Football chiefs to hold crunch talks with regulator on £1.5bn New Deal

English football chiefs will hold crunch talks on Tuesday in a bid to thrash out a £1.5bn 10-year deal and avert the threat of a settlement imposed by the sport's new regulator.

Sky News has learnt that the chairs and chief executives of the Premier League and English Football League (EFL) will meet David Kogan and Richard Monks, their counterparts at the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) in what is shaping up to be one of the sport's most defining weeks for decades.

Sources said the group of six would gather just 48 hours before the Premier League hopes to stage a vote of its 20 clubs to approve the landmark deal being formally put to their lower league counterparts.

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A football insider confirmed on Tuesday morning that Alison Brittain, the Premier League chair, and CEO Richard Masters would attend the meeting alongside Rick Parry and Trevor Birch, the EFL chair and chief executive.

The attendance of the IFR, which is understood to have been at the request of the other participants, underscores the seriousness with which both sides are taking the prospect of a deal that would establish a decade-long financial structure for the professional game.

Sky News revealed at the weekend the package of details contained in the Premier League's latest proposal, more than three years after a financial redistribution agreement was initially mooted.

The deal would include roughly £1.5bn in payments over a ten-year period, beginning with the forthcoming 2026-27 season.

The payments would start below £100m, and roughly double by the third year, after which the figure would remain constant until the conclusion of the deal.

Under the agreement, a new 'lifeboat fund' worth £20m would be established to assist EFL clubs which fall into administration, while a separate pot of money worth hundreds of millions of pounds over the deal's duration would be ring-fenced for EFL clubs to use for funding infrastructure improvements.

The advent of the IFR, which was conceived by the then prime minister Boris Johnson in the wake of the calamitous European Super League project, has raised the prospect of a settlement being imposed on the professional football pyramid.

A vote of top-flight clubs including champions Arsenal, newly promoted Hull City, Manchester City and Newcastle United will take place on Thursday if the Premier League is confident it can secure at least 14 votes in favour.

The deal would then be put to the EFL, although sources say it has already indicated to the Premier League that the financial terms are inadequate and would need to be improved to win its support.

Insiders say the Premier League intends to fund the deal according to clubs' revenues and also through an increase in the domestic transfer levy from 4% to 6%.

If adopted, this template would be likely to make big-spending clubs such as Chelsea and Manchester City among the biggest contributors to the New Deal.

Other key aspects of the New Deal are understood to include a gradual reduction in parachute payments which are made by the Premier League to relegated clubs over a three-year period.

The agreement would also require a guarantee that 20% of funds received by EFL clubs under the deal must be spent on infrastructure investment, in an effort to reduce the chances of funds flowing straight through clubs' coffers and into players' transfer fees and wages.

One football industry source not involved in the talks said the deal appeared to be "constructed as much with the regulator in mind as the EFL".

Mr Kogan has said that the IFR being forced to step in to impose a deal would reflect "an utter failure" by English football's power-brokers.

"Going forward, it's to everyone's benefit for football to try to reach this understanding," he told an industry conference earlier this year.

"But if the leagues can't find a new deal, those powers will be enacted, and we will be looking at things such as the current mechanism for parachute payments."

Sources said the Premier League's objective was to reach a deal by the end of August, ahead of the publication of the first version of the IFR's State of the Game report, which will be released in the autumn.

The review will examine how financial flows within the game have shifted, including in relation to "cliff-edges" between or within leagues.

If a bilateral agreement can be struck, it would rank among the most significant moments in English football since the formation of the Premier League in the early 1990s.

Talks about the latest iteration of the deal come as the Premier League introduces a new financial model for clubs called the Squad Cost Ratio, which will cap their on-pitch spending at 85% of their football-related revenue and their net profit or loss from player sales.

The New Deal could also include a requirement for clubs in the Championship to transition to the same structure, according to insiders.

The Premier League, EFL and IFR all declined to comment.

(c) Sky News 2026: Football chiefs to hold crunch talks with regulator on £1.5bn New Deal