New financing deal may not benefit Charlton

Although I do not have all the details, I am far from sure that the new deal between the Premier League and the EFL will be good for clubs like Charlton who are likely to be in the lower half of the Championship.  Apart from anything else, it seems that parachute payments for relegated clubs are likely to continue at near to the current distorting level.

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 £207m 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 £4 billion-a-year media-rights income with the rest of the game, just over £430m 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 £140m 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.