The Premier League is preparing to put one of the most significant financial decisions in English football to a vote, with its 20 clubs set to be asked next Thursday to approve a landmark 10-year agreement. According to exclusive details obtained by Sky News, the deal would see the Premier League provide in the region of 1.5 billion pounds of additional funding to the English Football League over the course of a decade, a move designed to settle a long-running dispute over how the lower leagues are financed.
Under the proposed structure, the biggest revenue earners in the top flight would pay the largest share of the additional money, spreading the burden according to each club's financial power. Alongside the headline funding figure, the plan also includes a proposal to increase the league's transfer levy from 4 percent of transfer fees to 6 percent, raising further resources that can be redistributed through the football pyramid.
The agreement is built around several new mechanisms intended to protect clubs lower down the ladder. One of the central elements is a new 20 million pound lifeboat fund, created specifically to support EFL clubs that fall into financial distress. The measure reflects years of concern about the financial fragility of clubs in the Championship, League One and League Two, several of which have faced severe money troubles in recent seasons.
Another key aspect of the deal involves the parachute payments that the Premier League currently hands to clubs when they are relegated to the Championship. Under the proposal, those payments would be gradually reduced over time. Parachute payments have long been a point of contention, with critics arguing that they hand relegated clubs a significant competitive and financial advantage over their second-tier rivals.
The stakes attached to the vote are heightened by the presence of a regulatory backstop. If the English Football League decides not to accept the deal, it could pave the way for English football's new independent regulator to step in and impose a settlement on both the Premier League and the EFL. That prospect adds pressure on all sides to reach an agreement rather than risk having terms dictated to them from outside.
The negotiations have been anything but straightforward. The question of how the lower leagues are funded has been the subject of on-off discussions among English football's power brokers for more than three years, with repeated disagreements over the size and structure of any settlement. The latest version of the deal, reported by Sky News city editor Mark Kleinman, represents the most concrete attempt yet to bring that drawn-out row to a close.
The vote is expected to involve all 20 of the league's clubs, among them the newly crowned champions Arsenal as well as heavyweight names such as Manchester United. A decision to approve the package would mark a major shift in the way money flows from the wealthiest division in world football down to the clubs that make up the rest of the professional game in England, potentially reshaping the finances of the pyramid for the next decade.