Top ten clubs to take greater share of TV money
From the 2019-20 season the current level of revenue from international TV rights sales, £3.3bn, will still be shared equally between all 20 clubs. Any increase on that level, which Scudamore is understood to be confident of securing will then be distributed according to where a club has finished in the league.
Any club who predicts to regularly finish in the top ten will benefit from this new rule change while those in the bottom half of the table will lose out.
Part of the compromise reached is that the difference this makes to the earnings of the top clubs will be capped. The Premier League pointed out that currently the highest-earning club from TV and sponsorship “central distributions”, title-winning Manchester City last season who were paid £149m, was approximately 1.6 times more than the lowest-earning, bottom-finishing West Bromwich Albion who made £95m.
The differential now the international money sharing formula is to be changed, will be 1.8, Scudamore said, and any income above that will be shared to maintain that differential. Proponents of the rule change, including the big clubs which pushed for it, argue that the entirely equal sharing had become outdated as the rule was established in 1992 when the international rights were negligible.
West Ham were one of 14 clubs to vote for the change.