Keir Starmer faces a new row in the freebies scandal as it is revealed the Premier League and top clubs handed giveaways worth more than £100,000 to MPs, including the prime minister and nine serving cabinet ministers, during the battle over a new football regulator. Premier League officials organised a spree of giveaways as they warned proposals for a tough watchdog might weaken the appeal of football in the UK. MPs were treated to hospitality at games, invitations to the Brit awards and Taylor Swift concert tickets.
Analysis by the Observer reveals more than a third of the new cabinet and at least 60 MPs, including 41 from Labour, have benefited from the largesse of the Premier League and its football clubs in the past three years. Hospitality and tickets were worth up to £4,000 for individual events. Clive Betts, the Labour MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on football, said the giveaways were “clearly part of a campaign”. He said: “I don’t think they can influence the regulator being set up, but they can influence what powers it has.” Labour now faces a battle over its plans to beef up the financial powers of the proposed watchdog after the Tory government’s football governance bill ran out of parliamentary time because of the election. Premier League bosses are lobbying to water down its powers. The proposal for a new regulator was made in 2021 after a review of football governance by the former sports minister Tracey Crouch. A watchdog would have powers to demand real-time financial information from clubs and scrutinise owners’ finances. The following year, the Premier League and its clubs, which oppose the plans, provided MPs with giveaways worth more than £11,500 in 2022, rising to at least £28,000 in 2023 and in excess of £68,000 in the first nine months of 2024. This compares with giveaways to MPs from the Premier League and its clubs worth less than £5,500 in 2018, an Observer analysis of the MPs’ register of interests has revealed. All the benefits were correctly disclosed on the parliamentary register of interests. In February last year, on the day a white paper was published outlining plans for a powerful new regulator, Jonathan Reynolds, now the business secretary, accepted two tickets and hospitality worth £1,000 from the Premier League for the Europa League match between Manchester United and Barcelona at Old Trafford.
Reynolds said last month he had “no problem” with MPs accepting hospitality, saying it was “always going to be the case people in public life are invited to certain events”. Starmer and six other cabinet ministers have also accepted free match tickets either from the Premier League or its clubs during the lobbying campaign. While MPs debated the football governance bill earlier this year, the Premier League provided MPs with courtesy tickets to events unrelated to football worth thousands of pounds. In 2024, the Premier League gave five MPs tickets to the Brit awards and gave six Labour MPs, including Starmer, tickets to see Swift’s Eras tour worth £14,830. The MPs who attended the Brit awards in March were Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister a key Starmer ally; Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary; Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology; and Rupa Huq, then a member of the culture media and sport committee. Also in attendance was Jake Richards, who was elected a Labour MP on 4 July. The total value of the tickets was £8,500.
On the eve of a Commons debate on the football governance bill in April, the Premier League held a parliamentary reception with drinks and canapes. Richard Masters, the Premier League’s chief executive, warned the assembled MPs and peers that “we are taking a big risk with a very successful industry”. One key battleground will be whether the government gives the regulator power over the Premier League’s parachute payments for relegated clubs. Many MPs support a proposal to include these payments in the regulator’s powers to intervene in how Premier League funds are redistributed to other clubs, but this is fiercely opposed by Premier League bosses. Speaking to the Observer, former sports minister Crouch said she expected a new football governance bill to be passed by parliament which would allay any concerns over lobbying. She said: “There would be fan uproar if the prime minister and his team did a U-turn on their promise for a regulator.” The Labour MP Huq said she had accepted an invitation to the Brit awards and had been shocked afterwards when told of the value in order to disclose it on her register of interests.
She said: “It seems odd in the feverish run-up to increased football regulation that the Premier League are offering tickets outside their usual remit of football.” Martin Bell, the former broadcast war reporter and independent MP, said: “Lobbying is part of politics, but it becomes suspect when money changes hands or there are benefits in kind. These have to be declared, but I think it’s unwise to accept them. MPs must look to their own constituents and what they will think of their conduct.” A Labour source said laws introducing a new regulator would be passed. “We are regulating the industry and hospitality doesn’t change that,” said the source. Starmer has vowed to overhaul the rules on accepting gifts, and has already paid back £6,000 of gifts and hospitality, including the value of Swift concert tickets funded by the Premier League. A Premier League spokesperson said: “The Premier League runs a programme of stakeholder engagement with a broad range of individuals including MPs and officials. Like all industries, including many football organisations, this is normal practice.”