A Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee (DCMS) has called on the Premier League to provide financial support for clubs in the EFL with up to 15 sides said to be close to going bust.

"The current football business model is not sustainable," the report reads."The Covid-19 crisis has shone a stark light on the financial issues within football.

"The Premier League is the main income generator of English football. If it does not step up to help the English Football League, many more clubs will follow in Bury FC's footsteps.”

Leagues One and Two were forced to curtail their 2019/20 seasons largely due to clubs being unable to afford to stage games behind closed doors. There remain concerns that some sides may not be in a position to begin 2020/21 - which appears likely to start on September 12th - for the same reasons.

Wigan Athletic are currently in administration with the resultant 12-point deduction confirming their relegation to League One last night.

Committee chair, Conservative MP Julian Knight, told PA: "There are 10-15 clubs on a watchlist right now in terms of whether they go bust. That's from the EFL. That is one in five.

"That would be absolutely tragic for many communities around the country. There needs to be a reset.

"This has been broken for years but the fact EFL clubs [now] cannot get people through their turnstiles means some of them are effectively facing extinction. They don't have the big TV deals that the Premier League does.

"Any idea there would be a government bailout is for the birds, in my view, when there is a £9 billion TV deal at the very top of football. The football family needs to come together and work together in order to sort this out.”

The Premier League was also urged to make parachute payments for clubs relegated to the Championship “a thing of the past”

Giving evidence to the committee in May, the EFL’s chairman Rick Parry said the payments are are "an evil that need to be eradicated”.

Additionally, the report said football needs to be more representative of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups and should outlaw homophobic chanting.

Meanwhile, Shrewsbury chief executive Brian Caldwell has suggested that Carabao Cup and Leasing.com Trophy ties - which traditionally attract smaller crowds - should be played in September when games will be played behind closed doors.

That would allow league matches to be staged once supporters were able to attend, even if in limited numbers, with prime minister Boris Johnson having said last week that he hoped fans could return to grounds from October 1st.

Caldwell also proposed the season being extended for an additional week to May 15th with two games scheduled for the May bank holiday weekend.

A meeting is being held tomorrow which is expected to confirm the September 12th start for the EFL divisions.

Photo: TWTD

dominiciawful added 10:45 - Jul 23 Premier Greed
7

Dissboyitfc added 12:10 - Jul 23 Been saying this for a while now, no brainer really!
6

Cloddyseedbed added 12:47 - Jul 23 I should think so too! This greed has been going on for too long and is destroying football outside the top 2 divisions and the greedy don't care.
5

runningout added 15:22 - Jul 23 Prize money to where you finish in each league should be a lot more. Not sure if we were a club in the Premiership again we would be generous in any shape or form. I hope we would. There's always a but. We in Britain have too many professional football clubs that want a slice of the pie. If clubs do fade away we cannot blame too league for greed, although we all know there's is too much of it in this messed up country that pays a family to reign it and give out meaningless titles and honours, so some borrowers can have letters after their names for work many do that don't get and prefer Not to get noticed. Should be no more honours (only Sir Bobby) just merits when something decent is done. Victorian times are gone. Our country needs to wake up all round and get Stronger all round by making a blooming decision or two. I'm done!

0

runningout added 15:23 - Jul 23 Top not too :-/
0

rugbytomc added 15:33 - Jul 23 I like the idea of the poorly attended cup games being played whilst fans still aren't allowed in the ground. As for the Premier League paying - not gonna happen. The whole idea behind the Premier League was for the "top" teams (in their eyes) breaking away from the rest of the English Football structure so they could negotiate their own TV deal separate from one that covered the whole English league structure. If they had any sense, they'd put the best supported teams in that league and ringfence it - to get the best TV deal. People would rather see 40,000 packed inside Elland Road or 30,000 packed inside Portman Road than 12,000 inside the Vitality. But anyway - the point being, they did that to make more money for themselves - not to make more money to then give to all of English football - so I don't see it happening. The Govt should launch a special tax on the league based on their TV income and use that to pay the football furlough instead. The league model isn't broken - we just weren't expecting to have no fans in the ground plus too many teams trying to operate outside of their means

2

istanblue added 19:40 - Jul 23 Whilst the sentiment may be good it shouldn't really fall on the Premier League to bail out the EFL. The PL (understandably) looks out for the interests of the PL and its member clubs. The EFL, FA or even the government should be the ones looking to give financial help (be it solidarity payments or loans) to those in the lower reaches of the EFL. Moreover, why weren't such calls made during the discussion to end the season? The decision for the PL and Championship to carry on whilst Leagues One and Two were discarded was a disgrace really. This conversation should have happened months ago.

1

alfromcol added 21:30 - Jul 23 If clubs are so important to the local community, which a lot of them aren't (see atttendances), increase local Council Tax to contribute to the local football club?
0

Razor added 10:31 - Jul 24 Crikey this no brainer has taken a long time coming and I just dont know why? The greedy self centred fat cats in the Premier League should of course offer to help the rest of the football family and it will be very sad if they are actually forced to do so---why has nobody offered or suggested this until now---amazing. Some clever chappies should work out a formula where all premier clubs contribute to a "save our soccer" fund and the amounts should be based on turnover of each individual club----sutrely this is not rocket science!

0

Michael101 added 11:33 - Jul 24 Of cause they should pay.but unfortunately they will avoid it unless the powers that be force them to.
0

Michael101 added 11:39 - Jul 24 When you have players earning £100,00 per week .they could make a one off payment of say10% and would not even miss it . But its more likely to seeing pigs flying than that happening.
0

ONENIL78 added 17:38 - Jul 25 like to see that ...but in all honesty.."never gonna happen"
0

Blogs 295 bloggers

Ipswich Town Polls