Liverpool Join Top Half Premier League Sides Demanding Larger Financial Share

In some places, most notably perhaps Spain, all incoming league revenue gets divvied up unequally based on finishing position and a club’s draw. In others like England, outside a relatively minor bounty based on finishing position, revenues get divided up evenly between the clubs.

That could change as soon as tomorrow if a number of the top half sides—led by the established top six of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, the Manchester clubs, and Tottenham along with aspirants Leicester City, West Ham, and Everton—get their way at an emergency league meeting.

Those nine sides are said to be pushing hard for a larger share, particularly that of television revenue, to be based on finishing position, rewarding the best teams which also happen to be the clubs most people from outside of England in particular are tuning in to watch.

According to The Liverpool Echo, that’s the argument Liverpool CEO Peter Moore plans to make, echoing earlier arguments made by Ian Ayre that foreign television money is earned primarily by the league’s biggest, most marketable sides and that a way should be found to compensate them accordingly.

At the time, Ayre’s arguments didn’t get enough traction for change to occur—14 of the league’s 20 clubs would need to vote for such a change, making it very difficult—but there is more support now than there was then for a change, including from the league itself.

This time around, in addition to clubs like Leicester and West Ham pushing for the change as well, league chairman Richard Scudamore has come out in favour of setting aside a little more than a third of broadcast revenue to be awarded by finishing position, with the remaining two-thirds divided equally.

It’s a compromise seeking to satisfy the top half sides without entirely depriving the league’s bottom half, and we may know as early as Wednesday evening whether he, Liverpool, and the rest of the sides pushing for a change get their way this time around.