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Rival Fans Laughing At Radrizzani’s Comments Miss Leeds Owners Point

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Leeds United’s owner Andrea Radrizzani certainly put the cat amongst the pigeons recently when he posited a Premier League 2 type tweak to football as he was discussing the disparity between television revenue gained by top-flight clubs, compared to those in the Championship and Leagues One and Two.

Okay, maybe you can throw at the chairman his own plan ignored the two tiers below, but it’s not his place to argue for them – Leeds are in the Championship so that’s his concern – owners of L1 & L2 clubs are capable of speaking for themselves.

Otherwise what exactly did he say wrong to receive the following comments from opposition fans, other than in them proving they completely missed his point.

That last point is the one that matters. The Premier League split sees a certain % given to each club regardless of how many times they feature on telly box, then there is a top up via facility fees for TV games hosted at a home ground and a much smaller reward given to opposition sides on the day.

The flat fee is worth writing home about, and facility fees can mount up into millions of their own with broadcasters having their more favourite teams.

The Championship and the EFL has no such system, it’s one big pot shared full stop. Why shouldn’t there be a similar system in place – Radrizzani is spot on, his only mistake was saying Premier League 2 as it created ‘split connotations’ again.

Money at Championship level is obviously nowhere near the revenue return of the Premier League, but why shouldn’t the pot be split more fairly in recognition of the disruption caused to fans as games get bounced around.

In light of moves to make TV viewing fan choice more than broadcaster dictated, surely now is exactly the right time to open a discussion on the ‘league’ protecting a bottom line for all clubs, but clubs bringing more reward to a broadcaster being suitably compensated.

That doesn’t just apply to Leeds, look at the Championship and the names within it.

The solidarity payment helps those clubs with a smaller fanbase, but football isn’t a Communist state, it’s a meritocracy and that’s recognised at the level above, why isn’t it at this level.

Radrizzani’s also not the only one to have mentioned this in the past, but those fans having a pop for his perfectly valid point also seem to miss that.

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