Fair Game Unveils Radical Four-Pot Revenue Model

A Financial House of Cards

English football’s financial house of cards is finally getting the blueprint it desperately needs. Fair Game, the governance campaign group that’s been banging the drum for reform whilst the big boys squabble over the spoils, has dropped an 89-page bombshell that could fundamentally reshape how the game’s billions are divvied up across the pyramid.

The timing couldn’t be more urgent. With 62% of clubs across the top four divisions now technically insolvent — yes, you read that right, nearly two-thirds — and average losses ballooning across every league, something has to give. The Premier League and EFL have been locked in a seemingly endless standoff over how to share £3.2 billion in annual broadcast revenue whilst clubs continue haemorrhaging money and competitive balance evaporates before our eyes.

Enter “The Four Pot Solution: Redrawing Football’s Finances,” released Thursday as what Fair Game describes as a “ready-made solution” for the incoming Independent Football Regulator. It’s bold, it’s comprehensive, and frankly, it’s about time someone put forward a proper alternative to the current free-for-all that’s left too many clubs gambling their futures on lottery tickets and handouts from billionaire sugar daddies.

Who Are Fair Game and Why Should You Listen?

For those not in the know, Fair Game isn’t some shadowy think tank dreaming up theories in an ivory tower. They’re a coalition of football clubs — real ones, with fans, communities, and balance sheets that don’t balance — who’ve banded together to campaign for better governance in English football. Their membership spans clubs across the pyramid who’ve seen first-hand how the current system incentivises reckless behaviour and punishes sustainability.

Their goals are refreshingly straightforward: improve football governance, protect clubs from dodgy ownership, ensure fan voices actually matter, and create a financial structure that doesn’t require clubs to spend money they don’t have just to stay competitive. They’ve been pushing for an independent regulator for years, and now that the government-backed IFR has finally been established in 2025, Fair Game is making sure it has a proper roadmap to follow.

This isn’t their first rodeo either. They’ve been vocal about everything from ownership tests to financial sustainability rules, positioning themselves as the voice of clubs who believe football should be run for communities, not just shareholders and TV executives.

Breaking Down the Four Pots

The beauty of Fair Game’s proposal lies in its simplicity — four distinct pots, each designed to address a specific structural failure in how football currently operates.

Pot 1: The Lights-On Pot covers the basics. Core funding to ensure clubs can pay essential staff, maintain infrastructure, and operate safely. Think of it as the foundation — you can’t build anything without it, and right now too many clubs are one bad month away from not being able to keep the stadium doors open or the pitch mowed. This pot ensures every club, regardless of division, has the resources to function as a professional operation.

Pot 2: The Don’t-Be-a-Numpty Pot — and yes, that’s genuinely what they’re calling it — is where things get interesting. This is performance-related pay, but not for league position. Instead, it rewards clubs demonstrating responsible financial management, genuine fan engagement, and good governance. Ran your club sustainably? Consulted supporters on major decisions? Didn’t waste your entire budget on mercenary strikers? Here’s your bonus. It’s behaviour modification through incentives, and it might actually work.

Pot 3: The Future Pot addresses one of football’s most glaring problems: clubs using money earmarked for long-term investment to pay inflated wages instead. This pot is ring-fenced specifically for stadium upgrades, training facilities, academies, and community assets. Crucially, it cannot be spent on player wages — full stop. No creative accounting, no loopholes. This is about building infrastructure that will serve clubs and communities for decades, not funding another panic buy on deadline day.

Pot 4: The Safety-Net Pot is the insurance policy football desperately needs. A mandatory escrow reserve that shields clubs from sudden financial shocks, whether that’s an owner doing a runner, a pandemic shutting stadiums, or a relegation nobody saw coming. Too many clubs have been left high and dry when circumstances change, and this pot ensures there’s always a buffer to prevent immediate collapse.

Tackling the Parachute Payment Problem

One of Fair Game’s key recommendations targets the elephant in the room: parachute payments. Currently, clubs relegated from the Premier League receive enormous sums spread over several years — £70 million-plus in some cases — creating a two-tier Championship where recently relegated clubs can outspend everyone else combined.

