A New Era in Football Oversight: Insights on the Football Governance Act 2025

Introduction

The Football Governance Act 2025 received Royal Assent in July 2025, ushering in the most significant regulatory reform since the Taylor Report of 1990.

This landmark legislation empowers what is currently the shadow Independent Regulator for English Football to fully step into its role later this year, operating autonomously from government and existing football bodies. Clubs will face tighter governance, with new reporting duties and rigorous ownership and director tests. Meanwhile, the Regulator gains formidable powers to shape the future of the game.

Clubs will become subject to new reporting obligations, their owners and directors must satisfy new tests, and the Independent Regulator has powerful new tools at its disposal. Simultaneously the fact that the Independent Regulator is answerable to parliament brings in new avenues for regulated clubs to challenge its decisions and creates new inflection points with football’s wider governing bodies including UEFA and FIFA.

Designed for sports professionals and legal advisors involved in navigating the new compliance, governance, and dispute mechanisms introduced by the Act, this short webinar will seek to summarise the new landscape, consider what practical actions clubs could do this season, and will look ahead to what might happen in the next few years.

What You Will Learn

This short webinar will cover the following:

• Explain the Independent Regulator’s 3 primary objectives, club financial soundness, systemic financial resilience, and heritage
• Describe the new licensing system, including:
• The provisional licence that clubs will be issued, and the relevant mandatory conditions
• The full licence that clubs will eventually be issued with, and the additional requirement of this
• The new owners and directors test, including the new test of the “competence” of directors/officers, and the new powers of the Independent Regulator to order a sale of shares by an owner, and what could happen if that is not complied with
• Summarise the financial distribution process whereby the Independent Regulator will manage and intervene in the commercial relationship between the Premier League and the EFL
• Identify the avenues for challenging the Independent Regulator
• Understand the expected timeline of what is to come, from regulations being published, the state of the game report and code for corporate governance

This pre-recorded webinar will be available to view from Wednesday 10th December 2025

Alternatively, you can gain access to this webinar and 1,900+ others via the MBL Webinar Subscription. Please email webinarsubscription@mblseminars.com for more details.