Threat to PFA’s slice of new television deal

THE Premier League’s new TV rights contract with Sky and BT gives them a chance to terminate their £25million-a-year agreement with the Professional Footballers’ Association.

The top-flight clubs choose where a lot of that cash is spent — often youth development and charitable causes — but a proportion is left to the discretion of the union, who paid their chief executive Gordon Taylor a £2.3m annual package that has provoked widespread outrage.

It is scandalous that the PFA are bankrolled by TV money when their many multi-millionaire members could easily self-fund an organisation turned into a personal fiefdom by Taylor over his 37 years at the helm.

But the PL deal — first negotiated after Taylor threatened to take the players out on strike in 2001 — is renewed for every three-year TV rights cycle, with the next one starting in 2019-20.

The PL say they will be meeting Taylor at some stage to discuss the contract. Yet they said the same three years ago after the domestic auction for the contract that has one more season and another £25m payment to the PFA to go. The FA and Football League also give money to the PFA without any say on how it is spent.

HAMPSHIRE chairman Rod Bransgrove has reacted more philosophically than expected to his beloved Ageas Bowl missing out again on an Ashes match in 2023, despite being the only English cricket Test venue never to stage one. Bransgrove (right) said: ‘I haven’t lost my ambition. I’m still hoping one day to sit at the Ageas Bowl and watch an Ashes Test. But by the time I get there I’m going to be very wrinkly indeed. It’s disappointing but I’m thrilled to be one of the new Twenty20 hosts and we have a number of other white-ball games.’