BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION RADIO 4 TRANSCRIPT OF “FILE ON 4” – “FIT FOR FOOTBALL” CURRENT AFFAIRS GROUP TRANSMISSION: Tuesday 29th September 2020 2000 - 2040 REPEAT: Sunday 4th October 2020 1700 - 1740 REPORTER: Adrian Goldberg PRODUCER: Kate West EDITOR: Carl Johnston PROGRAMME NUMBER: 20VQ6331LH0 - 1 - THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. “FILE ON 4” Transmission: Tuesday 29th September 2020 Repeat: Sunday 4th October 2020 Producer: Kate West Reporter: Adrian Goldberg Editor: Carl Johnston MUSIC ACTUALITY OF FOOTBALL MATCH GOLDBERG: Football is back - the national sport and a hugely successful export. ACTUALITY OF CHEERING GOLDBERG: The Premier League generates a £7 billion kick to the economy - and even without crowds in this time of Coronavirus, TV subscriptions to watch the likes of Liverpool, Chelsea and the two Manchester teams, City and United, generate a healthy income for the twenty elite clubs. ACTUALITY – CROWD SINGING ‘GLORY GLORY MAN UNITED’ GOLDBERG: But the English game isn’t all about the glitz and glamour of the Prem. Below that is the Football League - rebranded now as the EFL - the oldest league in the world. The EFL has 72 professional clubs playing in the Championship, League One and League Two, spanning the length and breadth of England - and parts of - 2 - GOLDBERG cont: Wales too. Testament to the deep and enduring affection many people have for their local team. DAMIAN: The fans’ relationship with the club is what makes football. Year in, year out, generation after generation, those clubs, they really belong to the community and someone should be looking out for them. EXTRACT FROM FOOTBALL RESULTS REPORTER: Wigan athletic 2, Gillingham 3. League 2 … GOLDBERG: The Football League gave me my first geography lesson, sparking an interest in the improbable romance of towns like Rochdale, Southend, Hartlepool, Swindon - places where the local football clubs help define a sense of community. REPORTER: Milton Keynes Dons 1, Lincoln City 2 … GOLDBERG: Now there are warnings that Covid-19 will bring EFL clubs close to financial meltdown. Plans to welcome fans back into stadiums have been paused indefinitely, denying clubs vital revenue. But many inside the game say this is a crisis that has been brewing for years - the result of financial recklessness and weak governance. We’ve already seen non-playing staff at one club using food banks. ARCHIVE RECORDING MAN: Staff at the club haven’t been paid for two weeks - that’s ground staff, that’s office staff, that’s receptionists, that’s cleaners. MAN 2: These are ordinary people, some on minimum wage, who desperately need those funds in order to live day to day. GOLDBERG: And clubs are already going to the wall. - 3 - ACTUALITY AT BURY AFC WOMAN: I’ve been going with my dad from when I was little, so it just felt like losing a member of the family – heartbreaking. No words can say what it was like. MAN: It has died, it feels like somebody’s died. GOLDBERG: I know that comparing the loss of a football club to the death of a loved one might seem like an exaggeration, but I’m a fan myself and I just can’t imagine weekends without a match - and there are millions more like me. Kick off times define our family timetable, results determine the mood. My Dad took me to football, now I take my girls. Yet in recent times, Bury FC have disappeared from the Football League, Macclesfield Town have been wound up as clubs outside the Premier League teeter on the edge of a financial precipice. So how did football reach such a wretched financial state even before coronavirus? And why have owners been allowed to run clubs in an unsustainable way, putting their futures in jeopardy? ACTUALITY GETTING INTO CAR GOLDBERG: I’m on a journey through the football heartlands of England to find out, with a couple of my favourite commentators for company. EXTRACT FROM ARCHIVE RECORDING OATLEY: This is Jacqui Oatley and alongside me tonight is John Murray. Evening John. MURRAY: Good evening, Jacqui, yes, very much looking forward to seeing what happens next in this story. OATLEY: Wigan Athletic, John. This is a proper football fairytale. We talk about the great stories of the game, but they don’t come too much bigger and better than what has happened to Wigan. - 4 - MURRAY: What we’re witnessing here is the kind of thing that all football supporters dream of. This club has risen up from the non-league, all the way to the