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Scotland’s Celtic the best-run football club according to the Fair Game Index
The Scottish Premiership’s Celtic was named as the best-run football club in the UK, according to the Fair Game Index, however there is work to be done around equality and ethical standards across all football clubs.
The index was first collated in January last year, looking into what a well-run club actually looked like. In its original index, some 92 clubs were examined from the top four divisions of men’s football in England. The third edition has now examined 206 clubs with the addition of the National League, the National League North and the National League South, as well as the top four divisions in Scotland.
This year, Fair Game analysed 226 publicly available data points across four pillars which include financial sustainability, good governance, equality and ethical standards, and fan and community engagement.
England’s best-run football club was Tottenham Hotspur, and was joined in the top 10 by fellow Premier League clubs Manchester United, Brentford, Fulham and Liverpool. Spurs scored an overall score of 68.2 out of 100 across the four pillars.
Clubs from other divisions included League One side Cambridge United, the Championship’s Norwich City and Swansea City, as well as League One’s Exeter City and League Two’s AFC Wimbledon.
“Football is far from perfect but with the likelihood of an incoming football regulator there is a real chance to change it for the better."
“Football is far from perfect but with the likelihood of an incoming football regulator there is a real chance to change it for the better,” said Niall Couper, Chief Executive of Fair Game.
“To deliver real and meaningful change we need to understand the problems. We’ve designed the Fair Game Index to do exactly that and help reshape the game we love. It is the most comprehensive analysis yet of what it means to be a well-run club, and we’re calling on the authorities, the Football Regulator and football’s governing bodies to work with us.”
Out of the six clubs to score more than 30 out of 40 on the financial sustainability metrics, none were in the Premier League and only Plymouth Argyle represented the Championship. The top clubs for financial sustainability in Scotland all featured in the Premiership, with Celtic being marked as the overall highest-ranked team across both England and Scotland.
The Index demonstrated that there was work needed on equality and ethical standards, with just 16 of the top 164 clubs in England scoring 10 or more out of 20, and just one in Scotland – Celtic.
However, fan and community engagement scores demonstrated that fan-owned clubs and those with fan representation on the Board scored highly. English Football League (EFL) and National League clubs were particularly prevalent in this area, including AFC Wimbledon, Tonbridge Angels, Scarborough Athletic, Exeter City, Chester and Bath City.
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