Commitments in lieu of licence conditions: how competition organisers can negotiate on behalf of English football
Most discussion of the Independent Football Regulator's discretionary licence conditions treats them as a club-by-club matter: the IFR identifies a concern at an individual club and attaches a condition to that club's licence. What almost no commentary has addressed is that, for financial discretionary conditions specifically, the Act gives competition organisers -- the Premier League, the EFL -- a genuine opportunity to step in and offer a commitment as an alternative to the proposed club-level condition or variation. This is a governance lever competition organisers should be thinking about proactively, not a mechanism clubs discover only once a condition has already landed on their own licence.
The starting point: financial discretionary licence conditions
The IFR's power to attach discretionary licence conditions -- conditions beyond the four mandatory conditions every club must meet -- is set out across sections 21 to 25 of the Football Governance Act 2025. Section 23 governs the specific procedure for a defined subset of those conditions: ones relating to the financial resources threshold requirement or the advancement of the IFR's systemic financial resilience objective. It is this specific category -- financial discretionary conditions -- where the Act gives competition organisers a formal role that does not exist for the Act's other discretionary condition categories.
Before the IFR attaches or varies a financial discretionary condition on an individual club's licence, section 23 requires it to give notice not only to the club itself but also to the specified competition organiser which organises a specified competition in relation to which a relevant team is operated by the club. In practice, the relevant specified competition organiser will depend on the specified competition in which the club operates its relevant team. This notification duty is the foundation of everything that follows: the organiser is brought into the process from the outset, not informed after the fact.
The commitment mechanism: what the notice must offer
The notice the IFR gives under section 23 must do more than simply describe the proposed condition. It must invite the club and the organiser to make representations about the proposal, and it must separately invite the organiser to give a commitment -- a formal undertaking to take action in lieu of the proposed condition or variation being attached to the individual club's licence. Both the representation period and the period for giving a commitment must run for a minimum of 14 days from the date the notice is given.
This is the structural point that most club-level commentary misses entirely: the organiser is not merely consulted about a condition being imposed on one of its member clubs. It is given a genuine opportunity to offer the IFR an alternative route -- a collective undertaking on behalf of the competition -- that could avoid the individual club-level condition being attached at all.
The organiser is not merely consulted about a condition landing on one of its clubs. It is given a genuine opportunity to offer the regulator a collective alternative instead.
When the IFR will actually accept a commitment
The IFR does not have unlimited discretion to accept whatever an organiser offers. Section 24 sets a specific two-part test, and both limbs must be satisfied before a commitment can be accepted. First, the IFR must be satisfied that compliance with the commitment by the organiser would mean that it would not be necessary to attach the proposed condition or make the proposed variation -- in other words, the commitment must genuinely address the underlying concern that prompted the IFR to consider the condition in the first place, not merely gesture in its direction. Second, the IFR must be satisfied that accepting the commitment would not jeopardise, or risk jeopardising, the IFR's ability to advance one or more of its objectives -- financial soundness, systemic financial resilience, or the heritage objective.
This is a genuinely demanding test, deliberately so. It is not enough for an organiser to offer something that sounds constructive. The commitment has to be a functional substitute for the specific regulatory outcome the condition was designed to achieve, assessed against the IFR's own statutory objectives, not against the organiser's own sense of what is reasonable or proportionate for its member clubs.
Where the IFR does accept a commitment, once the commitment is in force, the consequence is binding on both sides: the IFR may not attach the proposed condition, or make the proposed variation, while the commitment remains in force, and the organiser that gave the commitment must comply with it for as long as it has effect. Where the IFR does not accept the commitment, it must notify both the organiser and the club, explain its reasons, and may then proceed to attach the original condition without any further notice to either party.
