Football's Crisis Shines Merciless Light on Game's Inequalities

While the Premier League is straining to resume matches and thereby fulfil its lucrative pay-TV contracts League One and Two clubs could go bust. Photograph: Paul Greenwood/BPI/Rex/Shutterstock
While the Premier League is straining to resume matches and thereby fulfil its lucrative pay-TV contracts League One and Two clubs could go bust. Photograph: Paul Greenwood/BPI/Rex/Shutterstock
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Football's Crisis Shines Merciless Light on Game's Inequalities

While the Premier League is straining to resume matches and thereby fulfil its lucrative pay-TV contracts League One and Two clubs could go bust. Photograph: Paul Greenwood/BPI/Rex/Shutterstock
While the Premier League is straining to resume matches and thereby fulfil its lucrative pay-TV contracts League One and Two clubs could go bust. Photograph: Paul Greenwood/BPI/Rex/Shutterstock

f one impact of the Covid‑19 catastrophe has been to hold Britain rigid and shine a merciless light on all our structures, it was inevitable that football’s struggles would culminate in a piercing look at the money. And just as there are calls for fundamental improvements to the nation’s inequities when the horror is finally over, a focus is emerging on football’s own inequalities and how sustainable they really are.

The financial gap between the Premier League and the rest has widened exponentially over the 28 years since the First Division clubs broke away from sharing with the Football League’s other three divisions, but the divide now is brutal. While the Premier League is straining to resume matches and thereby fulfil its lucrative pay-TV contracts, and seeking government support by saying that it distributes big money down the system, League One and Two clubs are contemplating packing up and fearing many could go bust.

The EFL chairman, Rick Parry, a shrewd appointment by the league, is highly experienced, an architect of the Premier League breakaway and its first chief executive, who believes the gap grew too vast. During this crisis the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, and the sports minister, Nigel Huddleston, have been given some quick home-schooling on the realities of football’s finances, and put right on two elements of classic Premier League spin.

The first came after Dowden himself spoke in parliament last month of his desire to get the Premier League playing again, virus permitting, “as soon as possible”, because this would “help release resources through the rest of the system”. Parry is understood not to have been slow to question that, and the EFL told Dowden that as the Premier League had already advanced half of next season’s relatively tiny “solidarity” money, no more funds would be released to its clubs by the Premier League completing this season’s matches.

The second, which infuriated many football people, was the Premier League’s public assurance that it gives about £400m to the EFL a season, so the EFL made clear to the government how that breaks down. Of that total, £273m, almost 70%, is parachute payments, paid to the Premier League’s own few clubs when relegated, and is a profound disrupter of the financial stability and fairness of competition in the Championship.

With Dowden and Huddleston new to their roles they seem to have only just understood the maths: the total solidarity money shared with EFL clubs from the Premier League’s TV deals, which are £8.65bn from 2019-22, is £98m per season, 3.4%. A further £100m has in recent years been spent on grassroots facilities and community projects, which is all good work and much admired and publicised, but amounts also to 3.4%.

So Premier League claims that starting again will “release resources” through the system, and the folding of parachute payments into an overall lump sum of big money descending from the top have been called out. Now, there is a true financial crisis germinating, one of very many within this public health disaster, and a government supporting whole sections of the economy will not be providing aid for a sport soaked in TV billions which trickles too little down.

At Thursday’s video call Dowden and Huddleston asked Richard Masters, the Premier League chief executive, to discuss with Parry and the FA chief executive, Mark Bullingham, how to “ensure finances from the game’s resumption supports the wider football family”. The government also said its controversial backing for football to resume in empty stadiums should be reciprocated with “widening access for fans to view live coverage”. The ministers appear to mean free-to-air TV, but the Premier League, which has not had a single live free‑to‑air match dating back to 1992, is unlikely to do too much if it risks undermining its pay-TV contracts.

Clearly there are major hurdles to overcome if football is to start again, the biggest being the terrible virus that has killed more than 40,000 people in Britain. It is not clear at all if a resumption is possible, safe, appropriate, or will boost the nation’s morale as Boris Johnson has claimed. Troy Deeney is only the latest Premier League player to question restarting in these circumstances.

