A statutory body. Not the squad-cost rule.
The Independent Football Regulator is a statutory body established by the Football Governance Act 2025. Who Gets to Spend records its objectives as club financial soundness, the resilience of English football, and heritage.
It is not the Premier League’s spending rule. A vote in November 2025 led to SCR and SSR replacing the profitability and sustainability rules from 2026/27. Enforcement powers for earlier periods remained. The essay’s point is that these are different questions: how much squad cost is permitted, whether a club can meet its obligations, and who may own or run it. An answer to one is not an answer to the others.
The comparison is in chapter 11. This page is an explainer, not a finding.