Premier League clubs should pay back furlough cash after coronavirus outbreak is over Several Premier League sides have furloughed non-paying staff – including Champions League side Tottenham

For two decades the Premier League’s domestic TV rights deals went up and up beyond belief.

From £1bn at the start of the millennium to £1.7bn seven years later. Jaws dropped in 2013 when it rose to a staggering £3bn, as BT entered the fray and made a serious play to end Sky’s dominance. Again, it defied belief three years later when that figure rose to over £5bn.

Even as the domestic rights plateaued and the Premier League struggled to sell its online-only package in the latest deal signed last year, the overseas rights began taking up the growth slack.

Clubs turn to the taxpayer

It will therefore comes as no surprise that it has stuck in the craw that it took just two weeks from play being suspended due to the coronavirus for Premier League clubs to turn to the taxpayer for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme handout made available to keep businesses afloat and employees in work by chancellor Rishi Sunak.

If there is any doubt that Premier League clubs deserve that money – the government paying 80 per cent of wages up to £2,5000 – and there are arguments on all sides, there is one thing that should be a cast-iron certainty: the Premier League must pay this money back further down the line.

If they have so badly mismanaged the unimaginable sums of money that come their way that they cannot afford to pay their non-playing staff without a few months of football, they should be forced to share future spoils for another crisis. It is supposed to be for those businesses who would otherwise struggle to stay afloat, not for a football club who made an £87.4m pre-tax profit last year (Tottenham Hotspur).

Top-flight clubs must pay the taxpayer back

If the Premier League had agreed to cream a percentage from the top of each TV rights deal they could already have had an emergency fund in place to help deal with the outbreak of Covid-19.

If they had done so since the start of the new millennium even taking five per cent of the £13.766bn would’ve generated a pot of £688m. Perhaps going forwards the government now takes a slice of each new TV rights deal instead, to do the job for them.

In the last couple of days, first Newcastle United, then Tottenham Hotspur, then Norwich City, then Bournemouth have made the decision to use taxpayer cash. It is the timing of it, more than anything. There is something deeply irking about clubs turning to the taxpayer to pay their non-playing staff before we know how much the players are willing to forgo to help.

‘Furloughing is for smaller clubs’

The Court of Public Opinion is the most unforgiving court in the land, and it is rapidly turning against football. If anyone was in any doubt whether the bailout was intended for the Premier League’s billion-pound generating clubs, Julian Knight, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee, said on Wednesday: “Furloughing staff is essential for smaller clubs but the big boys of the Premier League should be looking to come to a fair arrangement with their stars before they go cap in hand to the taxpayer.”

The players are an easy target in all of this, and Spurs chairman Daniel Levy was quick to deflect the spotlight away from his £7million pay-packet – including a £3m bonus for the shambolic delivery of their new stadium – and burning brightly in the players’ direction.

But the players are waiting for the Professional Footballers’ Association to negotiate on their behalf, and the union do not believe there is a one-size-fits-all solution to the problem.

PFA negotiating on players’ behalf

They want to see each clubs’ accounts before they agree to what level of wage cut or deferral the playing squad needs to take.

If more financially sensible clubs who have insulated against such crises are able to pay their players and staff fully in the coming months, then so be it. If others have been financially reckless then it may be the case that players could agree to significant reductions.

Going forward it would then be up to the players if they wanted to make moves away from clubs who felt they were so hard-pressed they had to turn to government money to see them through and also required significant salary cuts from their players.

The government must then ensure that in whatever way possible the Premier League repays that money to the public purse.