Sky News: Premier League clubs could face 10% transfer levy under Labour

first they came for my healthcare, and i did not speak out.
then they came for my benefits, and i did not speak out.
then they came for my frenkie, and there was no one left to speak for me.
 
rimaldo said:
first they came for my healthcare, and i did not speak out.
then they came for my benefits, and i did not speak out.
then they came for my frenkie, and there was no one left to speak for me.
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Yet another reason to vote tories.
 
For the sake of clarity, is this a thing in any other country?
 
Cloud7 said:
For the sake of clarity, is this a thing in any other country?
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Probably not but I’d also imagine no other country charges what our PL clubs and broadcasters charge to watch them. So it’s unprecedented (maybe) but good.
 
rimaldo said:
first they came for my healthcare, and i did not speak out.
then they came for my benefits, and i did not speak out.
then they came for my frenkie, and there was no one left to speak for me.
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What?
 
So this would generate approximately £100m per year?

Hardly seems worth scuppering English clubs over. The tax on their earnings and salary payments will absolutely dwarf that.
 
I am not totally against this, I think in the long term it will benefit the game in this country, we already produce a lot of talented players and the prospect of taking that talent pool and having a fully funded grassroots system to go alongside it would be amazing.

But that does come with the caveat that some of that levy needs to be used to bring down the costs of coaching badges in this country. We have great coaches and coach educators but the standards of the courses and the amount of contact time is decreasing and the prices are going up.
 
I'm noticing a lot of smear tactics with the press lately regarding Labour. I have not seen anything about what 'might happen' if Conservative are re-elected, but there seems to be a hell of a lot if Labour are elected.
 
Dumb, dumb idea. The govt already makes a feckton of money through income tax and national insurance payments from PL footballers.
 
Adz_99 said:
So this would generate approximately £100m per year?

Hardly seems worth scuppering English clubs over. The tax on their earnings and salary payments will absolutely dwarf that.
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Id love to know how much tax city actually pay.
 
The holy trinity 68 said:
I'm noticing a lot of smear tactics with the press lately regarding Labour. I have not seen anything about what 'might happen' if Conservative are re-elected, but there seems to be a hell of a lot if Labour are elected.
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It happens every election. Tory donors own a lot of the media outlets in the UK.
 
Skills said:
Dumb, dumb idea. The govt already makes a feckton of money through income tax and national insurance payments from PL footballers.
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I thought the idea was that the levy pot would be reserved for investment into the football pyramid and grassroots?
 
In the past I've voted Tory or Labour, generally who I think will run the country better at that given time.
One thing Ive learned is that a lot of these stories get made up in the run-in to elections. I would like to know if its true or just media BS.

If true I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand I understand a Labour gov need to find different ways to get tax from, but at the same time, it could cripple some transactions and some clubs will just whack an extra 10% onto the player sale. Virtually every business does this.

At the end of the day, it will get filtered down somehow to the average punter to compensate, I'm sure. Extra 50p on the pies here and there...we all know how it works.
 
Hate transfer Levy. We’ve already had to pay extra 10% whenever we’ve signed a player from them.
 
Taxing Premier League clubs on transfers to earn £100-150m for the Football Pyramid sounds great. But it isn't going to help like it hints in that article, with Bristol Rovers needing to "invest in infrastructure for the future".

Two of the local sides near me (7th and 8th tier at the time) spent 1% of that between them to relay their pitches to 3G and do works around their grounds. There are 144 teams in the 6 divisions that make up the EFL and Conference, that money isn't going to do squat. It will likely have more of an affects on things at the top level than the positives it brings to the pyramid and grass roots.
 
Is this not an indirect tax on supporters? Who’s financing (most) clubs / transfers?
 
I could see this being a bargaining tactic for clubs wanting to remove spending restrictions to butter up the government with
 
The holy trinity 68 said:
I'm noticing a lot of smear tactics with the press lately regarding Labour. I have not seen anything about what 'might happen' if Conservative are re-elected, but there seems to be a hell of a lot if Labour are elected.
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It's exactly that. As often the case the headline and the article say two different things. The levy was a suggestion by a Conservative-led review that they declined to take up, all Labour have said is that they will 'look at everything again'. That's it.
 
Nothing story. Keir Starmer has actually come out on the radio today and said they're not looking at this - https://www.standard.co.uk/news/pol...ier-league-labour-tracey-crouch-b1165051.html

This came about when Labour were talking about preventing a European Super League. A journo asked the local Labour MP/ shadow sports minister if they they would consider this, as it was an idea that came up in a previous fan-led review that the Conservatives didn't implement either.

She said they'll look at everything and that's it.

It's a completely typical non-comittal response from a politician whose party may not have even discussed this issue. You don't rule it out, you don't say yes either when you haven't looked into something deeply or even at all as you don't want to risk dropping the party in it and upsetting the leadership. The question probably caught her off guard with her not in a position to give a definitive answer. If you say you don't know you risk looking uninformed or could be accused of not having a plan so you say you're exploring all avenues or are looking at everything instead because it sounds better. That in turn sparks these kind of stories.

On a side note, she might not even be elected herself if looking at her future chances of being sports secretary, think the green party candidate was in front of her locally in at least one recent poll. It could be close.
 
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Paul the Wolf said:
Having quickly u-turned on that idea, he's now come up with another brilliant idea to ban evening kickoffs
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Apparently he wants it to be 15 aside like Rugby because that would result in a 36% rise in income tax from professional players.
 