But when it finally does, and Britain begins to emerge from this crisis, perhaps there could be a reset of football’s divided structures and inequalities, along with all the other necessary rebuilding the country will need.

The Guardian Sport



Flawless Oscar, Max Flounders: Bahrain Grand Prix Talking Points 

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri of Australia in action during the the Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix, in Sakhir, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP)
McLaren driver Oscar Piastri of Australia in action during the the Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix, in Sakhir, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP)
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Flawless Oscar, Max Flounders: Bahrain Grand Prix Talking Points 

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri of Australia in action during the the Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix, in Sakhir, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP)
McLaren driver Oscar Piastri of Australia in action during the the Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix, in Sakhir, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP)

Oscar Piastri produced a command performance on Sunday to deliver McLaren's first win at the Bahrain Grand Prix since the nocturnal desert dust-up joined the Formula One calendar in 2004.

The Australian crossed the line in Sakhir over 15 seconds clear of Mercedes' George Russell to move second behind teammate Lando Norris in the drivers' standings.

Norris completed the podium to take a three-point lead into next Sunday's race in Jeddah.

AFP Sport looks at three talking points from the fourth round of the season:

Oscar Piastri shone brightest under the floodlights in Bahrain to enhance his standing as a potential world champion.

Cool, calm and collected, nothing seems to faze the 24-year-old Australian.

As McLaren team principal Andrea Stella succinctly remarked: "There's no noise in Oscar's head".

Brushing off the misfortune of a late run off in the season-opener in Melbourne that dropped him back from second to ninth he regrouped to win in China, take third in Japan, and win from pole in Bahrain.

"I'm very proud of the team, proud of myself, and excited for next week," he said after his fourth career win.

Piastri's persona is poles apart from that of the man on the other side of the McLaren garage, Lando Norris.

The Briton wears his heart on his sleeve, is intensely self-critical, and left Bahrain searching for answers to regain his and his car's mojo.

"I'm not confident, I'm not comfortable, I know what I can achieve, it's not gone, I've not lost it, but things aren't clicking. I've got to look at why but that's proving not to be easy."

Red Bull picked up their first double points of the season in Sakhir, with Max Verstappen sixth and his new teammate Yuki Tsunoda ninth.

But that was small consolation for a team in trouble and desperately searching for answers to solve issues with their problematic 2025 car.

Team principal Christian Horner was frank about the situation when he met the media in the team's hospitality tent after the race.

"Look, it was a bad weekend.

"It's a 24-race championship, we're eight points behind in the drivers' championship, and we know we need to make progress very quickly."

With Verstappen slipping to third in the drivers' standings his quest for a fifth successive title, a feat only achieved by Michael Schumacher, looks in danger.

"Everything went wrong, poor start, wheel spin, same problems in qualification, hard tires didn't work, I was last after the second pit stop," remarked Verstappen.

"Considering everything to finish sixth was alright.

"It's not what we want, but it's where we are at.

"It's tough, got to hang on to improve the situation -- hopefully we can improve soon," added the downbeat Dutchman.

Arguably the driver of the day was George Russell.

His Mercedes was doing everything it could in the closing stages to sabotage his race.

He found himself having to multi-task at high speed trying to sort out a litany of electronic issues -- at one stage he pressed the team radio button only to engage DRS (drag reduction system).

All that as he was fending off Norris.

After surviving a steward's inquiry over the DRS incident which carried with it the threat of a five-second penalty Russell's runner-up spot maintained his best ever start to a season with his third podium finish.

"I'm mega happy, the last 10 laps were exceptionally difficult," said the man who has seamlessly taken over the role of team leader at the Silver Arrows after Lewis Hamilton's move to Ferrari.

Hamilton's replacement Kimi Antonelli was going well until undone by the late safety car to finish just outside the points in a race which will serve as a valuable learning exercise for the brilliant young Italian rookie.