https://theathletic.co.uk/2137790/2020/ ... n-england/
One such club was League Two Leyton Orient, a couple of miles north of West Ham and about five miles east from Spurs. Orient had to furlough all but a few of their staff in April and were recently hit by a coronavirus outbreak that forced them to forfeit a lucrative Carabao Cup tie against Tottenham. Project Big Picture’s cash injection would have been a potential lifeline.
“What Project Big Picture has done is escalated the urgent need for reasonable discussion,” says Danny Macklin, Orient’s chief executive. “The game has needed to reset for a number of years, and we believed that large chunks of Project Big Picture would have enabled sustainability for most, if not every, EFL club, and the structure below that.
“There were elements of it that might not have been liked but we were very much liking what we were hearing in the main.
“And ultimately it would have been a platform. My chairman (Nigel Travis) summed it up perfectly: At the moment he invests in making a loss; what he wants to invest in is in a business and in a club’s facilities, their community involvement, academy etc, etc. He doesn’t want to be chucking money effectively down the drain, and it’s about allowing investment into the right areas rather than funding a loss.”
Last week also saw the EFL clubs reject the Premier League’s offer of a £50 million bailout package, with a statement outlining that “the conditional offer of £50 million falls some way short”.
Macklin adds: “We think that there needs to be a considerable package that allows clubs to survive during this COVID crisis, and that it’s done for all 72 teams’ combined benefit, not just 48 (the 24 Championship clubs were not included in the Premier League’s £50 million offer).”
Macklin, the Leyton Orient chief executive, meanwhile adds that a more equitable split of the money in football is critical. “There has to be a better distribution of the money that’s in the game,” he says.
“Naturally it’s never going to change in terms of the value that’s at the top of the game, and clubs like Liverpool and Manchester United drive that value for broadcasting deals, of course they do.
“But for the pyramid to survive and flourish, which I think Liverpool and United recognise, there needs to be something that recognises the uniqueness of our pyramid. That it doesn’t lose the competitive balance that we have across the leagues, and I think there are many intuitive ways we can do that. A levy on betting for example has merits.
“There is money in the football industry that should mean owners aren’t having to dig deep into their pockets time after time to pay ongoing costs and keep their clubs afloat, especially at a time like now when there’s not a lot coming in.
