Football clubs urged to ease police cost burden on taxpayers

What the report says

BBC Sport reported that football clubs in England and Wales are being pressed to pay more toward the cost of policing matches, after new Home Office figures for the 2025-26 season showed incidents recorded at 1,644 fixtures. Chief Constable Mark Roberts, the UK’s football policing lead, said the current arrangement leaves clubs free of responsibility for policing beyond stadium boundaries and places an estimated £70m annual cost on taxpayers.

The figures, published on Thursday, showed 159 incidents categorised as “high severity,” compared with 106 the season before. However, overall football-related arrests and other police actions fell to 1,963, down by 40 from 2024-25. Geoff Pearson, a University of Manchester law professor who researches crowd behaviour, told the BBC he was not alarmed by the rise in incidents, suggesting improved reporting by clubs may partly explain the increase and noting that violent disorder arrests fell by 3%.

The wider report also recorded a sharp rise in football-linked online hate crime and abuse, from 234 incidents in the previous season to 405. Public disorder made up the largest share of common arrest categories, followed by violent disorder and possession of class A drugs. There were 2,460 football banning orders in force at season’s end, the highest total since 2011-12; West Ham had the most, while Manchester City had the highest number of supporters arrested or subject to other police action.

BBC Sport also reported UK Football Policing Unit data from the 2026 World Cup, with 22 England fan arrests overseas but 2,322 related incidents and 391 arrests domestically, most during England matches.