Inside man Rick Parry is planning the sporting heist of the century.
In the mid-90s, when the Premier League was in its infancy, Russian President Boris Yeltsin was in trouble. He was struggling with a stagnant economy which meant poor poll ratings and a dire shortage of funds for his re-election campaign.
Rick Parry briefing EFL clubs on his plans
Seeing a man over a barrel, some of the nation’s nascent wealthy elite brought him a deal. In return for money flowing into his campaign coffers, he would agree to privatise huge swathes of Russia’s industrial infrastructure. A desperate Yeltsin assented and hundreds of billions of pounds worth of state assets were sold for pennies on the pound in rigged auctions.
The plan, which became known as the Loans for Shares Scheme, helped Yeltsin win another term in office, but at the cost of robbing the country of its wealth and unleashing the Wild West era of the oligarchs, where a small group of people, often using both legal and illegal means, came to make historic fortunes in just a few years.
Something similar is happening in English football. While the mooted Project Big Picture was cooked up by Liverpool’s and Manchester United’s American owners, its structure is strikingly reminiscent of the Loans for Shares Scheme which ultimately helped enrich Chelsea’s owner. It is the greatest fire sale in sporting history.
Now, sensible people are going to urge you not to overreact. We need to explore the details of the plan, they will say, and see how negotiations develop.
Nope.
Let me be clear: Project Big Picture proposes the effective privatisation of the Premier League, with the top flight of English football passing into the hands of the Big 6. In return for sharing some of the Premier League’s unfairly acquired gains with the rest of football, it would convert the Big 6’s de facto running of the game into permanent control of it.
It is not hyperbole to say that it would be the end of English football as we know it.
Project Big Picture is disaster capitalism writ large. In exchange for a £250m loan and a promised increase in revenue sharing, the Big 6 take complete control of all aspects of the Premier League as well as of fixture scheduling. They also get the increased formalisation of links to between large and small clubs and to start experimenting with selling their own TV rights.
This is an incredible list, all their Christmases at once. It creates precedents for, among other things, B Teams and an end to collective TV rights sales.
Beyond that, anything on the Big 6 wishlist not actually covered in the document – a Euro Super League while retaining a domestic presence, the end of relegation, or an ever larger share of TV money – becomes available to them as and when they want it by virtue of their voting power.
Under the current 14 of 20 voting system in the Premier League, each Big 6 club’s vote was 7.1% of a majority. Under the new two-tier rules, it would be 16.7% – more than double. And that says nothing about the increase in informal power that comes from narrowing the electorate to a group whose interests are closely aligned and who would have the ability to block any prospective new owners. In simple terms, anything the Big 6 agree on that is not actually illegal, or that falls within under the authority of the FA or Uefa, becomes possible.
EFL owners discuss Project Big Picture
Imagine you are the Glazers. Think of the increase in value of your club if, overnight, you more than double your voting power in the world’s wealthiest football league with freedom to reorganise its structure and revenue flows. What does that do for Big 6 football clubs that are worth in the region of a billion pounds? Does it add tens of millions to their value? Hundreds?
In all likelihood, each of the Big 6 owners will see their clubs appreciate by more than the total cost of the scheme. The deal is an unbelievable bargain for the Big 6, perhaps the greatest in English football history.
All they offer in return is a £250m loan and an increased revenue share from a source that they intend, eventually, to retire. As with the Russian Loans for Shares, it’s the effective privatisation of a national asset for pennies in the pound.
Think too what it means for governance. Healthy leagues do not allow a small group of clubs to run them. Look at Scottish football, Spanish football, Italian football – it becomes impossible to sustain a vibrant, competitive league when some clubs have disproportionate influence.
The challenge for those who, rather complacently in my view, are counselling caution, is to explain why the Big 6 need the power to remake any aspect of the game for their own profit or convenience if they don’t later intend to use it.
It’s achingly apparent to anyone with eyes that the Big 6 have steadily used their informal power to run the Premier League in a way that preferentially benefits themselves and harms competitiveness. How anyone could then blithely conclude that, if you increase and formalise this power, things won’t get worse is, to put it kindly, somewhat naive. Are there really people prepared to credit the Big 6 with good intentions towards the rest of the pyramid? People who believe they have any aim other than increasing their share of football’s wealth?
If these proposals were not a completely outrageous over-reach, the football equivalent of dissolving parliament, they would have emerged at some point in the last twenty years. The very fact they are only appearing in a time of emergency tells you how sweeping they are.
Ask yourself, are there any measures generally beneficial to the Premier League that could not be passed under a 14/20 system or even an 11/20 voting system? If there are not, why is a 6/18 system necessary?
Ask yourself too, are there are any measures harmful to football, or only beneficial to the Big 6, that a 6/18 voting system would make it impossible to prevent?
This is your face on lower division football
With such an extraordinary change, the burden is on its proponents to show why it is necessary. They must explain what it will be used for and why these essential changes are currently impossible.
They must explain too how such proposals are indicative of a partner negotiating in good faith, rather than one seeking to exploit a desperate EFL.
Because I can’t get past the simple point that no one who didn’t intend to misuse these powers would seek them. The only reason you demand the right to make policy with just 6 of 18 votes is because you intend future changes that you know the majority of voters would oppose. These powers have no legitimate purpose and, like the footballing equivalent of the Enabling Act, once granted will be beyond anyone’s power to curtail.
Again, cool heads will point out how many potentially good things there are in the plan. But the problem with examining them, with indulging this line of thought, is that there is no reasonable quid pro quo – nothing of remotely equal value – that the Big 6 could conceivably offer in return or could not later unilaterally withdraw.
It is a terrible deal, rotten to the core and, like Rick Parry’s reputation, unsalvageable. Better to walk away than to entertain it.
For decades, English football’s problem has been poor, short-sighted governance. The FA is hidebound, the EFL supine, the Premier League ever stronger and fans almost totally unheard. Finally, after years of campaigning, there is a growing agreement that we need a total overhaul of English football and a new regulator to govern how leagues and club owners behave.
So are we now going to stand by while our own Loans for Shares scandal irreversibly concentrates power in the game in the hands of six people so that they may run football as the oligarchs ran Russia?
If we do that, if we give into panic about the urgent need for financial support for our clubs, or take this proposal as the basis for further negotiation, we will regret it for decades.
Parry and his co-conspirators have overplayed their hand. This deal, even if it were good, can’t happen fast enough to save clubs. We need a bailout now; that needs to be our sole focus. It’s is time for the Premier League to say if they will help or not. No more delays, no more secret schemes.
Then later Parry’s replacement, if he or she still thinks Big Picture has merit, can begin the years-long consultation necessary for changes of this magnitude. Hopefully this will include a review of why the EFL appears unable to employ senior leadership whose sole focus is pursuing the best interests of its clubs.
Until then, clubs must not sell out their fans’ birth rights for a payday loan and some worthless promises. We need to burn Project Big Picture to the group and send Rick Parry packing.
Martin Calladine
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