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.
Comments
Post a Comment