Reading Between the Lines of the Fair Game Index

The Fair Game Index is designed to assess how well football clubs in England are run. Each year it scores clubs across eight areas: finance, governance, transparency, fan engagement, equality, diversity, environment, ethics and community.

The principle is sound. With the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) beginning to take shape, any attempt to benchmark clubs against standards of good practice is valuable. These are the issues that will determine whether clubs can operate sustainably in the years ahead.

Supporters should be mindful, however, that the Index is not universally accepted as the final word. Within football there are misgivings about its methodology and the way scores are compiled. The broad themes it highlights are important, but the specific numbers and rankings should be read as part of a wider conversation rather than a definitive judgment.

One complication in assessing Southport’s position is the timing. The 2025 Index was published in September, two months after the club’s most recent accounts had been filed and two months after a highly publicised takeover that followed an almost catastrophic collapse under the previous ownership. Yet the Index ignored all of that and based its findings on accounts from the previous financial year, scoring Southport 7th in National League North and well in finance for the division.

That choice highlights the central flaw in the methodology. A desk-based survey, reliant on historic paperwork and PR material, cannot hope to capture the real-time pressures facing a club. The danger is that it produces a veneer of authority that jars with lived reality. A club hours from closure in June should not, in September, be presented as financially “strong”, based on data which is 15 months out of date.

Fair Game themselves acknowledge the limits of their evidence base, particularly further down the pyramid.

“All the data was collected from publicly available sources, mainly club websites and annual accounts,” their statement explained.

“The financial data was taken from clubs’ latest financial accounts and therefore relate to the 2023/24 season.”

At Step 6, that evidence base is inevitably thin, selective and often out of date. Even when speaking directly with those involved at Southport, Southport Central has found it difficult to obtain the full picture. It is hard to see how a desktop survey could achieve more.

Southport’s recent history shows how misleading that can be. Peter Mitchell, whatever else may be said about him, was adept at presenting a positive narrative. His public version of events often bore little resemblance to the precarious reality behind the scenes. The collapse of his wider business empire exposed how fragile those foundations were. The Index’s reliance on published material risks repeating the same mistake by taking surface claims at face value.

Fair Game UK’s Lee McLaughlin, responding to questions from Southport Central, stressed that the overriding challenge at this level is finance.

“Clubs at this level do not have the cash to prioritise issues such as ethics, diversity and the environment. In addition, because reporting requirements are significantly lower in the National League, clubs in that league score significantly lower on transparency, governance and fan engagement than their counterparts in the EFL and the Premier League. This is of big concern as those three areas are the ones that form the main focus of the new regulator.”

He also pointed out that only four clubs from the National League North and South received awards this year, and none were deemed “regulator ready” outside of Bath, Chester, Darlington and Maidstone. Out of 164 clubs assessed, just 27 awards were made in total, nine to Premier League clubs and 12 to those in the EFL.

Those explanations highlight the structural challenges but also expose the Index’s limitations. Southport’s financial score was derived from outdated accounts. By summer 2025 the club was on the verge of collapse. That gulf between the scoring system and reality matters. At best the Index is a snapshot of past paperwork, at worst it risks presenting crisis clubs as stable.

This is why the Index must not be confused with the forthcoming regulator. The IFR, legislated for in the Football Governance Act, will have the power to insist upon up-to-date disclosures and to test them rigorously. That is a fundamentally different exercise to one built on what clubs choose to publish.

The Index’s use of the phrase “regulator-ready” should therefore be treated with caution. The regulator’s detailed licensing framework has not yet been finalised. The law sets out broad principles – financial sustainability, good governance, supporter engagement and protection of heritage – but the specific thresholds and processes will only be established once the IFR is fully operational. Until then, no club can definitively claim to meet the standards.

It is also worth noting that it is the Football Supporters’ Association, not Fair Game UK, that is working directly with the regulator to shape how those principles will be applied. That distinction matters, because it shows where the real influence lies in the design of the new system.

The Index assessed 164 clubs. Only five were found to be “regulator-ready”, and just one in six achieved gold, silver or bronze recognition – categories chosen by Fair Game, not the IFR. Its eight criteria overlap with the principles written into the Football Governance Act: financial sustainability, governance, transparency, fan engagement, equality, diversity, environmental responsibility, and ethical and community impact. The alignment is clear, but it remains an unofficial benchmark.

There is an irony here too. An initiative that claims to champion transparency has placed a price tag on access. Headline scores are published, but clubs and supporters who want to see a breakdown of how those scores were reached must pay. At National League North level, that fee is £100 per club, rising higher up the pyramid. Critics may question whether this serves the wider game or creates a new revenue stream.

The overall pattern was familiar: financial fragility and weak governance remain problem areas, while transparency and community engagement tend to show more strength. These findings generate headlines, but they are hardly revelations. The fragility of English football is well-known. It is precisely why the regulator has been introduced.

Southport Central has already highlighted these issues in earlier work. In The Independent Football Regulator: What it Means for Southport FC and the Role of Supporters, the focus was on how the regulator will apply licensing, ownership scrutiny, financial oversight and supporter engagement. Those are the very themes the Index claims to measure, but it does so on Fair Game’s terms, not the regulator’s. The priorities for Southport remain the same regardless of the scores.

In Football’s Financial Machine and Southport’s Place Within It, the point was made that clubs lower down the pyramid are inherently exposed to financial pressures shaped from above. The Index’s headline finding that many clubs are fragile and under-prepared simply restates that reality.

The real safeguard will come from regulation. Unlike a voluntary survey, the IFR will have the power to demand accurate, up-to-date information and hold owners to account. The purpose of that oversight is to protect clubs from the kind of instability seen at Southport this summer. The problem is that, at present, only Step 1 of the National League is confirmed to fall within scope. Unless the rules are standardised across the whole competition, two-thirds of its members in the North and South divisions will remain outside those protections.

That raises a further danger. If regulatory standards apply only to Step 1, clubs in the North and South could find themselves unable to be promoted unless they can suddenly meet licensing requirements at the point of entry. It would be an echo of the years when promotion from the Conference to the Football League was often blocked because clubs did not meet ground grading criteria. A system designed to safeguard clubs should not end up creating new barriers to progress.

Supporters should therefore see the Fair Game Index as a prompt rather than a verdict. It raises important questions, but not questions that haven’t been asked before and the answers will only come once the regulator is fully in place.

Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this article. The interpretation of the Fair Game Index is my own and should not be taken as representing the views of Fair Game UK, the Football Supporters’ Association, or Southport Football Club. Any errors of interpretation are mine alone.

Further Reading:

https://www.fairgameuk.org/press-releases/fairgameindex2025

https://thefsa.org.uk/news/fsa-response-football-governance-bill-achieves-royal-assent/

The Independent Football Regulator: What it Means for Southport FC and the Role of Supporters

Football’s Financial Machine and Southport’s Place Within It