Why the Supporters Direct was formed?
In January 2000 the government officially recognised that supporters can play a positive role in the game of football and, in particular, the running of football clubs. In response to the 1999 Football Task Force report, they announced an initiative aimed at giving ordinary supporters a voice in the running of the clubs they support. They established Supporters Direct, an organisation that offers legal and practical advice as well as financial help to groups of supporters in an effort to encourage them to set up supporters' trusts.
Since then supporters of nearly every football club in the Premier and Nationwide Leagues have expressed an interest in Supporters Direct and already trusts have been set up at clubs like Manchester United, Sheffield Wednesday, Crystal Palace, Mansfield, Lincoln and Spurs, to name just a few. Supported by the Premier League, the Football League and the PFA, supporters' trusts are here to stay.
Why form a Trust?
"Football supporters hold the key to football's future. They are the game's greatest assets, the people who pay the ticket prices, TV subscriptions and buy the merchandise. They keep the game in business. Where clubs have been in crisis, they have more often than not been saved by their supporters and emerged the stronger for it."
Chris Smith, MP, 2001
What is the Supporters Direct model of a trust?
All models used and recommended will be based on democratic, mutual and ‘not-for-profit’ principles. Legitimate objectives will include:-
- Influence - the formation and running of representative bodies for supporters.
- Ownership - the acquisition of shares in the football club to pool the voting power of individual supporters to further the aims and objects of the Supporters’ Trust.
- Representation - securing the democratic election of supporters’ representatives to the Boards of Directors of individual football clubs.
What is the Supporters Direct criteria for elegibility of a trust?
To qualify for the assistance of Supporters Direct, supporters’ groups must be:-
- Democratic in their structures and in the way they run their affairs.
- Open to all fans to join, at an affordable cost.
- Broadly representative of supporters.
The result of all this is that they: require supporters' groups they help to adopt a written constitution and use a limited number of model constitutions. This helps to reduce or eliminate the cost of legal advice to them and to individual groups on constitutional issues;and acts as a means of ensuring that their aims and philosophy are met in each case.
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