Contribution
I declare my interest at the outset, as I volunteer as a trustee of Millwall Community Trust.
This Bill has been a long time in the making, and there has been more than a little bit of scaremongering along the way about the implications of a regulator for the future of the premier league. The Bill does not pose an existential threat to the premier league, and no one who supports it wants to undermine the success of the premier league. The existential threat is to the football pyramid, should we fail to secure a fairer distribution of resources. The EFL estimates that its clubs will lose £450 million this season. That loss will have to be covered by the generosity of those clubs’ owners, and where that does not occur, we end up in situations like we had with Bury, Derby, Wigan and many others.
In 2020, the EFL proposed a 75:25 split of the combined TV revenues of both leagues, which at the time would have meant approximately £300 million of additional funding for the wider football pyramid. Instead, in the four years since the EFL first made that proposal, spending on transfers in the premier league has gone up by £850 million. In the 2022-23 season, the premier league spent £2.8 billion on player transfers; the other major European leagues spent around £750 million per league. Turning to wages, the premier league spent a combined sum of €4.6 billion on players’ salaries. Its nearest rival spent an aggregate sum of €2.5 billion—that is a gap of over €2 billion. Compared with the Bundesliga, the gap is nearly €2.5 billion, and for France and Italy, the gap is about €2.8 billion. The £300 million extra that the EFL was asking for pales into insignificance when compared with those sums of money, so a fairer distribution of revenues would not impact on the ability of the premier league to pay the highest salaries for players or the highest prices for player transfers. It will, however, make an enormous difference to the sustainability of the pyramid.
Currently, the 20 premier league clubs and the five clubs in receipt of parachute payments get 92% of the distributable money, which is around £3 billion. The remaining 67 clubs of the EFL get a total of 8%, or £245 million. That distorts competition in the EFL and encourages clubs to overspend. The premier league clubs have to agree to change the distribution of TV revenues across the pyramid. In the four years that this has been under discussion, no acceptable proposal has been put forward, so it is clear that football needs an adjudicator to end this impasse. Although it is reasonable to help clubs adjust to being in the championship, it is not acceptable to sustain a system that forces clubs to overspend in order to compete with clubs that are receiving parachute payments. Over the past seven seasons, two of the clubs promoted have been in receipt of parachute payments. The top three places in the championship this season have gone to clubs in receipt of parachute payments, with two matches still to go. The 75:25 split will eradicate the need for parachute payments altogether, create a level playing field, and remove the incentive for non-parachute payment clubs to overstretch themselves financially.
Another major issue, which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) has mentioned, is that of clubs being separated from their grounds. That has happened to my local club, Charlton Athletic, and to many other clubs. It is difficult to see how the Bill could deal with that issue retrospectively, but it is one that we must not lose sight of. It may not be possible to solve it through this Bill, but it is something that we need to deal with urgently. The time has come for a football regulator, which cannot fail to recognise that the current situation is not sustainable and that it must usher in a fairer system. I pay tribute to all those who have played a part in getting us to this point, and I look forward to playing my part in assisting the Bill’s passage through this House.