FA chairman Greg Clarke 'supported push by big clubs' to control TV deals

The Football Association chairman, Greg Clarke, told senior representatives of the Premier League and its big six clubs that he supported the clubs’ efforts to secure greater voting power for TV deals, club sources have told the Guardian.

Clarke is said to have made his supportive remark in the meeting called by the league’s chairman, Gary

Hoffman, with Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal on Tuesday 13 October, two days after the leaked “Project Big Picture” plans were published in the Telegraph. The Premier League’s chief executive, Richard Masters, also attended.

According to club sources, Hoffman told the clubs that he understood their argument for the Project Big Picture proposal that voting on “strategic issues”, such as TV deals, should be controlled by nine longerterm club members of the Premier League, with six carrying a majority. That proposed change to “governance”, as the Project Big Picture group termed it, was prompted by big clubs’ frustration at being outvoted on overseas TV deals by the other 14, three of whom are relegated every season so drop out of the league.

One club representative in the meeting is understood to have said that 10 smaller clubs think about their shortterm survival in the Premier League and not about long-term issues, so the change in governance was needed to enable a long-range view.

Clarke, who initiated the Project Big Picture process in January by inviting to discussions representatives of Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool, the EFL and the Premier League – Masters declined to attend – is said to have agreed in the 13 October meeting: “You don’t talk about value creation. Governance is key because people want distributions rather than growth.”

The Guardian put to the FA that Clarke was clearly supporting a change to “governance” – voting rights – so that the Premier League would seek longerterm creation of value in TV rights, rather than having people at smaller clubs look for the most money to be distributed to them immediately. The FA declined to comment.

On the same day that Clarke was