I think this is the crux of the matter. Liverpool, and other big clubs will sacrifice a greater percentage of PL TV money in return for limited rights to sell some fixtures and highlights packages off their own websites, and a shorter season that enables them to participate in money spinning tours and tournaments.
Smaller clubs in the PL don’t have all that open to them, so are unlikely to go with it.
By the way, purely on a numbers basis, does anyone else thing sustaining 92 professional teams in a small country like England a bit unrealistic.
Whenever you hear tales of woe from down the divisions I alway think we’ll yeah, but there’ll always be 20-30 clubs in financial difficulty because it’s just spread too thin.
What does fair and equitable mean in the context of a pyramid structure? Excluding Championship clubs is fine, but bottom 10 PL clubs isn’t? Or does the whole League have to get an equal vote? Is that fair to clubs in the Conference?
Fair and equitable is in the eyes of the beholder depending on where you wish to draw the line.
“92 professional teams” is a bit of a misnomer as well, because in reality several of the sides in the non-league are just as professional as the clubs they are looking to join. You dont win promotion into the football league and then all of a sudden become professional overnight. The point being, the money is spread even further down the pyramid than just those in the 4 “professional” divisions.
What happens if say United get relegated - can they just say they dont want to be?
I don’t think promotion or relegation is a voting issue.
There have been many attempts to define it philosophically. Rawls “original position” is one famous concept as it removes any motivation simply to maintain the status quo by specifying that one’s position is unknown.
From a footballing perspective it is easy to say that a club which is league champions and financially sound should reap all the rewards but it was only 10 years ago that the club was bankrupt and having to sell its major assets through no fault of any of the players or fans.
Most conference teams usually are quite competitive in league 2, I think to solve the issue would be to look at the Geographical nature of it.
You’ll probably find that the majority are well run, a lot of the financial issues stem from the ITV digital deal.
Yes some clubs will go to the wall but it’s those that have tried to challenge when they haven’t the platform. I’m thinking Bolton in that. Sunderland seem to be lingering at step 3 of the period but again were they ever bigger than that, they have a stadium but hardly much else.
Well run clubs can move up the period quicker but they do need time, trying to cheat it usually ends up in ruin.
Sad fact is those that went to the wall are mostly due to ownership. Plus there are several clubs that didn’t exist 20 years ago or didn’t exist outside of their little area, Salford being one and Forest Green another.
I find it slightly arrogant that fans from a higher club should start debating the existence of smaller clubs, this pandemic is an anomaly that effects us all, we suggesting the loans some clubs took out are substanible?
Right, but in this instance, even the pool of what constitutes a relevant position is an open question. Are Conference teams relevant? How many tiers do you go below them? Not sure that Rawls has a great deal to say on animal welfare, by analogy. The ‘original position’ line of thinking rests on membership of a set, which is uncontroversial enough if we think of the set of all citizens or all humans, but it comes apart thinking of a problem like this. If you accept the possibility that 100 or so clubs might just be too many for a country the size of England, you get to an interesting problem - a set of rules that attempts to make that viable risks destroying the resource necessary to do that. If LFC and ManU are going out in the CL qualifying rounds as a matter of routine, English football starts looking more like Scottish football, and the TV money disappears.
There are some real problems to balance here, and by that measure, the proposal put forward doesn’t seem that unreasonable. Consider that the PL’s proposal to date is 50M, not enough to bail out the Championship let alone the rest of the pro and semi-pro pyramid.
I’m curious about one thing with this. Isn’t taking wealth from the richest and distributing to the poorest exactly what some would say is the core of Liverpool? Who should vote on matters pertaining to the league? Surely all the clubs with equal measure. To argue otherwise is to argue that my house is worth more than my neighbour’s so I get more say on the landscape management.
Does seem to me that this is the teams at the top of the tree securing their position permanently at the top because they have the cash to do it. You could argue that you couldn’t be more tory.
The tories would ask for a referendum on whether to stay or leave the EPL,then fuck it up and we’d be playing non league football.
This isn’t politics. And in any case whereas the Premier League is twiddling its thumbs with some EFL clubs reportedly just weeks away from bankruptcy, the proposals actually include the following points:
Isn’t this a form of wealth redistribution?
The voting proposals themselves are of course controversial but you can’t outright dismiss them because they aren’t “democratic”. Why should some newly promoted club have the same say in league matters as the big ones?
It’s always politics mate. School yard, work, business, government, sport etc.
I think at the heart of project big picture is the basic need for a compromise.
I think Liverpool and Utd recognise that more needs to be done to protect grassroots football and there needs to be a regular flow of finance from the top of the game to the bottom. The PL have dragged their heels on this for years and even with many grassroots clubs on the bones of their arse due to Covid haven’t moved an inch towards the kind of rescue package that is needed.
But if The Premier Leagues are going to sacrifice a bigger percentage of TV money to support lower league clubs, there has to be some flex in the current situation to allow clubs to generate money to meet that shortfall. The big picture plan identifies TV rights and a schedule that allows the clubs to take on more commercial activities, like international tournaments and summer friendlies.
The thing that I find annoying about the response to the proposal is the assumption that Premier League clubs are simply rolling in cash. We saw from the spring cancellation that even clubs like Liverpool could not go on indefinitely with no income. A few more months without footy and we’d have been in trouble. Yes there is a lot of income, but the outgoings are huge too.
As I pointed out in the “why are we not spending £800m this summer thread”
The simple thing to me is this. If you’re going to redistribute wealth for altruistic reasons, why not do that? Whereas what we seem to be doing is throwing a lifeline in exchange for power.
Just trying on a capitalist thought here, and I’m not necessarily saying I agree with what I am about to say… but so what, if some clubs don’t make it? Why is there such an earnest effort to save them? If a number of them go by the wayside, isn’t that the system we have?
If some go by the wayside it might even give some space for things to evolve differently? The Prem teams might have a B side in the lower league - well run, well financed, offering a much better alternate?
92 professional teams, plus other layers even below that, is too much to keep up. If some clubs are going to the wall, why is it the responsibility of the bigger clubs to help guarantee their survival?
I’m also put off by the government talking about football. Stay in your lane and run the country better! If the government wants to guarantee the survival of all clubs in the football pyramid, it is chicken feed for them to do so, comparatively. Stop trying to spend other people’s money by telling the Prem clubs what they should be doing!
Premier League clubs, you must help out those less fortunate - say the EFL, The FA, and the government.
PL: 
PL:
EFL, FA, HMG: 
LFC & MUFC: 
?
EFL, FA, HMG: NOT LIKE THAT!!
PL:
EFL, FA, HMG: 
Pl:
EFL, FA, HMG: 
LFC & MUFC: 
?
EFL, FA, HMG: 
In the face of PL incompetence and inability to bring about any kind of rescue deal, this has provided an opportunity to provide an alternative.
Look at the strategy. Doing this independent of other PL clubs beyond United. The intent was never to get everyone onboard for this proposal.
It’s a negotiating starting point, set out everything you would like. This forces the PL to get it’s arse into gear or other clubs to negotiate from a stance of preventing all the changes. If United/Liverpool got half these changes they would be happy.