Salary cap in the championship?

Championship clubs and the EFL have been urged to introduce a salary cap to end the 'unsustainable' amount of money spent chasing the Premier League dream.


Thursday 11th June 2020


As we enter a period of huge financial uncertainty due to coronavirus, second-tier clubs are being told 'urgent' changes are required to ensure no other members of the EFL follow Bury into extinction.

Deloitte's Annual Review of Football Finance 2020 found that despite record revenues of around £785m, Championship clubs lost a combined £350m across the 2018/19 season.

And much of that loss was caused by unsustainable wages with the 24 Championship clubs having a combined wages-to-turnover figure of 107 per cent.

Clubs are largely spending that money to chase the Premier League dream, but there are now serious warning signs - particularly given the financial uncertainty that now faces football and indeed most businesses - that it is simply unsustainable, as Tim Bridge, director in the Sports Business Group, warns.

“Clearly a wage-to-revenue ratio of over 100 per cent does not reflect a sustainable business model unless you have the ability to draw down on some other form of cash funding," he said .

"And that for Championship clubs is typically an owner who is willing to invest their money in order to gain promotion to the Premier League.

“But the reason that Championship clubs are not self-sustaining is because everyone else is not self-sustaining and so you have to typically spend more in order to achieve more.

"Each club is trying to outdo each other on the pitch and it is perceived that the way to do that is to invest in the best playing talent, and that comes with a cost.

“The issue is that everybody is doing the same so there is competitive tension for those players and that has driven wage costs in excess of revenue over a number of years now.

“What we are experiencing at the moment is a real cash crisis and if you run out of cash, it is an existential issue.

“This feels like a natural time to consider more robust and more significant financial controls at that level of the game. Owners might not now be able to plug deficits. It feels like the timing is neat.”
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One possible problem maybe is parachute payments that will distort clubs finances wont it?..

FFP is there already .. so don't really see anything new in this... people will always find away around it...

FFP here already .. so don't really see anything new in this... people will always find away around it...

No way around salary cap as found out in rugby recently! Normally salary cap is for total budget of squad so may pay roony 100k a week but then rest squad will have to be payed less than normally would to fit him in cap.

I think its the only way to preserve some clubs, cant go on losing the amounts clubs are