The business of football was dealt a massive, if totally expected, blow last week with the High Court finding against the Football League in its claim against the media giants Carlton and Granada.
The reason that no-one was surprised is because it was apparent a long time ago that, as a matter of law, Carlton and Granada never actually gave the guarantees that the Football League alleged that they had - the guarantees simply weren't in the contract and the High Court is fussy about things like that. It is for that simple reason that an appeal against the High Court's finding should not be considered. That doesn't mean that to take the issue to trial in the first place was a bad idea. It is possible to come up with many tactical reasons why even an obviously flawed law suit should be taken to trial, but I don't think there's a great deal of point going through those here.
Just because the case against Carlton and Granada was doomed from day one, that doesn't mean that there isn't merit in pursuing a claim against the Football League's advisers/lawyers. It may well be the case (and I don't claim to know definitively either way) that the Football League's lawyers were seriously negligent in not advising the Football League of the potential pitfalls of signing a contract without those guarantees in place. ITV Digital had no track record as a company, no assets to speak of and no way of providing any security for the payments under the contract that it was about to sign. The risks of non-payment if things went even a little bit wrong should have been obvious even without the benefit of hindsight. Lawyers are hired to advise on these sorts of risks and if the advice they give is wrong or deficient then they get sued because they haven't done what they were paid to do. Of course it may well be the case that the lawyers fully appraised the Football League of the risks and that the Football League decided to take those risks anyway. If that's the case then there are serious questions to be asked of the people that run the game - questions that aren't answered by the resignations of Keith Harris and David Burns.
I also think that to say that the Government should have intervened would be to give the Government more powers than they should have. Government has no place intervening in contracts that are made (or, more accurately in this case, contracts that aren't made) between two people or two companies. The point of contract law is that people are allowed to regulate their dealings with each other as they see fit. There was, in a legal sense, no deceit involved, no fraud carried out - the terms of the contract were there for all concerned to read and the Football League made a bad deal. The Government should no more get involved in this contract than they should determine the price at which you decide to sell your house. At the AGM Peter Pike said that he hadn't had any letters from his constituents and so he was powerless. I suspect that even armed with a letter from everyone in Burnley the most that would have resulted would be an item in the notes of the day's proceedings in Parliament. The Government is not charged with ensuring that professional football (or any other business for that matter) exists as it has for the last few years - that is the job of those that run the business of football. As other sports have found themselves in financial difficulty through no real fault of their own, county cricket is a good example, there have been no cries for the Government to step in and force someone to bail them out. This is a mess that football has brought on itself.
At this point I think I should point out that I do not like what has happened any more than anyone else. I don't like the idea that Burnley's chances of promotion have been severely hampered by not being able to improve the squad over the summer as a result of the loss of the ITV cash, but all that said I find it hard to lay the blame entirely at the feet of Carlton and Granada. The Football League and Carlton and Granada all knew the rules of the game, but Carlton and Granada played it better than the Football League. The blame must rest with the powers that be in the Football League.
Barry Kilby mentioned at the AGM that the game is run by PLCs and their boards of directors and that they are all in it to make money and looking out only for themselves. That shouldn't surprise anyone - it's been that way for a while now. That is certainly true of the Premiership and they've played their game very well - even when times are hard the big summer signings have happened. Unfortunately, and worryingly, the people that run football outside the Premiership don't seem to have caught on. Business is a harsh world and leaves little room for sentiment - especially when that sentiment costs £180 million. With the new deal with Sky in place and with the resignations of Keith Harris and David Burns there is now a period of relative calm and an opportunity for the Football League and its clubs to take a close look at how the league is run and who it is run by. It seems ludicrous that the clubs weren't allowed to see some of the terms of the ITV Digital contract when it was dealing with the rights of the clubs and was supposed to be safeguarding their interests. Surely the clubs have to have more of an input.
I think I should end on a note of optimism. Four days before the start of the league and everyone is still just about intact. 92 clubs will compete in 4 professional divisions and it won't look much different to last season. As for Burnley, we've got most of the same players as we had last season. Yes, we've lost the likes of Kevin Ball and have been unable to sign David Johnson and Marlon Beresford, but we've got a (hopefully) fit (at last) Robbie Blake and Papadopolous might even play a few games this season. If we can somehow find some cash to sign Marlon Broomes (and even if we don't) I think we'll be up there fighting again at the end of the season and if we decide to play all of the season instead of just half of it, who knows what may happen...
Come on you Clarets!!!
