able to compel information by way of an ‘information notice’.  A person who destroys or falsifies information, provides false or misleading information, or intentionally obstructs an officer of the IFR in exercising a warrant, commits an offence which carries a maximum sentence of two years imprisonment.

Whilst public pronouncements of football predictions are nearly always a hostage to fortune, there is one thing we can say with confidence, the IFR is a game changer.