PREMIERSHIP clubs have been urged to put the greater good of the Scottish game ahead of their own financial concerns by agreeing to share the new UEFA solidarity payments with their Championship counterparts – or risk the gulf between the top flight and the second tier widening even further.
Dundee, Hibernian, Kilmarnock, Motherwell, Ross County, St Johnstone and St Mirren are all set to receive £1.6m when the solidarity money – paid out to clubs which miss out on European football in order to “maintain competitive balance in the top divisions” across the continent - is distributed in March and June.
Meanwhile, Aberdeen and Dundee United will bank £1m while Hearts and Livingston, despite being relegated at the end of the 2023/24 campaign, will be handed £650,000.
But UEFA have stipulated that top flight clubs in their member nations can now distribute as much of the coefficient ranking payment as they want to second tier clubs if the total amount exceeds €3.5m - and Scotland will receive €6.018m from that pot in the coming months.
However, there are fears the Premiership clubs will, despite the SFA and SPFL being in favour of the Championship clubs which meet the eligibility criteria receiving a portion, decide to keep all the cash for themselves due to the pressure they are under to break even amid a challenging economic climate.
Jamie Swinney, the chief executive of current second tier leaders Falkirk, is still hopeful that 75 per cent of the Premiership clubs will listen to SFA and SPFL recommendations and agree to share the wealth in a vote in March.
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“Clearly, it is a Premiership discussion only,” he said. “But we are very aware of the change and we have been advocating for a distribution down the leagues. I would like to think our position would be exactly the same if we were a Premiership club just now.
“Clubs in the Premiership currently receive 84 per cent of SPFL monies and, as it stands, 100 per cent of UEFA solidarity funding. So in excess of 90 per cent of all monies in Scottish football go to 12 clubs at the moment.
“The disparity with what the lower leagues receive is huge. For every new million pounds that comes into the SPFL you have £840,000 going to 12 clubs. The gap just gets wider and wider and wider every single season.
“It's difficult to do anything different with the distribution of other monies. The SPFL articles require an 11 to 1 vote in favour of changing the distribution model, which therefore means that it won't change.
“But all the clubs are going to receive more solidarity money, which is great for Scottish football. These are additional monies over and above the existing solidarity payments. This is actually an unbelievable opportunity to distribute new monies and help the wider game.”
“We've not been around the table when the Premiership clubs have been discussing it because obviously we're not at that level. But our understanding is that there's a bit of a divide, that a number of clubs that are in favour of it, but some that are very much against it.
“It needs 75 per cent support. As it currently stands, it looks like it would be voted against. But there is obviously a bit of time between now and the vote, so that might change.
“The Bundesliga clubs in Germany actually got dispensation for UEFA to distribute all the solidarity money to the Bundesliga 2 clubs. They proactively asked and got approval to distribute the money.
“I thought that spoke volumes about the positive approach they have got. It is the opposite of how we've always operated in Scotland. We've always operated in self-interest and very much taken a short-term approach. Hopefully that won’t be the case in this instance.”
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Swinney, a qualified coach who previously worked full-time in youth football for five years, revealed that receiving some of the UEFA solidarity payment money would enable Falkirk to expand their age-group set-up.
“For Falkirk, and for a lot of Championship clubs, it's very hard to run a sustainable model because of the disparity in funding,” he said. “We work very hard to reach a break-even budget, but it is precarious and difficult to get to that point.
“It is difficult for us to invest at the level we'd like to when it comes to something like youth development. We only have an under-16s and an under-18s at this point in time.
“The difference between what we currently spend and what we would need to spend to get up to the level we used to be at, and we had a full academy from under-10s all the way through, is about £100,000 to £150,000 a season.
“Right now, the only way to fund that would be to take £100,000 to £150,000 out of the playing budget. When you're trying to win a league, doing that has a significant impact on your chances of winning the league. So we're caught in a bit of limbo with regards to youth development because of that.
“The solidarity payment figures which have been quoted are in that £100,000 to £150,000 bracket. If that was to be distributed down the way, it would allow us to look at the wider football infrastructure, not just the first team. We could use it to supplement what we do with the first team.
“That might be youth development, but it might be investment into recruitment, analysis, sports science, other things that actually we struggle to do because of the current distribution model.”
But Premiership clubs voted to ban the use of plastic pitches from 2026 back in June and Swinney stressed they will need to shell out a seven figure sum replacing their artificial surface if they do go up.
He anticipates it will become more difficult for second tier clubs to survive in the top flight when they win promotion in the future if the solidarity money is withheld.
“It would help,” he said. “The recent ban on artificial surfaces is making it even more of a closed shop. If we are successful in getting promoted, we're going to have to spend £1.2m converting our UEFA Champions League standard pitch into a grass pitch. That’s how much it's going to cost us.
“Our reward for being promoted will be a bill for £1.2m. It is an absolutely colossal amount of money for most clubs in Scottish football. Not only is the financial gulf between the Championship and Premiership widening, but they've also now put in another major hurdle for us to overcome.
“If we do go up, having to spend £1.2m will reduce our ability to compete. It makes it even more challenging for us because we've got this huge barrier in our way. All in all, we're talking small money. But the UEFA solidarity payment would certainly make life a bit easier.”
