Sporting Events Bill [HL]

Lord Wood of Anfield Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who made lots of very thought-provoking points about wider issues. It is also a pleasure to take part in a debate with so many people who have contributed so much to our great sporting legacy.

I too welcome this Bill. It provides an overarching framework, a one-stop shop if you like, for major sporting events. As many Lords have said, it is important because sport is so central to our culture and our economy. To make the point, I will share a couple of statistics, one of which is very strange. We are still among the handful of countries that are always at the top of the Global Sports Index, which measures the scale, reach and impact of sporting events around the world. Here is the strange statistic: just before Covid, the UK had the honour of being the only country in the world whose sporting annual attendance of professional events was greater than its entire population. A recent UK sports survey showed that 83% of the UK population expressed pride in hosting major sporting events. Getting 83% of the country to agree on anything is pretty extraordinary.

Having a framework approach is sensible, to provide efficient delivery, to reduce delay and uncertainty once bids have been successful, and to improve the bidding for events by meeting organising committee requirements in advance. I agree with a lot of what the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, said earlier. My understanding is that this is a package to enable bids for international events to be smoother, so I can see some logic in separating out some events from regularly held major events.

In particular, it is good to see action on deterring touts, protecting commercial rights, enabling co-ordinated transport planning and saving admittedly modest amounts of money—but still, saving money—in the legislative and administrative groundhog day that is involved in legislation for each new bid that is made.

It is important to note, as other noble Lords have done, that the Bill is accompanied by other initiatives that, taken together, look suspiciously like a co-ordinated strategy: a new cross-government programme with sporting bodies on priority infrastructure development; a new cross-sector major events strategy, which will be fed into by my noble friend Lord McConnell, as the new adviser on sporting events and soft power; and, as many noble Lords have said, the upcoming ticket touts Bill, more on which later. All this is very welcome.

I want to flag up four areas where I think there will be a lot of interest across the House in probing for more detail. The first is the definition of “events”, which is perhaps not a big issue in policy terms but is a tricky issue from an administrative point of view. Clause 3, as we have heard, specifies that the events within scope are those that are held in or partly in the UK of a kind that are not regularly held in the UK and that are likely to be of significant international interest. It is clear that UEFA and FIFA tournaments, Rugby World Cups and international cricket competitions fall in that scope, but what about events such as high-profile title bouts in boxing that are organised in an ad hoc way? What about the Ryder Cup, even? The Ryder Cup, as my noble friend Lady Nye knows very well, is held in Europe every four years, but it is no longer held in Britain every four years—it is held in different countries. Does that count as qualifying as an event that would be within scope? These are not deal-breaking issues, but it would be worth hearing what further guidance the Secretary of State will rely on when making decisions.

The second area is ticket touting. As many colleagues have said, the stated intent in the Bill is good, but there are three small issues in this area. The first is how exactly the steps on eliminating ticket touting in the Bill will dovetail with the wider treatment of ticket touting that is yet to come. As many have observed, the risk is that measures to deter or prohibit touting for major sporting events now, which take place in primary legislation, will perhaps be in tension with the broader reform of the resale market, which is in draft legislation and will proceed on a slower basis, and itself will be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny and so may change down the line. There is a question of how we are going to ensure—as a Parliament, let alone as a House—that these two pieces of legislation on such different timescales dovetail, rather than being in tension.

The second issue, and here I am going to join my noble friend Lord Foulkes in having a pop at FIFA, is that it is assumed in the Bill that the international sporting bodies will want reassurance about the host country’s commitment to eliminating ticket touting. However, if you follow what is happening with FIFA at the moment on ticket pricing in the upcoming men’s World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada, you will know that there is a case of an organising body colluding with ticket resale platforms in its pricing policy. It is keeping its official prices ludicrously high— $11,000 face value for the final and $2,500 dollars for USA v Paraguay—knowing that the market clearing price is actually lower, and shifting unsold inventory of tickets through these third-party resale platforms. So there is a new problem here: legislation to deal not just with ticket touting inflating the price but with an organising committee that may be colluding with resale platforms. That is something that is, unfortunately, worth bearing in mind.

The last issue on ticket touting is that the Bill will have to have due care for official fan-to-fan exchange schemes—and those schemes are going to have to be restructured in response to this and the ticket touting legislation anyway. I have a gentle thought that the Government’s view on the steps needed to control resale mechanisms cannot trample on perfectly legitimate ticket-sharing mechanisms within clubs and within national sports organisations.

The third area is that there are a couple of issues regarding the reliance on secondary legislation, which the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, mentioned earlier. First, the House will want reassurance that if event-specific provisions are being triggered by secondary legislation then there will still be scope for proper scrutiny of issues that arise in the organisation of that event. There is no reason why there should not be. The second issue is that the understandable need for clarity on licensing and commercial association has to strike a balance between, on the one hand, protecting property rights and, on the other, continuing to be community friendly to local businesses, consumers and fans who enjoy and have economic activity around the event.

The fourth area is that, while the Bill covers excellent ground, as many, including the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, have mentioned, there are issues that are at least worth considering to be included in this framework legislation. The noble Lord mentioned inclusion and issues around technology, while the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned environmental sustainability issues. Another is safeguarding provisions. Should there be minimum safeguarding plans, particularly as some of these events may involve under-18 tournaments, and should there be dedicated welfare officers? It should be considered whether that should be baked in as part of the universal set of issues.

I look forward to engaging more in this debate. The Bill is excellent, it fulfils a manifesto commitment and it is going to be of value across our country and across sports. The last thing I urge is that we do not schedule any of the Committee days at times that clash with World Cup matches.