All football clubs are in bed with dodgy sponsors – take them into fan ownership!
Joe Woolfall, Liverpool Socialist Party
A recent Novara Media report has explained how Liverpool Football Club “tops the league of complicity in Israeli genocide and apartheid”.
This ranking is based on another report, which addresses Premier League clubs and their financial complicity in the genocidal slaughter in Palestine at the behest of the Israeli state.
Liverpool FC’s high ranking is because its “shirt sponsor, Standard Chartered, provided $15.4 billion (£11.5 billion) to 24 complicit businesses between January and August 2025”.
Many supporters will feel ashamed at this, and that “the Premier League itself is sponsored by Barclays Bank, which the report says has provided billions to 49 complicit companies”.
The report calls on the billionaire-owned football clubs to act on their “morally toxic” sponsorships. Of course, as a Liverpool supporter myself, I hate the idea that the money I give to the club could be in some way involved in the horror in Gaza.
However, what is needed is not moral appeals to big business, who are in bed with dodgy sponsors for their financial interests, not by some mistake! What is needed is to take football clubs into fan ownership, so that they can be run in the interests of the working-class communities that are the lifeblood of the clubs, alongside the workers who keep them running.
Under an alternative ownership system, the profit motive would not exist, and therefore also the tendency to be in bed with dodgy sponsorships which are linked to genocide and imperialist slaughter in the global south. Liverpool FC is one of the biggest football clubs in the world, with fans on all continents, including in the Middle East and Palestine itself.
Big football clubs are also responsible for exploiting local workers who perform cleaning, security, and other roles. The deciding question is ultimately one of control. With fans in control, no dodgy dealings are necessary; money would be raised in ways that suit us. Take the clubs into the ownership of fans and workers.
