Something curious is happening in English football. Of the last nine teams promoted to the Premier League, six lost their category the following year, while the remaining three (Leeds United, Burnley and Sunderland) are the newly promoted teams, i.e. those who have not yet managed to be relegated this season. It’s what is known among football’s elite as the elevator effect, a phenomenon that the most powerful league on the planet now intends to nip in the bud.
To this end, the 20 clubs that make up the Premier League approved this Friday the implementation of the Team cost ratio (SCR), a measure that will take effect starting in the 2026-27 season to limit team spending to 85% of each club’s revenue. This establishes an ongoing spending cap that did not exist until now, as only each institution’s overall losses over three-year periods were monitored and not the money invested exclusively in footballers during the current season.
“This will allow clubs that do not regularly participate in European competitions to have a sufficient margin to compete (…) against clubs already qualified for UEFA tournaments that receive additional European revenue,” the English league said in a statement. Therefore, the club that spends more than 85% of its total revenue on staff will face financial penalties that the competition have described as “proportional” or even the loss of six points in the league table if said club exceeds 115% of revenue derived from its staff.
Designed from the beginning to balance the sporting equality of English football, the Premier League’s new economic limit however has its clauses written in small print, as it is much more permissive than that established by UEFA (70%). In this way, despite the change in regulations, very financially powerful clubs and holders of the Champions League such as Manchester City, Arsenal or Liverpool will have to adapt their squads more before UEFA than before their own championship.
However, what the 20 Premier League clubs have not reached an agreement on this Friday is to limit the maximum spending based on the staff costs of the most modest team in the competition (the so-called TBA or Anchoring from top to bottom), a measure that just a few weeks ago the UK players’ union threatened to take to court for violating their freedom to negotiate their wages.
