Rick Parry: Regulator is chance to protect clubs

Legislation intended to lead to the creation of a new regulator was included in Tuesday’s King’s Speech.

The regulator will operate a licensing system for professional clubs in the top five tiers of English football, with the key objective of ensuring clubs are financially sustainable, responsibly run and accountable to their fans.

The importance of clubs to the communities they serve was underlined in an EFL impact report published by the league in January, which showed more than 840,000 people engaged in EFL club community activities over almost 580,000 hours across the 2021-22 season, delivering over £865million worth of social value to towns and cities across the country.

Clubs’ ability to continue doing that valuable work has been boosted by the launch of the Building Foundations Fund on Wednesday.

EFL title partner Sky Bet will invest £1million a year in the fund across the course of the six-year sponsorship deal, with community trusts able to bid for grants of up to £100,000 to invest in ongoing programmes or to develop new initiatives.

To mark the start of the fund, each club community organisation is being given £10,000.

“(The fund) will enable clubs to make lasting contributions in people’s lives – that’s not overstating it,” Parry told the PA news agency.

“The £6million invested by Sky Bet will go a long, long way, because the one thing that is absolutely clear with the club community organisations is that they operate very effectively.”

The fund was launched in Barnsley, whose Community Trust either directly offers or indirectly supports a huge variety of initiatives from those promoting physical activity to those combatting loneliness, homelessness and mental health problems.

Parry sees the proposed regulator as vital to protecting the ability of not just the 72 EFL clubs to continue sustainably, but those on either side of the pyramid.

“This isn’t about the EFL against the Premier League and it’s absolutely not about us putting our hands in the Premier League’s pockets,” he said.

“It’s all about making club sustainable at every single level – above us in the Premier League, but also below us.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a proper reset and proper rethink of the resources within the game.

“It’s getting that balance of the excitement and the importance of what happens on the Saturday, whilst preserving the club’s ability to do all the brilliant community work they do for 365 days a year.”

Parry sounded an extremely positive tone on the ‘New Deal’ talks between his league, the Premier League and the Football Association.

The deal will cover a new financial agreement on how television revenue is distributed, but also includes cost control measures and calendar reform to account for the expansion of UEFA club competitions next season.

PA understands Premier League clubs could be asked to give their approval to the New Deal when they next meet on November 21, and Parry said: “We are moving forwards constructively.

“We are really hopeful that we will come to a solution very, very soon. There’s been a really strong mood from top to bottom (in the EFL) that we do have a responsibility to make sure that any income and revenue is used sustainably and doesn’t just go to increased costs that would exacerbate the problems that already exist.

“We still have the cliff edge between the Championship and the Premier League. We still have the cliff edge within the Championship because of parachute payments. So we haven’t solved the problems overnight. We’re stepping firmly in the right direction we hope, but there is more still to do.”