‘Lazy’ clubs wasting TV money – Parish

THE chairman of Crystal Palace declared yesterday that the wiping off of hundreds of millions of pounds from the value of the Premier League’s UK television deal was a good thing because its clubs “waste a lot of money” and had “got lazy”.

Steve Parish also said Palace and his rivals had “got a little bit of our own medicine” from Sky Sports and BT Sport after the broadcasters agreed to pay £4.46bn to show almost the same number of games for which they pay £5.14bn under the current deal.

Two of the seven packages put out to tender also remain unsold almost three weeks after the auction began, with the Premier League close to being forced to get creative in order to shift them. Even if they are bought, the value of the rights will have fallen for the first time since the competition began, following two 70pc surges in value fuelled by the rights war between Sky and BT that ended in a ceasefire in December.

Parish said: “Maybe we outfoxed the bidders a little bit last time. And maybe we got a little bit of our own medicine.

“I think it’ll be good for football. Because I think we waste a lot of money in the Premier League – all of us – because of this never-ending increased TV income issue. A little tightening of the purse strings wouldn’t go amiss, for everybody.

“We’re certainly seen as a target, almost, for clubs to sell to. Their players are managed to sell them to us for extortionate amounts of money. And we’ve got lazy, I think, in terms of buying very exposed talent. We could all do a better job in terms of our recruitment.”