Why this matters more to organisers than to individual clubs
Read section 23 from the perspective of an individual club and the commitment mechanism looks like a helpful safety net -- a chance that the competition organiser might step in and spare the club a discretionary condition. Read it from the perspective of the competition organiser itself, and it looks like something considerably more significant: a genuine opportunity to shape the regulatory response to financial sustainability concerns that may otherwise be addressed club by club, on the organiser\'s own terms, rather than watching the IFR impose conditions club by club and building an inconsistent patchwork of individual regulatory relationships across the league.
A competition organiser that has thought through, in advance, what kind of collective commitment it could credibly offer the IFR -- and has the internal governance capability to monitor and evidence compliance with that commitment once given -- is in a fundamentally stronger negotiating position than one reacting to a specific notice about a specific club for the first time. This is a governance capability worth building before it is needed, not after the first notice arrives.
What happens once a commitment is in force: monitoring and release
A commitment is not a one-off negotiation that concludes once accepted. Section 24, supported by Schedule 6, sets out the ongoing procedural framework, and the IFR retains active oversight for as long as the commitment has effect.
Before accepting a commitment or a requested variation to one, the IFR must give notice to the club concerned and have regard to any representations made in response -- a further procedural safeguard layered on top of the initial section 23 process, though this specific step does not apply where the IFR does not consider a proposed variation material. The IFR must, as soon as reasonably practicable after deciding whether to accept a commitment or a variation, notify both the club and the organiser of its decision.
The IFR also retains the power to release an organiser from a commitment. Before doing so, it must again give notice -- this time to both the club concerned and the organiser -- and have regard to representations made within a minimum 14-day period. One of the grounds on which release can occur is straightforward: the organiser has failed to comply with the commitment it gave. Where release occurs on this or a related ground, the IFR has two options. It may, without any further notice, attach the original proposed condition or make the original proposed variation that the commitment was accepted in lieu of. Or it may attach an alternative condition or make an alternative variation -- in which case the club itself must be given a fresh notice, with its own right to make representations, before that alternative is attached.
The practical effect is that a competition organiser's commitment does not simply disappear if breached. Its breach can trigger the reinstatement of the exact individual club-level condition the commitment was designed to avoid -- or something the IFR considers a suitable alternative. An organiser that offers a commitment and then fails to deliver on it has not merely disappointed the IFR. It has potentially reopened the individual club-level regulatory exposure it originally negotiated away, for every club affected by the underlying concern.
The consequence of organiser non-compliance: an enforcement matter, not just a lapsed commitment
Beyond the reinstatement mechanism described above, section 24 requires the IFR to keep under review whether to take action in accordance with Part 8 of the Act -- the Act's general enforcement provisions -- in respect of a competition organiser that fails to comply with a commitment it has given. This means organiser non-compliance is not treated by the Act merely as a lapsed negotiation. It is treated as a matter warranting the IFR's own enforcement consideration, in the same way it would consider enforcement action against a club or an individual for a relevant infringement elsewhere in the Act.
For a competition organiser, this changes the calculus of offering a commitment considerably. A commitment is not a low-risk, purely reputational undertaking. It is a formal regulatory obligation that, once accepted, carries genuine enforcement exposure if the organiser does not deliver on it -- on top of the practical consequence of individual club-level conditions potentially being reinstated across the competition.
Why competition organisers should be thinking about this now, not reactively
The commitment mechanism sits within a broader pattern of duties the Act already places on competition organisers in their dealings with the IFR. Organisers must notify the IFR of any suspected club breach of competition rules, must consult the IFR before imposing a sanction on a club, and must consult the IFR before adding, removing or materially varying any relevant competition rule. The relationship between the IFR and organisers like the Premier League, the EFL and the FA is already, by design, a close and continuous one -- not a relationship that activates only when a specific club-level condition is under consideration.
