EFL TV Deal: What the clubs earn, including parachute payments

2 May 2026 06:00 BST | 3 min read

EFL Championship Blackburn Ipswich — © IMAGO

Paul Macdonald | Brand Owner

Sky Sports, like with the Premier League, have been a long-time partner of the lower leagues in England, and the current EFL deal is worth in the region of €215m per season which is split between the 72 clubs of the Championship, League One and League Two.

Article continues under the video

This is not split evenly; the Championship takes the majority of the revenue on the table, €150m between the 24 clubs, €35m is reserved for League One, and €25m for League Two.

The EFL’s international TV rights deals are incorporated into the Sky Sports deal. This represents an additional €45m from rights deals which are taken to auction by key distribution partners, Pitch and Relevent Sports. 155 Championship games plus a handful of League One and Two Matches are given to broadcasters, and this deal includes playoff matches, too.

The final amount to add to the pot - ITV’s highlights/live match deal, worth €6m per season, to show a weekly highlights show and sporadic live matches throughout the season. This creates a grand total of - roughly - €266m to be divided among the 72 teams.

There is a centralised fee of €9.2m given to every club, and Championship sides also benefit further from the solidarity payment provided by the Premier League, to the tune of €3.5m per club. That means every team is guaranteed €12.7m before the commencement of the season.

The gap, therefore, between the Championship and League One and Two is becoming more pronounced than ever. By comparison, League One clubs earn €1.75m from the TV deal and their PL solidarity payment is just €0.75m, for a combined €2.5m per season.

Finally, League Two gets €1.25m from TV, and €0.55 from the PL, adding up to a total of €1.8m per season.

Clubs in all divisions also receive match fees when selected for live TV: the home side can earn up to £100k and the away side around £10k. It’s harder to calculate given the unpredictability of these figures but a well-watched Championship club can expect to add somewhere in the region of €2m per season courtesy of being on TV.

PARACHUTE PAYMENTS

One unique grey area is the case of parachute payments. These are given to teams upon relegation from the Premier League in order to ease their transition back to life at the lower levels.

This amount is paid for from Premier League TV money set aside from their own deals and it is due to last for a period of three years (unless the club returns to the Premier League in that corresponding period).

In the first year the relegated club can receive 55% of the TV that would have been due had they remained in the Premier League. We can project this amount at, roughly, €55m-€60m.

This drops to 45% in year two, so around €47.5m, and if the team remains in the Championship after year three, they receive 20%, or around €22.5m.

This set-up is completely unique to the English Championship. Other leagues such as La Liga do operate with parachute payments, but the amount is usually smaller and limited to one year. Ligue 1’s payment is now so small it is barely a buffer, while the Bundesliga’s equitable model across Bundesliga and Bundesliga II softens the relegation blow somewhat.

Read more about: Championship