EFL clubs escape with Sky rebate bill of under £10m
The English Football League has agreed its rebate with Sky Sports for the suspension of the season, with the bill payable from the clubs to the broadcaster understood to be less than £10million, down from the estimated £15million initially feared.
The total cost to all broadcast rights holders was originally estimated at £42million and consequently the EFL regards this individual settlement with Sky Sports, its principal broadcast client, as a good deal. The EFL wrote to its clubs yesterday to let them know the settlement had been reached and to lay out the repayment terms.
The rebate will take the form of deductions from the agreed rights values for the final three seasons of the current five-year deal: 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24. In a letter to clubs, chairman Rick Parry said that the league had agreed a rebate payment with Sky Sports “which is less than half of the minimum rebate amount we initially advised to clubs”.
The EFL agreed a five-year deal with Sky Sports in November 2018 for £595million, which began at the start of the current season.
The 24 Championship clubs were set to earn around £5 million annually from the deal with League One and League Two clubs taking much less. Championship clubs earn almost as much in solidarity payments from the
Premier League as they do from their own television deal.
The League Managers Association has written to the EFL with a list of complaints and questions over the restart of the season and to demand a meeting with Parry. The letter lists 16 questions which LMA chief executive Richard Bevan says need to be answered before the season can resume.
It will ask whether players’ welfare or the demands of broadcasters are the chief concern in the scheduling of fixtures. It also asks whether the rationale behind the season being completed on July 30 is linked to having to pay more than the extra one month’s salary players are entitled to be paid after their contracts expire at the end of June.
There are dire financial consequences for Championship clubs as a result of the coronavirus crisis with Parry estimating that the liability for season-ticket rebates for the second tier alone could stand at £12.9 million.
In return for agreeing the rebate, Sky Sports will gain an additional 10 live Championship matches for this current season, that restarts behind closed doors on June 20, taking its total to 30. It also has live rights for League One and League Two matches.
There will be a maximum of six games per club that can be selected to be shown live by Sky Sports. That will allow clubs who are selected the most often to offer a minimum of three matches via their own live streams. All 15 play-off matches will be shown exclusively live on Sky Sports in the UK. The EFL clubs will discuss this new rebate agreement with Sky Sports at a shareholders’ call on Wednesday.
Derbyshire Constabulary has confirmed that initial plans to move Derby County’s Championship game against Leeds United to Southampton – reported in The Daily Telegraph – have been rejected and revealed its desire for that match, and another potential high-risk clash with Nottingham Forest, to remain at Pride Park.