Given that existing context, the commitment mechanism under section 23 is best understood not as an isolated procedural option but as one further instance of a competition organiser's standing relationship with its regulator. An organiser that has already built the internal capability to engage constructively and evidentially with the IFR -- accurate financial data across its member clubs, a credible view of systemic risk within the competition, and governance structures capable of monitoring compliance with an undertaking once given -- is in a fundamentally better position to use the commitment mechanism effectively than one encountering the concept for the first time when a section 23 notice arrives naming one of its clubs.
For individual clubs, the practical takeaway is different but related: a club facing the prospect of a financial discretionary condition should understand that its own competition organiser may have a genuine role to play in resolving the underlying concern collectively, and should engage with that organiser proactively rather than assuming the condition is a matter for the club alone to resolve.
For the detail of what a financial discretionary licence condition can actually require of an individual club, and how the mandatory licence conditions interact with this discretionary layer, see Lagom's existing guidance on the IFR's mandatory licence conditions.
A commitment is a genuine regulatory opportunity for competition organisers and a genuine regulatory obligation once given.
Understanding whether a commitment is genuinely the right route for a specific proposed condition, and what a competition organiser needs in place to offer one credibly, is often a focused strategic question rather than a full engagement. Lagom Sports Compliance offers ad hoc hourly support for exactly this kind of situation: a single booked session to work through a specific section 23 notice or commitment proposal, or a fixed number of hours each month at a discounted rate for competition organisers and clubs that expect to need this kind of input on a recurring basis. If your organisation is considering how to respond to an IFR notice, or wants to think through its own readiness to offer a commitment proactively, get in touch to talk through what that looks like.
Frequently asked questions: commitments under the Football Governance Act
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A commitment is a formal undertaking the relevant specified competition organiser can offer the Independent Football Regulator as an alternative to a financial discretionary licence condition being attached to one of its member clubs. Under section 23 of the Act, before attaching or varying a condition relating to the financial resources threshold requirement or the systemic financial resilience objective, the IFR must invite the relevant competition organiser to give a commitment to take action in lieu of that condition, alongside inviting representations from both the club and the organiser.
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Yes, in a specific and defined sense. For financial discretionary licence conditions, section 23 gives the relevant competition organiser -- not the individual club alone -- a formal opportunity to offer the IFR a commitment as an alternative to the condition being attached to a specific club's licence. This does not apply to all discretionary conditions; the equivalent provision for non-financial resources and fan engagement conditions does not include the same organiser-commitment mechanism, meaning this collective negotiation route is specific to financial matters.
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The IFR may only accept a commitment where two conditions are both satisfied: first, that compliance with the commitment by the organiser would mean the proposed condition or variation is not necessary; and second, that accepting the commitment would not jeopardise, or risk jeopardising, the IFR's ability to advance its statutory objectives. This is a demanding test -- a commitment must genuinely substitute for the regulatory outcome the condition was designed to achieve, not merely gesture toward it.
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Non-compliance carries two distinct consequences. First, the IFR may release the organiser from the commitment, and where it does so it can either reinstate the original proposed licence condition without further notice, or attach an alternative condition, with the affected club given its own right to make representations on any alternative proposed. Second, the Act requires the IFR to actively consider whether to take enforcement action under Part 8 of the Act against the organiser for the non-compliance itself, meaning a breached commitment is treated as a matter warranting the IFR's own enforcement consideration, not simply a lapsed negotiation.
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Under section 23, the notice the IFR gives before attaching or varying a financial discretionary licence condition must specify a period of not less than 14 days, beginning with the day the notice is given, within which representations may be made or a commitment may be offered. The same minimum 14-day period applies to representations on a proposed release of an organiser from an existing commitment under Schedule 6 of the Act.
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No. The commitment mechanism under sections 23 and 24 and Schedule 6 applies specifically to discretionary licence conditions relating to the financial resources threshold requirement or the IFR's systemic financial resilience objective. The Act's parallel provision for discretionary conditions relating to non-financial resources or fan engagement threshold requirements follows a club-level notice and representations procedure without an equivalent mechanism for the competition organiser to offer a collective commitment in lieu of the condition.