Premier League clubs will reportedly be asked on Monday to back a £836 million package for the lower leagues, as bosses race to reach a deal before a new UK regulator is set up.
Such a deal, which has repeatedly been tweaked after club’s rejections, would see £836 million sent to English Football League clubs over a five-year period, reports say.
A £44 million payment would be made immediately as part of this, followed by another within months, as per Sky News, though this initial £88 million would effectively be a loan repayable over a period of more than six years.
This comes after months of failed deliberations between the Premier League and the EFL, which includes the Championship, League One and League Two, over the distribution of media revenues in English football.
Such so-called solidarity payments see the EFL’s 72 clubs share in annual payments of around £130 million, which are funded by the Premier League’s media revenue deals.
Based on the reported £924 million figure, which includes the early payments, these payments would increase to just under £185 million a year.
The actual value of the deal would depend on net media bills though, reports say.
Premier League clubs have faced government pressure to come up with a new and improved deal for the distribution of funds to lower league clubs.
“The current distribution of revenue is not sufficient, contributing to problems of financial unsustainability and having a destabilising effect on the football pyramid,” a white paper found last year.
A new independent football regulator, which will have the powers to impose a deal on both the Premier League and EFL, is expected to be introduced imminently.
This will come when the government publishes the Football Governance Bill, which Sky-quoted Whitehall sources said could happen as early as this month.