English Clubs Face £20.3m Yearly Bill for Football Regulator

English football clubs will be asked to pay a combined £20.3m a year to run the Independent Football Regulator (IFR), a figure that is around double the original estimate.

The IFR is the body set up to oversee the finances and owners of English clubs. To pay for its work, it has proposed a levy, which is a charge that clubs pay into a central fund. The proposal is for a levy of £18.3m to cover its operating costs, according to BBC Sport.

From next season, every regulated club in the top five divisions of men's football would have to contribute. The amounts vary sharply by level. Under the proposal, the richest Premier League clubs could pay up to £1.8m a season, with most paying £600,000. Championship clubs that do not receive parachute payments, the transitional money given to clubs relegated from the Premier League, would pay around £45,000. League One clubs would pay about £9,000, League Two about £6,000, and National League clubs less than £600.

The regulator plans to employ around 100 staff. The proposal also includes £1m to cover possible legal challenges. Set-up costs are estimated at £45m, to be paid off over the next 10 years, with £1m of that included in the proposal. A 2019 impact assessment had put the regulator's annual running costs at between £8m and £10.2m for its first decade.

The money request comes alongside a warning about the state of the game. The IFR's State of the Game report found that 94% of clubs are loss-making, meaning they spend more than they earn. It also found that more than 60% of clubs in the EFL and the National League are technically insolvent, which means they cannot pay their debts as they fall due. The report recommends that clubs bring in tighter cost controls.

The regulator said English football must "act before it is too late" to deal with the financial dangers it faces. It warned of "a dangerous cocktail of rising debt and an over-reliance on owner funding". It described the game as increasingly unequal, dependent on debt and owner top-ups, and loss-making.

Since it was established last year, the IFR has carried out suitability checks on 40 owners, directors and senior executives. These checks look at whether people running clubs are fit and proper to hold those roles.

Football's money gap is easy to see in the numbers. A Premier League club at the top of the scale could pay more than three times the £600,000 most top-flight clubs face, and far more than a National League club, which would pay under £600. The regulator's case is that the whole pyramid is under strain, and that the cost of oversight should be shared by the clubs it watches.