The Stupidest League In World Football 

As a Preston fan I'm looking forward to another season of us having an under the radar start to the season, everyone else suddenly noticing we're 6th around December, a section of our fanbase demanding we spend millions in January but instead signing a young striker on loan who scores enough goals to give us hope of a playoff place, having a run of draws/defeats around late March and finishing about 12th.

you guys are lucky, Serie B in Italy still doesn't have a clear schedule because there are 4 teams fighting in court for 2 spots😂 the fixtures say "X" and "Y" instead of the names of the teams involved

I absolutely LOVE going to watch EFL Championship games and I’m a QPR fan, so that’s saying a lot. Despite us losing SO MUCH, the atmosphere and standard of football on the whole, is enjoyable to be around and it makes the wins even sweeter

"That might sound a bit technical, what with it being a technical analysis afterall" never change Alfie😂

"Broken pipes, broken tools, People bending broken rules" Yeah... That really deserved that Nobel prize for literature. 😳

Brilliant journalism as ever Alfie. Well done.

As always another brilliant analysis - thank you so much. I have always been told that the promotion to the EPL final at Wembley is the most valuable game in sports. No wonder it invites gamblers all around.

"Welcome to Blokhus" had me rolling, as it is A: Located in Denmark B: is home to a club that recently was embroiled in so much controversy and chaos (Jammerbugt) that it could compete with quite a few EFL tragedies over the past couple of years

This is insane. I'm Brazilian and follow the Premier League, and, to a lesser extent, English football as a whole, for over a decade, but didn't know any of this. Very informative and interesting video, thanks. I just think, if you're willing to take a suggestion, that you should've made the informations in the video more visual.

Except for Argyle. Not a penny of debt now, will still be zero at the end of the season. Fabulous owners, best manager below the Prem. The other clubs are basically, erm, cheating.

The actual football has become incidental to the finances. Most people would be as well watching 22 guys playing the Stock market.

Rotherham United were heralded by financial experts last year as being the smartest run club in the division, because they were the only club that functioned within their financial means. They are mocked, ridiculed and overlooked by almost every other club in the division. Interesting to note that you only show one picture relating to Rotherham United and that's an image to represent all clubs that are favourites for relegation. The narrative being that Rotherham are just naturally too small to compete, rather than the fact that they are working to a sensible financial model whilst surrounded by "big" clubs spending money that they don't have.

The real financial scandal is that Alfie has single handedly built the best football channel on RU-vid and he doesn’t even own it

You didn't mention that last year, 2 of the teams who had just been relegated made a complete hash of it and were nowhere near promotion (Norwich & Watford). Only Burnley went up, and although they spent money, that was from transfers as they lost nearly all their team.

This is your best yet Alfie. No fat on this video at all mate, and very well researched. As a Scottish fan there's a certain amount of schedenfreude, but not much. My club (Partick Thistle) has came close to extinction a couple of times and there's a horrible feeling of powerlessness (even before you touch on the grief of having no club) that comes with that. I'm wondering how realistic fan ownership is in England. That's the only way to break up the oligarchy which is infecting English football from top to bottom (and aye, I'm looking at Wrexham too, no matter how likeable Reynolds is) and also the only way of safeguarding their club's future, even if it's as a lower league team for a while.

parachute payments are making this league a bit of a joke as teams like southampton as noted had players ward-prowse, tella, alcaraz, and lavia playing for them against sheffield wednesday. they won that game with 80% of possession. This also happens with other relegated teams like watford norwich and sheff utd who also kept their best players and went back up

As a finance graduate, your football finance videos are genuinely my favorite in all of youtube. You help everyone understand the impacts of transfers and league table finishes on teams and leagues as a whole. Keep up the good work and analysis Alfie.

Then there is Preston and Bristol City had my chuckling!

17：42 Thanks for the Singapore mention, would love a video about Singapore soon, love from Singapore 🇸🇬❤

Hang on a minute, you've missed a huge caveat with Parachute Payments. No club gets PPs until the end of the season and if the team that's due PP's get promoted, the PPs get distributed across the teams in the EFL instead. So two teams getting promoted at the first time of asking means £88m gets distributed across the EFL.

Enjoyed the video, plenty of work evident in the stats compilations and nicely put together with the background images. As a Leeds Utd fan football finances are always top of my personal concerns!

When I've played this division in football manager the complete lack of prize money boggles my mind. No idea how teams are meant to progress sensibly and gradually, there's no reward for doing anything other than gambling on promotion.

