Why Andy Burnham Wants Football’s 41-Year Alcohol Ban Reviewed

Andy Burnham was sitting inside Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium watching rugby league when he noticed something fairly obvious.

People around him had pints.

“How come these lads can do that in my seat here when we can’t do that at an Everton home game?”

Burnham has now brought that question into Downing Street, describing football’s alcohol restrictions as “discriminatory” and backing trials rather than an immediate nationwide change.

At present, supporters can buy alcohol at designated football grounds and drink it on the concourse. They can even watch the match on a television while doing so. Walk far enough forward to see the actual pitch, though, and the rules change.

The restriction comes from the Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc.) Act 1985, introduced during one of English football’s bleakest periods. That season included serious disorder around Luton-Millwall and Birmingham-Leeds before 39 people died at Heysel.

Alcohol formed part of the government’s response, although Parliament was already debating whether banning it from stands really addressed the problem or simply encouraged supporters to drink elsewhere before matches.

Forty-one years later, football at least has some new evidence.

Women’s professional football has already tested drinking in view of the pitch. A pilot beginning with Birmingham City, Bristol City, Newcastle United and Southampton expanded across the WSL and WSL2, passing 100 matches by January 2026 without a reported incident or ejection linked to the scheme. Support among surveyed fans rose from 58% to 70%, with an average safety score of 9.4 out of 10.

That doesn’t mean a WSL fixture can be directly compared with every men’s game. Crowd sizes, policing requirements and histories of disorder vary enormously, something the UK Football Policing Unit stressed when it called changing the law without proper consultation “incredibly rash”.

There is still evidence behind that caution. Home Office figures recorded 1,963 football-related arrests and other police actions during the 2025-26 domestic season, while 2,460 banning orders were in force.

The same data shows how the picture has changed. The overall rate was four arrests or police actions per 100,000 attendees, while alcohol offences accounted for 7% of cases, compared with 34% in 2010-11.

There is money involved too, particularly lower down the pyramid. Evidence submitted to the 2021 Fan-Led Review estimated the restrictions cost clubs around £2 per supporter per match. For a League Two club averaging 4,000 fans, that was roughly £184,000 across a season.

Dulwich Hamlet offered an even stranger example, telling the review that promotion into the National League could cost the club around 40% of its income because the alcohol rules would then apply.

Getting promoted and discovering the bar suddenly makes less money is quite an addition to the usual promotion bonus.

The Fan-Led Review had already proposed controlled trials at National League and League Two level, with restrictions retained for higher-risk fixtures. Burnham’s comments haven’t changed the law, and no men’s pilot has been announced, but there is now considerably more evidence to test than there was in 1985.

Which brings it back to his Everton seat.

For rugby league, Burnham can sit there with a pint. For Everton, he can buy the same pint underneath the same stand and watch the match on a television.

He just can’t walk back out and watch it with his own eyes.

Forty-one years later, that is becoming an increasingly difficult distinction to explain.