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LCP help shape football’s first ever ‘Sustainability Index’

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LCP’s Football Analytics team have supported campaign group Fair Game to help them develop the first ever ‘Sustainability Index’ for football, with the aim of boosting standards in how clubs in England are run.

The Sustainability Index, which was launched today for clubs in the Premier League and Championship, seeks to provide the checks and balances to ensure that the new vision set out in the recent Fan-Led Review chaired by Tracey Crouch MP can become a reality.  Fair Game are campaigning for clubs to be financially rewarded for performing well against this index, and it is expected ultimately to be extended down the pyramid.

Through analysis of club accounts, data and processes, the Sustainability Index measures teams against four indicators: financial sustainability, governance, fan engagement and equality standards. LCP were well placed to help interpret and visualise the data for the Index because of their growing reputation as data experts in the sport, following the development of their innovative football player scouting tool TransferLab for both the men’s and women’s game.

Of the 20 Premier League teams, Liverpool led the way, scoring highly in the Football Leadership Diversity Code, which makes up 50% of the governance score. Finishing bottom of the table were Nottingham Forest. Forest’s rating was hamstrung by their financial rating of 1 out of a maximum score of 40. Figures showed Forest spent 202% of their revenue on players’ wages, nearly triple the recommended amount of 70%.

The financial sustainability metric is built on standard accounting measures - credit ratio, debt ratio, loans and wages - which analyse every club’s credit, debt, loans, revenues and wages, based on the latest available published accounts.

The fan engagement metric uses data from the respected Fan Engagement Index and how full a club’s stadium is on an average matchday.

The Equality Standards measure analyses board make-up and couple that with data from the Football Leadership Diversity Code, which looks at recruitment at football clubs.

Good Governance couples data from Responsiball with information taken from the Sports Positive League website and whether a club is deemed to be state-owned as defined by FairSquare.

Bart Huby, Head of Football Analytics at LCP: “We are delighted to support Fair Game by helping to make the Sustainability Index’s information clear and accessible. We believe that intelligent use of data is a means of bringing transparency, insight and accountability to any industry. Change can only be driven on the basis of accurate, comprehensive information, clearly communicated.

“Our work visualising the Sustainability Index will help stakeholders, from fans and governing bodies to clubs themselves, understand what is happening across the sport. This is why it is so important to have access to comprehensive, real-time information about club finances, to help make the Sustainability Index genuinely meaningful and actionable.”

Niall Couper, CEO of Fair Game, added: “The inaugural Fair Game Sustainability Index is the culmination of over 18 months of hard work from our large team of world-renowned experts. LCP have played a key role in helping us to understand the data and turn it into something that can help create a new culture that celebrates and rewards well-run clubs and makes football sustainable for the future at all levels of the game. It has been a real pleasure working with LCP."

You can read the full Sustainability Index here

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