The Football Governance Bill today [Monday 21st July 2025] achieved Royal Assent legislating for the introduction of an Independent Football Regulator (IFR).

The regulator is tasked with protecting our clubs from reckless owners, giving supporters a bigger voice in the game, improving heritage safeguards and ensuring domestic clubs cannot enter any breakaway European Super League.

Football Supporters’ Association (FSA) chief executive Kevin Miles said:

“This is an historic moment for football in this country and we are very proud that the FSA was at the heart of change, helping to bring in laws which can help protect the clubs we love from the worst excesses of owners throughout the professional game.

“We look forward to working with the regulator, as well as the FA and leagues it covers, to ensure that the supporter voice continues to be at the forefront of debate as fans are the beating heart of the game. Club owners can no longer mark their own homework.”

Speaking in the Commons earlier this month sports minister Stephanie Peacock told MPs she expected the regulator to consult the FSA on fan issues.

The first version of the Football Governance Bill was tabled in 2024, following the Fan-led Review of Football Governance which was launched in the immediate aftermath of elite clubs across the continent trying to form a European Super League.

However, the FSA has argued for decades that a football regulator was needed to monitor club finances in real time and provide safeguards against incompetent, negligent or reckless owners.

As far back as 2012 the national fans’ organisation had submitted evidence to a Culture, Media and Sport Committee investigation endorsing far stronger rules on club licensing, ownership and protection of assets outlining why “the regulated should not control the regulator”.

Following Bury FC’s collapse in 2019 the FSA put forward a wide range of proposals to the FA to protect our professional clubs – and this included the concept of a regulator for football.

The FSA resolution to the FA Council was passed without opposition but ultimately stalled as the FA Board did not act upon its own Council’s vote.

Fast forward a couple of years and more clubs at lower levels of the game teetered on the brink while billionaire owners tried to stitch up the game for their own benefit – and the Government was eventually left with no choice but to pick up the reins. 

The FSA’s list of proposed solutions was remarkably prescient in calling for a licensing system which removed the conflict of interest arising from club owners regulating themselves. 

The licensing system will now be put in place by the regulator along with a whole raft of recommendations which are very heavily based on the FSA’s proposals to the FA, representing a remarkable victory for supporters in shaping the direction of the game.

In those proposals the FSA argued for better tests of “fitness” for club owners and directors, protection for “heritage” items, rules to prevent clubs being relocated without supporter approval and bans on “leveraged” buyouts which burden clubs with debt.

The FSA also argued in favour of the concept of “stewardship”, with owners being custodians on behalf of fans who will be there long after a current ownership regime has gone – an idea which is now widely understood and accepted.

Further reading:

• Football Governance Act (clause-by-clause long analysis)
• What’s in the Football Governance Bill? (short analysis)
• Game changer: The FSA’s role in the Football Governance Bill

About the FSA: The FSA is the national, democratic, representative body for football supporters in England and Wales. We are the leading advocates for supporter ownership, better fan engagement, cheaper ticket prices, the choice to stand at the match, protecting fan rights, good governance, diversity, and all types of supporter empowerment. Join the FSA here.