How Soccer Could Sway Britain's Election

Many Britons will spend the next month fixated by the unforeseen twists and drama of an epic battle drawing to a climactic conclusion. Oh, and there's an election on too. But the final weeks of England's domestic soccer season promises elation for some and frustration for others. Mindful of the fact that the neck-and-neck race for the English Premier League title between Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal will generate greater passion than the May 6 general-election contest pitting the Conservative front-runners against the Labour incumbents and smaller parties like the Liberal Democrats, the politicians are making their own play for the fans' attention: the ruling Labour Party, in its election manifesto published April 12, has promised to develop policy proposals that would enable "registered Supporters Trusts" to buy shares of the teams they back. Granting fans the opportunity to purchase as much as 25% of their beloved football clubs (as soccer franchises are known in Britain), Labour suggested, would bring "mutualism to the heart of football."

As vote getters go, the government could have done much worse. The plan taps into creeping resentment among fans over the ways top clubs manage their money. The world's richest soccer competition by measure of revenue, England's Premier League also tops the table when it comes to debt: 18 of its 20 teams owed a total of $5.2 billion in 2008 according to UEFA, the sport's governing body in Europe — more than all the clubs in the continent's other top divisions combined. (Debt-ridden Portsmouth, one of two Premier League teams not included in UEFA's sums, in February became the top flight's first franchise to fall into bankruptcy.) The leveraged buyouts by American investors of top clubs Manchester United and Liverpool, meanwhile, were "acting principally as a burden" on those clubs, UEFA added in the recent report, "rather than to support investment or spending." That's because the new owners piled the debts incurred in buying the clubs onto the teams' own finances, limiting the cash available for buying new players and therefore the clubs' ability to compete with better-endowed rivals. (See a group-by-group guide to the 2010 World Cup.)

Just as Britain's voters look set to unseat Labour in part as punishment for the debt-ridden state of the economy, soccer supporters' patience for massive borrowing by football clubs — and the owners behind it — has expired. Asked in a March YouGov poll whether they felt their club would be in better hands if it was owned cooperatively, 56% of fans expressing an opinion believed it would.

Support for cooperative ownership was even higher among fans of Manchester United and Liverpool. Angered by the $1 billion debt piled onto United's books following its 2005 takeover by the Glazer family — owners of the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers — a consortium of wealthy United fans is putting together a plan to buy out the club with the backing of ordinary supporters. While the group, known as the Red Knights, is unlikely to make an offer before the end of the current season — the club, for its part, insists it's not for sale — the extent of support for the fans' rebellion can be seen on match day when, as an act of protest, many thousands have discarded United's red colors for the green and gold of the railway workers who established the club well over a century ago. (See a brief history of David Beckham.)

Labour hopes that its proposals, which could also see fans offered right of first refusal to buy their club in the event that it was put up for sale, could coax many football fans to turn out for the party come election day. "There's the potential for [the plan] to be very popular in an electoral sense," says Duncan Drasdo, chief executive of the Manchester United Supporters Trust (MUST), which advocates for fans having an ownership stake in the club. A large number of United's 3.8 million adult fans in the U.K. live in marginal constituencies, Drasdo says. The chance to have a say in the way the club is run, he adds, "is the kind of issue that gets people out who don't normally bother voting."

Were Labour to win next month — the opposition Conservatives, who've dismissed the offer of ownership stakes as a "gimmick," are currently ahead in the polls — implementing its proposals could still prove tricky. While the government is taking legal advice on how the sale of shares to supporters might be enforced, it's hard to imagine club owners would allow any such reform to pass unchallenged.(Read "Can Fans Buy Their Team?")

And while most fans might resent an owner who has bought their club on his credit card, convincing them to buy him out with their own hard-earned cash won't be easy. A 2008 campaign to get 100,000 Liverpool fans to each chip in $10,000 toward the cost of buying back the club from its unpopular owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, failed to gain momentum. Ongoing uncertainty over their plans for the club — Hicks and Gillett are expected to step down as co-chairmen this week amid the search for a buyer — has meant a revised fundraising effort "won't be going anywhere at the moment," admits James McKenna, secretary of Liverpool supporters' group the Spirit of Shankly. If the fans' rebellion fails to build momentum before the soccer season draws to a close next month, however, the same may be true for Labour's prospects.

Read "English Soccer Tackles High Taxes and a Weak Pound."

See pictures of South Africa preparing for the World Cup.