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Premier League clubs are split in a £1billion conflict over TV money — the biggest threat to the top flight’s unity since its formation.
A meeting of the 14 Premier League clubs, not including the Big Six, was held at London’s Pullman St Pancras Hotel on Wednesday to discuss their approach ahead of next week’s summit on the big TV issue.
PL chief executive Richard Scudamore, who was invited to address the meeting, revealed that three other clubs — Everton, Leicester and West Ham — had joined the big six Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham in accepting his proposal that 35 per cent of overseas cash would be allocated according to where a club finishes in the table. Currently all the foreign money is shared equally between the 20 clubs.
The nine clubs backing Scudamore’s plan is more than expected but still less than the 14 needed for a rule change. There will be plenty of lobbying ahead of next Wednesday’s expected vote, but the mood of Wednesday’s meeting organised by Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish was that the battle lines will not change much.
There is a lot at stake because 35 per cent of the current overseas rights pot is about £1bn over three seasons and the foreign market has far more potential for revenue growth.
The Big Six, led by City’s Spanish chief executive Ferran Soriano, want more of the bounty, claiming they are responsible for drawing the bigger TV audiences and a growth in interest.
And the threat in the background is of the Big Six breaking away or more imminently causing trouble around the next TV rights tender this winter.
The other side say the collective approach of 20 clubs is why the Premier League has been such a resounding success and should remain paramount.
Scudamore has the difficult task of keeping both factions on side, but crucially he doesn’t want to go into the next TV auction with his most attractive teams not fully behind the payment structure.
World champion boxer Carl Frampton is said to have split from promoter Barry McGuigan because it is alleged Frampton is owed a considerable amount of money from his last two fights.
Yet McGuigan started a boxers union to protect them from rip-off promoters, and during his own storied fight career McGuigan fell out with his promoter Barney Eastwood for the same reason.
England coach Trevor Bayliss said on Wednesday that it was ‘most definitely’ not right and ‘very unprofessional’ for Ben Stokes to be out at 2.35am in Bristol when he was due to play three days later.
Yet Sportsmail revealed that Stokes had been out in Manchester later than that during the fourth Test against South Africa. Setting that kind of example should see him stripped of the vice-captaincy irrespective of the Bristol incident.
West Ham are not waiting for British Athletics to confirm they will be moving the Muller Anniversary Games Diamond League meeting forward in the calendar from July 27-28. They plan a pre-season game for the first weekend in August, by when the stadium will have to be back in football mode, which will take at least a fortnight.
MCC’s resolution that the club should fund their own redevelopment of Lord’s, rather than accept £150million for Charles Rifkind’s property developers building flats at the Nursery End, was carried by a landslide 90.5 per cent majority on Wednesday night with 7,163 members in favour and 748 against. MCC hope the emphatic result will close the door on a 20-year conflict.
Yet more disgruntled assistant referees have come forward flagging up inconsistencies in the FA’s award of an England cap to officials who have represented their country.
The common theme is that those who have missed out didn’t have a good relationship with the FA referees high command of Neale Barry and David Elleray. The FA wouldn’t comment about that, but did say former World Cup linesman Glenn Turner’s cap, apparently lost in the post five years ago, has been discovered and will be sent to him again.
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