22 February 2024 , 17:57
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Premier League clubs have been urged to reach a deal for the EFL - and finally end football’s “inequality.”
Football bigwigs gave more evidence to Ministers on Thursday ahead of an emergency Premier League meeting next Thursday to try and thrash out a £900m deal to support the rest of the pyramid. There is a growing feeling that the Football Governance Bill might happen now before the 20 top-flight clubs get a chance to reach an agreement but they are now under greater pressure to find agreement.
Football action group Fair Game is pushing for agreement to reach to help support all levels of the game. Fair Game told Mirror Sport: “The Premier league see the meeting as settling on the deal, and crucially how they are going to pay for it. Given the lack of agreement to date, the clubs are arguing amongst themselves about who loses out and who has to pay.
“But it is also important to be aware that for every £1,000 earnt from broadcast revenues, £882 goes to Premier League clubs, £6.22 goes to League One clubs and just 15p to those in the National League South. The inequality is clear to see and it is no surprise that clubs like Rochdale, Southend and Scunthorpe have faced extinction.
"Whatever the result of the meeting it will fail to even touch the edges of the financial problems facing so many hard-working community clubs. Only a strong independent regulator with powers over financial flow can properly save football's fragile ecosystem.”
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EFL chair Rick Parry says that without cash support huge numbers of their clubs will go out of business. The Premier League insist they are keen to do a deal and end the deadlock.
In January, Parry appeared at a DCMS hearing where he gave evidence to a committee in the light of efforts to reach a deal. The hearing came just days after a protest from fans of League One side Reading against the club's owners saw a match abandoned.
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Rick Parry was sat next to Masters at the January hearing (Sky Sports)“Our purpose is making clubs sustainable," Parry told the committee in January. "That requires two things: a fairer system of distribution, redistribution which means more being given up and more coming down, substantially more.
“We’d prefer the regulation was done within football but as long as it’s done fairly and with competence we don’t mind who does it. We can save the regulator a lot of time by pointing out that two thirds of our clubs are insolvent without redistribution so what is the regulator going to do?
“Refuse to give them a licence? Put them out of business? We hope not. It would be odd to say just leave football to find a solution. It has to be the right solution. The clubs want a better future, they want a better system because they know the current system is broken.”
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