A new report, released Thursday morning, has proposed what its authors call a “ground-breaking” solution to financial issues afflicting English football.
Fair Game, a campaign group which lobbies for better governance in the sport, issued proposals it believes could and should end the ongoing deadlock among football’s authorities regarding how money is distributed throughout the English pyramid. The report is titled: ‘The Four Pot Solution: Redrawing Football’s Finances’.
The discussion has been ongoing between the Premier League and the EFL since 2021, with no end in sight. The recently established Independent Football Regulator (IFR) has ‘backstop’ powers to “intervene in the distribution of revenue as a last resort”, though IFR chair David Kogan has repeatedly stated his preference for the leagues to resolve the matter between themselves. It is a preference shared by those leagues.
Kogan reiterated the view at last month’s Financial Times Business of Football Summit, even as he outlined how a significant proportion of clubs in the English pyramid would not survive a single month if their current owners were to pull the plug on funding.
‘The Four Pot Solution’ is wide-ranging, the result of a year’s work and covers 18 separate but linked sections over 89 pages. In lieu of those at the negotiating table offering up possible new distribution methods, at least publicly, Fair Game believes the report “provides the football authorities with a ready-made solution to the problems within our national game”.
Moreover, it appeals directly to the IFR, highlighting that, without reforms to the sharing of English football’s bounty, “the IFR will not be able to meet its statutory objectives on financial soundness, systemic resilience, or heritage protection”.
Fair Game’s solution boils down to three main recommendations: introduce a four-pot distribution model; reduce the parachute payments currently paid to recently relegated Premier League clubs; and rebalance the distribution of English football’s TV money across the country’s top six levels (being the Premier League, the EFL and the two tiers of the National League).
The four-pot model
The report proposes a reduction in the 20 Premier League clubs’ share of the competition’s annual revenue from the sale of TV broadcasting rights. Fair Game puts the sum total of those now at £3.2billion, and calls for a reduction in the top division’s share from the current 83 per cent to 75 per cent.
Premier League clubs’ TV money distributions actually fell slightly in 2024-25, though an increase is expected this season as a new deal cycle begins. Fair Game proposes a significantly larger reduction than last year’s £15million; the report lays out the case for Premier League clubs to receive £2.4bn annually, a more than £400m drop on last season and a return to the level disbursed in 2016-17.
Doing so would, per the proposals, enable a “more stable pyramid” by reducing the cliff-edge of relegation to the Championship and bringing clubs in the National League into the distribution fold. Fair Game’s solution would provide the 72 clubs of England’s fifth and sixth tiers with a combined £161.4m annually. They receive nothing from the existing distribution model.
With overall divisional distributions sorted out, money would then be allocated according to those four pots: reward funding, ring-fenced funding, universal core funding and a mandatory escrow account. It marks a sharp departure from the current model, where clubs receive funding from one pot and can use it as they please.
Reward funding would be available only to those clubs who meet sustainability criteria, such as wage control, fan engagement and a reduced reliance on owners’ money.
Getting wage inflation under control is key to improving the finances of clubs, particularly in the Championship where in 2023-24 exactly half of the division’s teams spent more than 100 per cent of income on salaries. Fair Game’s solution is to try and incentivise clubs rather than impose legally fraught caps.
Ring-fenced funding would be for exclusive use on long-term projects, while the ‘universal core’ pot would ensure non-playing staff were paid and essential stadium maintenance works carried out.
Last but far from least, the escrow pot would seek to ensure all clubs could meet at least one year of liabilities, going hand in hand with that reduced reliance on owners. In response to the argument escrow accounts are too burdensome, Fair Game propose a three to five-year implementation period.
A reduction in parachute payments
Elsewhere, the proposed reduction in parachute payments draws heavily on research carried out by the University of London’s Birkbeck Sport Business Centre which found, in a paper issued in April 2025, that parachute payments were both “excessive” and only necessary “up to two years following relegation”. Relegated clubs who spend longer than one season in the Premier League currently receive three years of such payments.
Parachute payments are calculated as a percentage of Premier League clubs’ annual equal share payment. The current system sees relegated clubs receive 55 per cent of that equal share in the first year post-relegation then, provided they aren’t promoted, 45 per cent in year two and 20 per cent in year three.
Fair Game’s proposal mirrors those of the Birkbeck paper, calling for parachute payments to be limited to two years and set at 25 per cent of the equal share in each year. In 2024-25, that would have seen the parachute payment of recently relegated Burnley, Luton Town and Sheffield United reduced from £48.95m to £22.25m.
It marks a significant drop on current levels but, as that Birkbeck paper outlined, parachute payments have increasingly been used by clubs to enhance chances of promotion rather than as a way of indemnifying themselves against falling revenues. With Premier League clubs receiving less overall under the proposed distribution model, the idea is that a reduction in parachute payments would increase competitiveness in the Championship without imperilling relegated clubs.
Fair Game’s report is comprehensive, spanning much of English football’s workings and ecosystem.
Recommendations beyond the core ones outlined here include issuing a 10 per cent levy on transfer fees paid by Premier League clubs to fellow top-tier teams or sides from abroad, with the monies then distributed down the pyramid to fund academies and development; bringing monies received from UEFA competition within the domestic regulatory framework to reduce inequality; and making some of the ring-fenced funding available for the installation of 3G pitches.
A worthwhile endeavour – but unlikely to met with universal approval
Analysis
Fair Game’s proposal is a little dizzying, chockfull of pound signs and percentages and a bevy of recommendations that would make Tripadvisor proud.
The aims are laudable and rooted in the concept of English football as a sport, rather than a business.
Yet laudable aims are quite different to achievable ones. The report heavily leans upon the IFR’s ability to determine the distribution of TV money in the English game, even as David Kogan has repeatedly stressed his organisation’s reluctance to employ what many view as a nuclear option.
Whether the Premier League and EFL will take heed of the proposals laid out here is unknown, but reducing the amounts paid to the nation’s top 20 clubs by hundreds of millions of pounds is unlikely to be met with universal approval.
Fair Game reasons that no reduction in Premier League clubs’ equal share payment will reduce volatility, with the redistributed element coming from the existing merit and TV facility pots. Merit payments, they say, jar with stability and sustainability. Yet on an average basis the proposal here would still reduce individual clubs’ distributions by around 15 per cent, at a time when wage bills continue to soar.
The report’s suggestion to tackle the latter – that careful clubs receive funds from the ‘Reward’ pot, as opposed to the imposition of a legally contentious salary cap – is commendable but may run up against the motives of existing owners and the reality of wage spending correlating with success.
Recent history suggests many club owners are willing to fund deficits if it heightens their team’s chances on the field, and doubtless plenty believe they can eventually make their money back and more when the time comes to sell up. Incentivising clubs to run themselves sustainably should be applauded, but good motives don’t guarantee success.
Ultimately, for now, with the matter still in the hands of the Premier League and the EFL, a proposal clearly aimed at the IFR is unlikely to meet with immediate approval.
That doesn’t, however, make the report a worthless endeavour. Far from it. A solution to the distribution issue is long overdue and the unsustainable nature of the English pyramid shows little sign of improving without one. Even as a new EFL TV deal last season sent more money to member clubs, evidence from those to have released 2024-25 financials show operating deficits have actually worsened, as increased income continues to be gazumped by higher wages and operating costs.
Fair Game’s proposal is too multi-faceted and wide-ranging for everything in it to be adopted but, at a time when one of England’s best-supported and oldest clubs sits in administration and on minus points, potential solutions to the sport’s myriad financial problems are welcome.