Member

Let me put this into context. Throughout 2023, both the Premier League and the EFL were engaged in serious discussions about a transformative generational settlement. Those negotiations were centred on an ambitious and innovative plan, one that incorporated many of the EFL’s own ideas. It would have permanently aligned the incentives of both leagues, including through the joint selling of international broadcast rights, pooling each other’s organisation, revenues and costs, and creating a long-term framework to permanently share in each other’s collective success for the long term. With this revised Bill, I am sorry to say, that vision is now dead. How could the Premier League even consider such a long-term commitment under a system whereby any agreement lasting more than five years risked triggering the backstop? This change has not just disincentivised ambition; I am afraid that it has sabotaged it. It delivers permanent short-termism and senseless destabilisation within the financial ecosystem of English football.