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Solidarity deal could create new cliff edge

The English Football League (EFL) and Premier League are now only £27 million apart from agreeing a comprehensive new financial solidarity package for the men’s game after years of stop-start talks.

While there are still some other details to decide, the EFL has told the Premier League it will accept the so-called New Deal for Football if the latter ups its latest offer of an extra £180m a year in solidarity payments to £207 m annually, with the additional amount ring-fenced for Leagues One and Two.

Under the terms of  the last solidarity deal the leagues agreed in 2019, the Premier League currently shares 13 per cent of its £4billion-a-year media-rights income with the rest of the game, just over £430 m a year. Of that sum, more than half goes to half a dozen or so clubs recently relegated from the top flight in the form of parachute payments, with just over £140 m shared between the rest of the EFL’s 72 clubs in solidarity payments and a similar sum dished out to fund community projects, football-related charities and small grants to non-league and women’s football.

Last week the Premier League came back with a solidarity offer of 14.7 per cent, which would be worth an extra £180m a year, over a seven-year period. But this would still be distributed on an 80/12/8 basis, with a Championship merit rake of 1.75:1, which means the team that finishes stop of the table gets a central distribution worth 1.75 times the team that finishes bottom.

There are several Championship clubs who believe this will create a new cliff edge within the division but it seems that enough clubs are now happy with the “quantum” on offer to vote it through, providing the Premier League agrees to a five-year deal – which would in effect be a seven-year deal as the IFR has already pointed out that the backstop process would take about two years.

 

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