Football's moneyed goliaths win another round

The FA and Premier League have agreed to scrap FA Cup replays from next season, sparking a cacophony of outrage from lower-league clubs, commentators and fans. The backlash is a barometer of concern about how the commercial success of the PL is shaping the future of a game played by close to 12 million people in the UK.

By Matthew Brooker

One of the most memorable goals in English FA Cup history came in a February 1972 replay when Hereford United footballer Ronnie Radford ran forward on a muddied field and drove the ball 30 yards (27 meters) into the top corner to equalize against top-tier Newcastle United, sparking a pitch invasion by home fans of the non-league club. Hereford went on to win and knock out Newcastle, a team containing six internationals, in perhaps the greatest-ever FA Cup upset. It will never happen again.

The Football Association and Premier League have agreed to scrap FA Cup replays from next season, sparking a cacophony of outrage from lower-league clubs, commentators and fans. Ties will henceforth be decided by penalty shootouts when teams are still level at the end of extra time. The decision was a “disgrace,” the chief executive officers of lower-tier Bolton Wanderers and Tranmere Rovers said, decrying what they described as a backroom deal reached without consultation. Trevor Birch, CEO of the English Football League, which represents professional clubs outside the Premier League, called the abolition of replays “frustrating and disappointing.”

The strength of the reaction is a bit surprising. A precedent for the change had already been established: In 2018, the FA dropped replays from the fifth round onward, when there are 16 teams remaining. The FA insisted that it had consulted and that all parties had accepted replays would have to go. Simultaneously, it made adjustments designed to reinforce the prestige of the tournament (formally, the “Emirates FA Cup” after its sponsor) and buttress revenues for smaller clubs — increasing the number of matches broadcast in the early rounds, before Premier League clubs enter, and scheduling all games for weekends instead of during the week.

The backlash is a barometer of concern about how the commercial success of the Premier League is shaping the future of a game played by close to 12 million people in the UK. The abolition of replays may seem like a relatively minor change; it touches a raw nerve, though, inflaming festering anxieties over how the financial interests of a small group of multibillion-dollar clubs is dictating policy throughout the football business and eroding cultural traditions that underpin the popularity of the sport.

The FA Cup, created in 1871 and the oldest national football competition in the world, is the best opportunity that smaller clubs get to take on the giants of the game. Land a tie with a member of the Premier League elite like Liverpool or Arsenal and a revenue boost is guaranteed; avoid defeat and the payday is doubled. A replay can be worth £800,000 ($1 million) in combined gate receipts, broadcast payments and prize money — a rounding error for a club like Manchester United, which had revenue of £648 million in the year through June 2023, but potentially transformative for an outfit like Tranmere, with revenue of £5.45 million and a loss of £1 million in the same period.

The trouble is that the top-flight clubs don’t want these extended encounters — and with good reason. They face a congested schedule that is getting ever busier, with the European Champions League to be expanded next season and FIFA, global football’s governing body, planning a 32-team Club World Cup that will hold its inaugural event in June 2025. These international contests are much more lucrative than playing a club from England’s lower leagues.

There is an issue of player welfare here, admittedly. The more games footballers play, the higher their likelihood of injury for club assets valued in the tens of millions of pounds. But the pretext rings a little hollow when you consider that the changes announced last week included the scrapping of the Premier League’s winter break, which was designed to enable player recuperation.

The FA Cup has lost cachet in recent years with the proliferation of rival sporting, entertainment and broadcasting options. In your correspondent’s younger days, it felt as though the nation stopped on the day of the final, held in May, with much of the day’s television schedule given over to the buildup to the Saturday showpiece.

Public fury may partly be driven by nostalgia for that lost world. It also reflects a cultural attachment to inclusiveness. Britons love to cheer for the underdog, and they celebrate the “romance” of a cup competition that allows football’s Davids to take on — and occasionally even strike down — the game’s Goliaths. The same impulse was behind the mass outrage that thwarted an attempt by six Premier League clubs to join a closed-shop European Super League in 2021. That aborted endeavor prompted the government to propose the Football Governance Bill, which will establish an independent regulator and has its second reading on Tuesday.

The review that foreshadowed the legislation talked a lot about the football “pyramid” — a word that featured in many of the responses to last week’s replay decision. The image denotes recognition that, while the money might be concentrated at the top, football is an ecosystem that is held up by a much wider base of participation. The law aims to ensure a fairer distribution of resources through the structure.

That’s a tall order. In a world in which football clubs change hands for billions of dollars, there’s less room for romance. The independent regulator may make some difference at the margins, but reversing the overall trend remains a long shot — longer even than Ronnie Radford’s thunderbolt half a century ago.