100 said:
Is this not an indirect tax on supporters? Who’s financing (most) clubs / transfers?
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Stobzilla said:
Rich benefactors and TV Advertising money.
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Exactly. Plus we all know the clubs are rinsing as much as possible out of supporters already. If they could find a way to screw another 100m out of the fans annually, they would already be doing it.
 
Keir Starmer wants to put ad breaks during play in football matches to generate an extra £69 billion for the UK economy.
 
thisisnottaken1 said:
He probably has u-turned on that pledge. He’s the king of broken promises.
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He is, but it was a never a pledge. A casual comment by a shadow secretary of sports saying they'll look at all the points brought up by a fan-led review made in 2021 and what was one of them. The press latches on and it was immediately shot down by Starmer the next day.

Even this "banning" of late kick offs isn't talks of outright banning them. First he mentions Saturday night kick offs specficially rather than all. Then it's not necessarily an outright ban.

I think it's good that things like that are being looked at. My first thoughts of seeing the fixture list and that we had Fulham at home on a Friday night was how much of a shitter that must be for lots of fans wanting to attend, especially the Fulham fans coming up from London, and of course we have fans all over the country too.

I think it would be good to try to schedule evening kick offs for matches involving teams who are geographically located fairly close to each other where possible. That would help. It's not always completely possible as you have some teams who are more isolated than others such as Newcastle. Even then, you could say let's not have Newcastle playing London or South coast teams at 8 o'clock if we can help it whether that's home or away.

He's also talking about cost - how about free travel for evening kick offs for away fans?
 
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Chipper said:
He is, but it was a never a pledge. A casual comment by a shadow secretary of sports saying they'll look at all the points brought up by a fan-led review made in 2021 and what was one of them, immediately shot down by Starmer the next day.

Even this "banning" of late kick offs isn't talks of outright banning them. First he mentions Saturday night kick offs specficially rather than all. Then it's not necessarily an outright ban.

I think it's good that things like that are being looked at. My first thoughts of seeing the fixture list and that we had Fulham at home on a Friday night was how much of a shitter that must be for lots of fans wanting to attend, especially the Fulham fans coming up from London, and of course we have fans all over the country too.

I think it would be good to try to schedule evening kick offs for matches involving teams who are geographically located close to each other where possible. That would help. It's not always completely possible as you have some teams who are more isolated than others like Newcastle. Even then, you could say let's not have Newcastle playing London or South coast teams at 8 o'clock if we can help it whether that's home or away.

He's also talking about cost - how about free travel for evening kick offs for away fans?
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He's going to be extremely shocked when Arsenal have to play in Europe next season.
 
Chipper said:
He is, but it was a never a pledge. A casual comment by a shadow secretary of sports saying they'll look at all the points brought up by a fan-led review made in 2021 and what was one of them, immediately shot down by Starmer the next day.

Even this "banning" of late kick offs isn't talks of outright banning them. First he mentions Saturday night kick offs specficially rather than all. Then it's not necessarily an outright ban.

I think it's good that things like that are being looked at. My first thoughts of seeing the fixture list and that we had Fulham at home on a Friday night was how much of a shitter that must be for lots of fans wanting to attend, especially the Fulham fans coming up from London, and of course we have fans all over the country too.

I think it would be good to try to schedule evening kick offs for matches involving teams who are geographically located close to each other where possible. That would help. It's not always completely possible as you have some teams who are more isolated than others like Newcastle. Even then, you could say let's not have Newcastle playing London or South coast teams at 8 o'clock if we can help it whether that's home or away.

He's also talking about cost - how about free travel for evening kick offs for away fans?
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Yeah, I’d be up for banning late kick offs on Saturday. They’re silly.
 
Paul the Wolf said:
He's going to be extremely shocked when Arsenal have to play in Europe next season.
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Ha! Yes there is that but nothing can be done about those. I think certain things can be done to help match-going fans following their team in domestic league games, and would welcome attempts to do that. There's the commercial interest of the TV companies to consider but there's a balance to be found.

Don't know if they still do it, but I remember about a decade ago some Spanish league matches had even worse kick offs. There was a Sevilla v Levante match on at 10:30pm because they wanted it on TV but also wanted to show Barcelona v Real Madrid before it including post-match coverage before the Sevilla game started. The fans that were there all chucked tennis balls on the pitch in protest. At least we're not at that stage, but if we're not careful things can drift that way.
 
Chipper said:
Ha! Yes there is that but nothing can be done about those. I think certain things can be done to help match-going fans following their team in domestic league games, and would welcome attempts to do that.

Don't know if they still do it, but I remember about a decade ago some Spanish league matches had even worse kick offs. There was a Sevilla v Levante match on at 10:30pm because they wanted it on TV but also wanted to show Barcelona v Real Madrid before it and post-match coverage of it before the Sevilla game started. The fans that were there all chucked tennis balls on the pitch in protest. At least we're not at that stage, but things are drifting that way.
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But there are loads of midweek matches - League Cup, lower division matches throughout the season in midweek. They're not going to kick off at 3 in the afternoon on a weekday. The evening matches at a weekend should be even better than midweek as most people will not have to go to work the next day. It's mindless rambling.
 
(not from the UK but) I came in here with the impression most would be fine with this? Taxing the super rich for their spending and distributing it back to the poor? If this was a corporate tax or executive bonuses, I'm sure most here would celebrate.
 
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