Written evidence submitted by National Futsal League 15th November 2020 Dear DCMS Committee Members SPORT IN OUR COMMUNITIES: GOVERNANCE OF FUTSAL IN ENGLAND BY THE FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION Thank you for providing the National Futsal League (NFL) with an opportunity to submit evidence to your Committee. In this submission we would like to address the first two of the three issues of interest to your inquiry into Sport in our Communities: Are current sports governance models fit for purpose? o At what level of sport should the government consider spending public money? What are the biggest risks to the long-term viability of grassroots sport? o What key measures could the Government introduce to increase the resilience of sports clubs and venues? We do not address the third issue of interest to your inquiry (the extent to which elite professional sports should support the lower leagues and grassroots) because futsal in England is currently played only at grassroots level. We will make the case that the FA’s current governance model for futsal is not fit for purpose. This threatens the long-term viability of what is currently in England a grassroots sport played by amateurs and organised by unpaid volunteers. Background to futsal and the National Futsal League and our reasons for submitting evidence The FA is responsible for several versions of “football”, including futsal, which is the FIFA recognised indoor five-a-side version of football. From 2008-2019 the FA supported the NFL in delivering the top level open-age futsal competition across England. Currently over 17,000 FA-affiliated players of all ages play the sport across the country and it is one of the fastest- growing sports worldwide. However, over the past two years the FA has imposed several catastrophic governance decisions on the sport with neither stakeholder consultation nor consent. That is why we wish to make a submission to your inquiry. Destructive FA governance decisions Some examples of destructive decisions by the FA during 2019 and 2020 include: The launch by the FA of a rival National Futsal Series (NFS) in March 2019 against its own FA-affiliated NFL, without any formal stakeholder consultation or consent, leading to a split in the futsal community and the unnecessary existence of two parallel league structures in England. This FA decision has led to legal challenge from the NFL in relation to the FA’s abuse of a dominant market position under the Competition Act (Chapter II). We are happy to provide you with the legal opinion we received on this matter which we commissioned from Fladgate LLP. The lack of any published research by the FA to support the major changes they imposed on futsal league organisation in 2019 and a subsequent lack of clarity about whether earlier claims by FA staff about the existence of this research are factually correct. Creation of the NFS as a wholly FA-controlled and owned entity with no democratic input from its member clubs and no election to its entirely FA-appointed management committee. This contrasts with the democratic structure of the NFL in which all management committee positions are subject to annual election by member clubs. NFL FA affiliation unlawfully withheld in 2019 unless our league accepted demotion from Tiers 1 and 2 of the national competition (which we had run for a decade) to a previously unknown and hastily invented “Tier 3”. For our member clubs this was analogous to informing a Premiership football club that despite finishing in the top half of the Premiership in May 2019 they would now be relegated to EFL League 1 from the start of the next season unless they agreed to join a breakaway league over which they now had no ownership or control. Support in 2020 for the formation of a new limited company for the NFS with neither member club consultation nor an opportunity for these clubs to subscribe as members/shareholders of the new company. No publication of relevant committee minutes (there is an FA Futsal (sub)Committee – see below), despite requests for them to do so, and therefore no transparency about any business transacted during these meetings which affects futsal stakeholders. No Futsal Committee communication with clubs, players, or the wider futsal community. There is neither a webpage nor social media presence for the Futsal Committee and requests to attend committee meetings or receive minutes have been consistently rebuffed by the committee chairman. Expulsion of several teams from the FA Futsal Cup in 2020 by yet another FA- appointed committee led by the Futsal Committee chairman – a decision later wholly overturned on appeal as being “unreasonable and excessive”. Withdrawal of funding and support for the men’s international futsal team in 2020, leading to national embarrassment and a UEFA fine this month for failing to field a team in a European play-off match against North Macedonia (all other nations in that competition still intend to field a team). Is the current FA governance model for futsal fit for purpose? The simple and obvious answer to this question is “no” because of systemic flaws in the FA’s governance model that inevitably lead to the poor governance and administration outlined above. These systemic flaws are: 1. The FA is the Football Association and not the Futsal Association and futsal forms a very small part of the FA’s overall business. FA management has therefore perhaps understandably delegated the governance and organisation of futsal to a small Futsal Committee in the mistaken belief that this committee will support The FA’s values and deliver progress for the futsal community. 2. The Futsal Committee members are all appointed by the FA and none was elected by futsal stakeholders (which are primarily amateur clubs and players). The committee is very susceptible to capture by one or more individuals with an agenda that is not shared by the wider community, without the existence of any democratic checks or balances from that community. 3. There is no transparency in relation to the business transacted by the FA’s Futsal Committee and the current chairman refuses to i) allow independent observers to attend meetings, or ii) release any meeting minutes. In summary, the FA’s governance of futsal is undemocratic, autocratic, and opaque because senior FA managers show little interest in meeting their futsal governance responsibilities and have outsourced this to an unelected and unaccountable subcommittee vulnerable to regulatory capture. At what level of sport should the government consider spending public money? Futsal is not football. However, various international decisions in the past have brought futsal under the control of FIFA, and hence under the control of the FA in England. Unfortunately, this is a little like expecting England Netball to be subsumed under Basketball England (because both sports throw a ball), or England Squash to be governed by the Lawn Tennis Association (because both sports use racquets). The situation is unlikely to change in the near future because this governance structure is internationally embedded, but it is important to ensure that in England there are clear financial, operational, and governance dividing lines between the football and futsal sides of the FA’s business. This is not currently the case. The FA’s publicly available accounts are opaque in relation to income and expenditure specifically for futsal, although The FA has recently announced a cut in funding for futsal from £900k to £125k per annum – a reduction of over 86%. The futsal community currently has no useful information on how and why this decision was made when the overall reduction in FA income resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic is estimated to be around 33%. To summarise, in the specific and perhaps rather unusual case of futsal, in which our sport is governed by the NGB of a different sport, any government spending via Sport England or other agencies should be ringfenced so that it is not used by The FA for football-related activities instead of futsal. However, we would like to stress that in our view it is poor governance and not opaque or insufficient finance that is the main current problem faced by the futsal community in England. What are the biggest risks to the long-term viability of grassroots sport? What key measures could the Government introduce to increase the resilience of sports clubs and venues? The biggest risk that we see to the development of financially sustainable (and therefore viable) futsal clubs and a vibrant unified national league is a conflicted NGB that, on the one hand, does not wish to invest in futsal and, on the other, still wants to retain complete control over the sport. Futsal clubs in England are more than capable of governing themselves within an overall framework of rules defined by FIFA and the FA. Indeed, this is already the situation for football, in which clubs and leagues at every tier of a unified football pyramid operate as independent organisations within a regulatory framework that is policed, but not micro- managed, by the FA. For some reason, in the case of futsal the FA has adopted an autocratic, paternalistic, and controlling approach without any meaningful investment, consultation, or consent. Government assistance in removing the constraints of FA bureaucracy and incompetence from futsal clubs would allow them to operate within a democratically organised and unified sporting pyramid, develop financial sustainability and resilience, and grow our sport across the country. Our proposed solution Our solution to the problems described above is simple: there needs to be a functionally independent futsal association (perhaps England Futsal?) open to, owned, and democratically controlled by all English futsal clubs.