Soccer’s golden dream fades

Press, 10 December 1976, Page 28

Soccer’s golden dream fades

By CLAUDE RICHARDSON, NZPA-Reuter correspondent. London

English soccer, long hope!ful that an injection of cash j from the millions bet on football pools would ease its financial troubles, has been wakened rudely from its golden dream by an official recommendation against a levy on pools gambling. An interim report by the I Royal Commission on Gambling, which is considering ways of raising money for British sport, has come out against a pools levy and has also turned down a general levy on gambling. Now the best hopes of football, horse racing and all the other sports seeking financial help seem to hang on the setting up of a national lottery. The commission ex- ) pressed no immediate concluIsions on lotteries and said it ihad “temporarily excluded” (them from consideration. The commission produced a double body blow for soccer, not only turning down the pools levy, which footbalj circles had optimistically expected to be instituted to help the sport, but virtually condemning the wav football is currently administered.

In its interim report it said.

“In our view any scheme foi financial assistance to football must be accompanied by the creation of suitable administrative machinery to use the money in the most effective way. It is by no means clear to us that such machinery exists at present.”

British soccer is thus paying dearly for the divisions in its own house. As the commission pointed out, the Football Association, the governing body of the sport, and the Football League, in charge of professional league soccer, are not in full agreement about the needs of the sport, and the Professional Footballers Association has asked that any financial assistance should not be paid to the association or the league. Worst hit by the denial of immediate help are the dozen or so league clubs which are in such financial trouble that the final whistle may be blown on their activities at anv time.

One of them, the fourth division team, Newport County, has announced that it will, go out of business after Christmas if it is not taken over and given a cash injection.

There are few English clubs which are not in some mea-sure-of financial need, and the British Minister of Sport. Mr Denis Howell, has estimated

that the clubs are in debt to a total of £1 IM. The commission’s blow has been all the more staggering because of the optimistic tone of the brief it was handed by the former Prime Minister, Sir Harold Wilson, when it was set up last February. Sir Harold) asked it to produce an early interim report “on the possibility of a levy on the football pools or otherwise as a means of providing financial assistance to sport,” and it was known he had soccer primarily in mind. But the commission has refused to advise dipping into the golden stream of more than £2OOM a year which passes through the pools promoters’ hands. The pools contribution to soccer remains at the £2M a year they pay to the league and the association for the use of fixture lists and the £BOO,OOO they hand out to the Football Grounds Im-1 provement Trust. Pointing out that after, deduction of tax, administration expenses and promoters’ profits the pools return) only 28 per cent of their in-1 take in prize money, the) commission concluded that there was little scope for; "creaming money off for, assistance to sport.

Official reaction in soccer circles to the commission’s recommendations was predictably bitter and was echoed by the large Central Council for Physical Recreation. A council spokesman described the report as “a broken promise and a sad future.”

The council had hoped for the institution of a £SOM national sports lottery and it is expected now to press for legislation in Parliament for the lottery to be set up. In horse racing circles, the report is probably viewed with qualified relief. Racing is constantly pressing for more money from betting, but if the commission had come out for a general levy on gambling, with all sports sharing in it, this would have threatened racing’s current yearly income of about £9M from the existing horse-race betting levy. Racing will have to wait until early 1978, when the •commission is due to make •its full report, to learn what (it proposes for the turf. [ One ominous note for rac|ing, with its multiplicity of j official and semi-official (bodies, is the commission’s (strictures on the division of (opinion in official football I circles.