The case

Parachute payments explained

How they work

When a club is relegated from the Premier League it keeps a share of the league's broadcast money on a three-year taper. The share is calculated against an equal share of Premier League broadcast revenue — the part divided evenly between the twenty clubs, as distinct from merit payments and facility fees.

Year one: 55% of an equal share.
Year two: 45%.
Year three: 20%, but only if the club had been in the Premier League for more than one season before going down.

A club promoted and immediately relegated therefore gets two years, not three. The structure has been in this shape since 2015-16.

Source

Premier League parachute and solidarity payments. Wikipedia.

Index only, not a citation. Accessed 2026-09-05.

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The parachute taper, as a percentage of an equal share of Premier League broadcast revenue. Year three applies only to clubs that spent more than one season in the Premier League before relegation.
Season after relegation	Share
Year 1	55%
Year 2	45%
Year 3	20%
Year 4	0%

What that looks like in the same division

The chart below puts a parachute club next to a Championship club that is not receiving one. Both are in the same league, playing each other twice a season, and one of them starts the year with roughly six and a half times the central income of the other.

Parachute figures are 2020-21, the most recent total the EFL has published; solidarity figures are the 2024-25 rates. Both are from the EFL's written evidence to Parliament.

Central income per club in the Championship: a club on parachute payments against a club on solidarity payments. Parachute figure is the average of £233m across the 5 clubs receiving them in 2020-21; solidarity is the 2024-25 rate. Both are from the EFL’s written evidence to Parliament.
Type of club	Central income
On parachute payments	£46,600,000
On solidarity payments	£5,379,000

In 2020-21 the Premier League paid £233m in parachute payments across five clubs. The 2024-25 rates are £48.9m in year one, £40.1m in year two and £17.8m in year three.

Source

Premier League parachute and solidarity payments. Wikipedia.

Index only, not a citation. Accessed 2026-09-05.

Read the source

Solidarity payments — which go to the EFL clubs not receiving parachutes — are calculated as a percentage of the third-year parachute payment: 30% in the Championship, 4.5% in League One and 3% in League Two. So the floor of the whole EFL settlement is pegged to the bottom rung of the parachute ladder. Change the parachute and you change everything below it, which is precisely why it is hard to change.

They also stop dead at League Two. There is no equivalent percentage for the National League, and no percentage at all for Steps 2 to 6.

What the Premier League says

The argument for parachute payments is a real one and we are not going to caricature it.

A promoted club has to compete. If relegation meant an immediate collapse in income with no cushion, promoted clubs would rationally refuse to invest, the bottom of the Premier League would become a procession, and clubs that did invest and went down would go into administration — taking their staff, their academy and sometimes their ground with them. Parachute payments exist because the drop is a cliff, and clubs at the top of the Championship sign players on Premier League contracts that do not disappear on the day they are relegated.

The Premier League also points out that parachute clubs are a minority of the division and that the money is temporary by design.

Here is where we agree and where we do not. The cliff edge is real. But the answer to a cliff edge is a gentler slope for everybody, not a rope for three clubs a year. Nothing about the argument for cushioning relegation requires the cushion to be six times the income of the clubs the relegated team is playing against, and nothing about it requires the entire settlement for the other 69 EFL clubs to be defined as a fraction of it.

Parachute payments were brought within the scope of the Independent Football Regulator's backstop by amendment as the Football Governance Bill went through. They fall to be considered if the backstop is triggered and they are judged relevant to the financial sustainability of the pyramid.

Source

Football regulator to review parachute payments; State of the Game report timing. SportsPro, 2026-01-20.

Secondary source. Accessed 2026-09-05.

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The question is no longer whether they can be looked at. It is what replaces them.

Our ask on this

Phase them down, redistribute what is released, and keep them inside whatever settlement the regulator arrives at — rather than outside it.

Read ask two in full Next: the 2026 deal