With the World Cup over, international football was once again thrust back into the spotlight with FIFA’s failed plans to open it up to private investors. The new UK Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has declared that “Football does not belong to investors. It belongs to the people who fill the stands and who stand on the touchline week in, week out, rain or shine.”
The Prime Minister has also said grassroots sport “will be a BIG priority in my time in office”. He is right to do so: with almost 16 million people playing at the grassroots level locally across the UK, this really is where the game lives - and belongs - week in and week out.
But that game is being undermined by extreme weather and worsening climate impacts. Estimates put grassroots football matches postponed each season at between 120,000 and 150,000, mostly because pitches are waterlogged or flooded. Roughly one-third of grassroots pitches in England already lose six to eight weeks per year of playable time. Unplayable pitches mean postponed fixtures, falling attendance and lost revenue.
Sport England notes that “these effects are not distributed evenly [across grassroots sport], with more deprived communities often more exposed to climate hazards and with fewer resources to respond”. The cost to grassroots sport is estimated at £320 million a year, according to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s own research, and rising dramatically as the world warms.
Given that more frequent and severe climate impacts are now inevitable, many grassroots clubs are bracing themselves; some face extinction. Support is sometimes available from the likes of the Football Foundation and Sport England when floods hit, but is largely reactive, arriving only after the damage is done. For clubs that flood again and again, the water often returns before they have had the chance to recover. Most are run entirely by volunteers, left to fundraise for repairs, haul ruined kit out of the water and reassure players and parents that the club will make it through.
Making the grassroots game climate resilient will take more from the government than emergency relief. One promising opportunity sits with the Sporting Events Bill, which moves to the Commons at the start of September. Delivering on a manifesto commitment, the Bill creates a framework to support mega-events heading to the UK, starting with the men's EUROs in 2028. It is a moment to ask a bigger question: what legacy do these tournaments leave behind and how can it be oriented towards making grassroots football more resilient and environmentally sustainable?
Ministers should use the Bill, and the once-in-a-generation pipeline of events it underpins, to commit sustained investment to the grassroots game - money that doesn't simply build new facilities, but proactively defends existing ones against floods and extreme weather.
This alone won't be enough, though further fixes need not be complicated and the ground is already being laid. The Government has just promised to hand decisions over sporting investment to local leaders as part of Rewiring the State. To make that count, local pitch plans can do more to identify the grounds most exposed to extreme weather, and Lottery money, which has already built pitches and pavilions across the UK, could do more to help protect them.
Grassroots football is where the next generation is inspired, where communities come together, and where the health and social benefits ministers so often celebrate are actually delivered. If grassroots sport is to be a big priority, we must protect the pitches communities depend on. A climate-resilient grassroots game will not build itself. Labour has the groundwork, the events and the mandate to make it happen. It should not let that opportunity drain away.