Premier League and now they’ve won the FA Cup as well. OATLEY: And a key factor in all of that, John, as well, the owner, Dave Whelan, he was a player once, and he broke his leg famously playing in an FA cup final, and now here he is, lifting the trophy for his hometown club. What a story. ACTUALITY AT DW STADIUM GOLDBERG: In 2013, against all the odds, Wigan Athletic won the FA Cup Final. Fast forward seven years though and there’s been a nasty plot twist in that football fairytale. In July, the club was placed in administration, meaning that unless a new buyer can be found, it will go out of business. I’ve come to the DW stadium - named after former owner Dave Whelan’s sports business - to meet a group of Wigan supporters. ACTUALITY OF FANS CHANTING TONY: The high point was winning the FA Cup, I think everybody would say that. The day at Wembley, I think we all agree, it was the greatest day of our lives. At the time I was just thinking, keep the score down, we don’t want to get embarrassed in front of millions of people across the world playing Manchester City. And then, when we got a corner in the last minute, I just had a feeling that we’d get a goal. And when we did [ACTUALITY OF CROWD CHEERING], oh, it was so emotional, you know. It was raining that day, I just looked up to the sky and I thought of my dad who’d died eight years earlier, and there were people around you crying and it was just magnificent. GOLDBERG: While spectators are kept away from the DW as well as other stadiums because of coronavirus, fans can submit pictures of themselves or their family members to the club. These are then placed amongst the seats as life-sized cardboard cut- outs. Christine Lamb tells me about the one she sent in of her son Jack. LAMB: My son died five years ago, he was five months old, so we never got the chance to take him to a game. I met his dad through a Wigan Athletic game. - 5 - LAMB cont: So when they was doing the cardboard cut-outs, I just thought I’d get Jack one. It felt special. That’s what we are, we are a family club, it’s a special club, and what’s happening at the minute is just heartbreaking for everyone. ACTUALITY OF PROTEST MAN [VIA LOUDSPEAKER]: What do we want? CROWD: Krasner out. MAN: When do we want it? CROWD: Now! MAN: Krasner Krasner Krasner! CROWD: Out out out! GOLDBERG: These Wigan supporters are protesting in Manchester at the offices of the administrators appointed to try and sell the club as a going concern - if they can. The fans are unhappy at what they regard as slow progress. MAN: Well, the ultimate fear, of course, is liquidation really, you know. We’re stood in a beautiful stadium now and will we ever get to see a game of football here again? That’s the fear. Because just down the road, twelve months ago, Bury Football Club came to an end, so it can happen in the Football League. The next couple of weeks are absolutely crucial. GOLDBERG: The club was sold in June for more than £40 million to the Next Leader Fund - registered in the Cayman Islands, a well-known tax haven. New owner, Au Yeung, bizarrely pulled the plug on the business less than a month later. Going into administration led to a 12-point penalty, ensuring Wigan were relegated from the Championship to League 1. Yet Au Yeung had passed the EFL’s Owners and Directors Test, - 6 - GOLDBERG cont: against which anyone with more than a 30% shareholding in a club has to be assessed. Kieran Maguire is a football finance expert at the University of Liverpool. MAGUIRE: Well, the tests are broadly split into two areas, the first of which is an assessment of the individual’s personal circumstances, and effectively, it’s looking to determine whether or not the potential owner of a football club has any convictions, any outstanding court issues which might make them undesirable from a football perspective. So somebody that’s been on the sex offenders register, somebody who has an outstanding conviction would not be allowed to be an owner of a football club until that conviction is spent, and it is very much a box ticking exercise. The second element to the Owners and Directors Test is in relation to proof of funding. They have to be able to present details of their business plan for the club, to see whether or not the individual concerned has the resources to run the club. GOLDBERG: So on the face of it, the test looks quite rigorous. But less than four weeks after passing it, Au Yeung put Wigan Athletic into administration.