Burnley had earned a reputation as the archetypal yo-yo club – relegated from or promoted to the top division in each of the past five seasons. <\/p>\n
But after a leveraged buyout by Alan Pace’s ALK Capital in 2020, the Clarets were carrying \u00a3142m in loans in the 2024-25 accounts – the year they went up – which was the highest debt level in the Championship.<\/p>\n
This week Burnley set a new English league record for the longest run without a home win. When they host Portsmouth on Saturday, it will be 378 days since their last home victory.<\/p>\n
Being humbled by a well-run, up-and-coming club like Lincoln, with far fewer resources but savvy ownership, will not be lost on Burnley supporters.<\/p>\n
And the financial gap is huge.<\/p>\n
Burnley’s total revenue for 2024-25 was \u00a371.7m, which dwarfed Lincoln’s \u00a37.81m. <\/p>\n
The Clarets then received \u00a348m in parachute payments. Lincoln can expect about \u00a35.5m in solidarity funding. <\/p>\n
Off the pitch there should be no contest, but football is not played purely on balance sheets.<\/p>\n
In its State of the Game report, published earlier this month, the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) said a new financial deal between the Premier League and the EFL must “reduce the distortive impact that parachute payments have on financial incentives within the Championship”.<\/p>\n
The solution is merit payments, which would mirror the Premier League’s model of prize money by final league position. <\/p>\n
At present, every club in the Championship receives the same payment, regardless of where they finish. <\/p>\n
“The amount of money paid in parachute payments will reduce and the amount of money going into the Championship will vastly increase,” IFR chair David Kogan said.<\/p>\n
“The delta between parachute payment clubs and non-parachute payment clubs is going to significantly reduce, which makes the Championship a much more competitive league.”<\/p>\n
Parachute payments are paid to clubs relegated from the Premier League to help them adjust to the financial realities of the second tier – \u00a348m in year one, then \u00a339m in year two, <\/p>\n
Could this make the double drop more common as the revenue gap closes? Much will depend upon just how “significantly” the gap is closed.<\/p>\n
The IFR report found that parachute payment clubs were more than four times more likely to be promoted. In 2024-25, four clubs were in receipt and they were almost 27 points better off, and filled the top three places (with Luton relegated).<\/p>\n
“If you look at the numbers of teams that go back up or finish in the top places, there’s a huge correlation between those clubs and the ones that are parachute payment clubs,” McAnuff said.<\/p>\n
“Even with a reduction in parachute payments, I still feel that advantage will prove to be massively significant for those teams.\u2060\u200b\u2060\u200d\u2060”<\/p>\n
It may yet be that Burnley escape the double drop, that the financial advantage of parachute payments outweighs poor decision-making.<\/p>\n
But the double drop has generally become far more common. And that should concern any club that gets relegated and is not prepared for life in the Championship. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Burnley had earned a reputation as the archetypal yo-yo club – relegated from or promoted to the top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-817811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}