Fair Game proposes shrinking these payments significantly and rebalancing how revenue is distributed across divisions. The current system creates perverse incentives where Championship clubs overspend trying to reach the promised land, knowing that even if they fail, parachute payments will cushion the fall. Meanwhile, clubs who’ve never been in the top flight struggle to compete against relegated sides banking tens of millions more per year.

By reducing parachute payments and redistributing those funds more equitably across the Championship and Leagues One and Two, Fair Game argues you’d restore competitive balance, reduce the financial desperation that drives reckless spending, and create a more sustainable second tier where success depends on smart management rather than who got relegated most recently.

The Opposition: Why Big Clubs Will Fight This

Make no mistake, this proposal won’t sail through unopposed. The Premier League’s elite clubs — particularly the so-called “big six” — have every incentive to maintain the status quo that’s made them fantastically wealthy and powerful.

The cynical view is straightforward: it’s about greed. Why would clubs earning £150–200 million annually in broadcast revenue alone voluntarily accept a system that redistributes wealth more equitably down the pyramid? The current concentration of resources at the top has created a self-perpetuating cycle where Champions League qualification brings in additional tens of millions, which funds better squads, which secures more Champions League football.

But there’s a more nuanced argument the big clubs will make, and it’s worth taking seriously. English football’s top tier competes globally against state-backed clubs like Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City (ironically), Spanish giants with different financial structures, and increasingly wealthy operations across Europe. The Premier League’s commercial dominance relies partly on having globally competitive super-clubs. Redistribute too aggressively, the argument goes, and you risk weakening English football’s position in European competition, which could ultimately reduce the broadcast value that benefits everyone.

The counter to that, of course, is that the Bundesliga manages competitive European clubs whilst maintaining far more equitable revenue distribution. And that financial sustainability across the pyramid actually strengthens English football’s overall product rather than weakening it. But expect this debate to dominate any serious push for reform — the big clubs won’t go quietly, and they’ll frame their resistance as protecting English football’s global competitiveness, not just their own balance sheets.

How Would the IFR Actually Enforce This?

Here’s where the rubber meets the road. The Independent Football Regulator isn’t just a toothless advisory body — it’s been created with genuine enforcement powers to ensure financial sustainability, tighten ownership rules, and protect fans’ interests. But implementing the Four-Pot Solution would require the IFR to flex those muscles properly.

First, the Regulator would need authority over revenue distribution mechanisms, which means getting the Premier League and EFL to accept centrally-imposed rules on how broadcast money gets shared. That’s no small feat when the current big six model concentrates wealth at the top.

Second, the IFR would need robust monitoring and compliance systems to ensure Pot 2’s “responsible management” criteria are actually met and that Pot 3 funds aren’t mysteriously redirected to wage bills through creative accounting. That means regular audits, transparent reporting requirements, and meaningful penalties for clubs that take the mickey.

Third, enforcement of the mandatory escrow reserve in Pot 4 would require legal mechanisms to protect those funds from being accessed inappropriately, even by club owners. The Regulator would need power to freeze distributions, impose sanctions on non-compliant clubs, and ultimately exclude clubs from competition if they refuse to participate in the system.

The IFR’s first State of the Game report, expected later this year, will be crucial in establishing whether the Regulator has the appetite and authority to push through reforms this comprehensive. Fair Game is essentially handing them a fully-formed proposal and saying: here’s your chance to actually fix this mess.

The Bigger Picture

The current system rewards the wrong behaviours, punishes prudence, and concentrates risk at the club level whilst the rewards flow upward to broadcasters and super-agents.

The Four-Pot Solution won’t solve every problem in English football — nothing could — but it addresses the fundamental structural issues that have created the current crisis. Reduced wage inflation, less dependence on capricious billionaires, better competitive balance, and support extending down to the National League. It’s ambitious, but then again, the problems are enormous.

Couper hopes the proposal “sparks a much-needed debate in football that leads to a realistic solution for the entire football community.” Whether the IFR has the bottle to take on vested interests and implement something this transformative remains to be seen. But at least now they can’t claim nobody’s put forward a viable alternative.

English football stands at a crossroads. Continue down the current path toward ever-greater inequality and instability, or embrace genuine reform that puts sustainability and community ahead of short-term gains. Fair Game has drawn the map. Now we’ll see if anyone’s brave enough to follow it.