Premier League transfer spending keeps breaking records. Clubs spent more than £3 billion in the 2025 summer window alone, an all-time high, and the 2026/27 window (open 15 June to 1 September 2026) looks set to push that figure higher still. That spending power doesn't stay contained at the top of English football. Through parachute and solidarity payments, it reshapes finances, and ultimately competitiveness, throughout the EFL, especially the Championship.
When a club is relegated from the Premier League, it doesn't lose its television income overnight. Parachute payments cushion the fall over three seasons: around 55% of a full Premier League broadcast share in year one (roughly £49 million for clubs relegated in 2025), dropping to about 45% (around £40 million) in year two, and 20% (around £20-22 million) in year three. A Championship club without recent relegation, by contrast, typically receives only around £5.5 million in solidarity payments, a gap of more than £38-43.5 million between clubs in the very same division.
The imbalance goes well beyond parachute payments. Deloitte's Review of Football Finance put the revenue gap between the Premier League and Championship at roughly £5.3 billion by 2022/23, up sharply from an estimated £4 billion just a year earlier. Parachute-payment clubs generated average revenues of £62.9 million in 2023/24, more than double the £26.7 million earned by clubs without them. The effect on recruitment is stark: the average wage-bill gap between the two groups grew from £10.4 million in 2014/15 to £43.3 million by 2023/24, while parachute clubs fielded squads worth £157 million on average, against just £19 million for the rest of the division.
This head start translates directly into results. In each of the last six Championship seasons, at least two of the three clubs promoted to the Premier League were receiving parachute payments at the time. The Championship posted record total revenue of £959 million heading into 2025/26, but parachute payments accounted for £230 million of the division's £435 million broadcast income, meaning growth was driven largely by which clubs happened to be freshly relegated, not by the health of the league overall.
EFL chairman Rick Parry has called the current system "a league within a league" and wants parachute payments scrapped in favour of a 25% share of pooled broadcast revenue, distributed across all four divisions on merit. The Premier League has resisted wholesale change, though it offered an extra £358 million over three years in 2023, a proposal EFL clubs rejected. The new Independent Football Regulator, created under the Football Governance Act 2025, is now examining parachute payments as part of its State of the Game report, due in draft form later in 2026 ahead of a final version in spring 2027, with backstop powers to impose a settlement if the two sides cannot agree.
As Premier League transfer spending keeps climbing, the financial distance to the EFL looks set to widen rather than narrow in the short term. Whether the regulator's review delivers meaningful reform, or simply confirms the scale of the problem, will shape English football's competitive balance for years to come.