Richard Masters: Premier League must ‘preserve and protect’ the competition

Richard Masters has insisted Premier League clubs share a determination to “preserve and protect” the competition, as a new season beset by off‑field challenges is about to get under way.

Masters, the top flight’s chief executive, says a “collective spirit” remains within the league’s 20 member clubs, despite continued legal battles involving the champions Manchester City, and the Premier League pursuing legal action against Fifa over an expanded club calendar.

In the lead up to the opening round of fixtures this weekend, a buoyant Masters attempted to paint a picture of the league’s collective strength. “There is a collective spirit within the Premier League that still exists, absolutely,” he said. “[The Premier League] is a competition, so it’s set up for people to compete with each other. They’re competing with each other all the time, and everyone is trying to find an angle, whether it be signing a player, finding a way to be better in the Premier League, and I think that is a great thing.

“When it comes to rule breaching, I don’t believe in that, and we will deal with it, but I do think there’s a collective spirit. In the end, every­body understands that the Premier League is a fantastic football competition that needs preserving and ­protecting. That’s principally the Premier League’s role, but everyone has to play their part, and I believe they understand that.”

Masters would not comment on the disputes with City, with reports suggesting a verdict in a first arbitration case, over the league’s rules on associated party transactions, is due within weeks. He said the league “actually have a pretty good operating relationship” with its champions of the past four seasons, but argued the competition needed to move beyond recent discord and disputes over the rulebook.

Masters hopes to do so by implementing a new roster of regulation. This season the league is to trial two new financial mechanisms that could be implemented permanently in 2025-26: one, the squad cost ratio, would cap player spending to a share of income; the other a top to bottom anchoring system that would limit the top clubs to ­spending a fixed multiple of the income of those at the bottom.

“If we are changing system, we will be changing to one that I hope the clubs have confidence in and want to comply with so we’re not talking about financial regulations and rules at the time, but we’re talking about football,” Masters said.

“I will always want the football to do the talking. Obviously we don’t want to normalise asterisks on the league table or long-running disputes. We want this to be temporary, not permanent. We have to lean into these challenges and resolve them, and get to the end of the season and have a clearer picture.”

Masters also addressed the issue of the expanded international calendar, reiterating the league’s opposition to Fifa’s lack of consultation over an expanded Club World Cup and arguing that a record number of matches for the biggest clubs could cause “saturation” in a TV market to which the league will return this year.

“Obviously we have lots of football and the Premier League is part of it,” he said. “Our clubs are participating in multiple competitions and we’re adding to that calendar. So it should be a concern, I think, that we will reach a point of saturation.”

Masters said that by the end of this year the league hopes to have completed all its broadcast deals for the period 2025-28. “We need to tell the clubs what their budget is going to be, the financial forecast, and it’s going to be a good one. We’re going to have a strong economic position to present to them, and we’ll have grown our market share.

“Looking at the collective broadcast revenues of the big five European leagues, we are at around 50%. So we think we’ll be in a very strong economic position, which obviously allows clubs to plan for the future to get the best players, to recruit brilliant management teams, invest in infrastructure, to do all the things that make a successful competition fizz.”