God, the start of the video was pure gold. Love that you are a fellow Dylan fan Alfie, much love from Buenos Aires

"Oh a new HITC Sevens video I wonder if Alfie would mention Bob Dylan and at what time... ah." That should be a new record of zero seconds Alfie!

"That's enough money to convince Jordan Henderson to sell his soul to the devil." - Quote of the year.

what a treat watching a banger alfie video on a slow weekend. cheers mate love your work

I look forward to your videos every day. Exceptional work as usual. Youre doing great work and absolutely dwarf corporate football media with the quality of your content

If you play this.on mute its just photos of random players and managers faces staring at you for 10 seconds at a time

This is why I hope Lutons promotion last season from Championship might be a sign that you don't have to spend millions but have the right players with right attitude. Hopefully if we stay up in premier league other clubs may follow suit

Thanks for this. As a Wigan fan in Japan, I’ve been frustrated by the seemingly revolving door of ownership combined with apparent mismanagement. I became a fan when they won promotion to the Premiership. My British friends were fans of the big 6 clubs, wanting to join the conversation I chose Wigan. And I’m glad I did. Beating City in the FA was and is a highlight. Your video helps to explain some of the difficulties Wigan has endured these recent years. I would appreciate you doing a similar analysis of Wigan and their financial situation.

Anyone who plays football manager knows how crazy the parachute payments are when you get a small team promoted you just have too get in the prem get the 80m tv rights and get relegated and repeat for 2-3 seasons

I think right now the parachute payments are about 300 million over 5 years It’s INSANE

For the freshly relegated clubs: "financial restraint would only result in a less competitive and more uneven division." I don't understand this at all. Would it be possible for these parachute payments, instead of only going to the three clubs that are relegated, to be shared between all of the league's teams? (This arrangement heavily favors those clubs to succeed and be promoted obviously.) Sorry if that is a dumb and/or naïve question, but would it not level the playing field and avoid the inequality that seems to be such a problem? While also reducing the debt of all the clubs at least by a little bit? Thank you for the video!

I think your videos are fantastically inciteful and I appreciate seeing your well researched viewpoints. As a Norwich fan I felt personally attacked, obviously. gg. thanks Adam Idah :)

This is a Certified Hood Classic ⚽️

Unpredictable as taking a car journey with Kaitlin Jenner 😂😂😂

Brasileirão Série B and EFL Championship are the most competitive leagues in the world, change my mind.

Money has killed football. Before the 90's countries outside the top 5 leagues of England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France could on many occasions reach a European final, Cup Winners Cup or Uefa Cup. I think Real football fans enjoyed that. Now it is mostly the top 5 leagues l mentioned who compete in the finals. I will end by saying I really enjoyed this video.

Alfie's been working up to this one for a while. Brilliant, unflinching stuff.

Another great video by Alfie. Keep up the quality content!

West Brom fan here, I look forwards each season to being bottom 5 after 5 games, being top 5 by Christmas, hovering around 7th-10th between February and April, then sometimes making it into the playoffs and losing, and sometimes getting promoted to instantly get relegated again the following season.

3:31 let's just talk about how absurdly beautiful these lads are

We've been saying this over and over again, if you want Association football to be a healthy stable sport, you going to have to adopt a lot of NFL practices. At the very minimum, Salary Cap(and Salary floor) need to be instituted for every level of the EFL, including the Premier League. You are going to have to adopt full revenue sharing, including equal TV monies, no more rewarding the top team with more money than the rest. You are going to have to institute Rookie contracts, the payday should come when they are in their mid 20s not when they are 16. You are going to need to institute very real financial controls into these leagues, you cannot let marginally solvent entities run up a massive debt every year. If you don't fix this, then your sport ecnomy is going to collapse, and MLS is going to feast on their carcasses, because they, won't go insolvent, because they don't overpay, and they don't run up a debt.

Great video, but could you do another video on teams that are in the championship but aren't living beyond their means like Rotherham, who are one of the only clubs not in debt.

The issue is the same everywhere in Europe: The first league is overly expensive/lucrative (depending on your perspective). For any team it's a huge blow to be relegated from the first league. And most clubs are in debt. That's why they fall in the first place. Then they go down to second league, get far less money from licenses, go deeper into debt, need to sell the most valuable players, weakening the roster even further and if they don't immediately go back up into first league the very next season, they are in deep trouble.

With the new season quickly approaching g it would be a great time to do a video I've been requesting for ages.. worst debuts ever. You could mention what happened in their debut match followed by if it had a detrimental impact on their time at the club or even their career. Jaoa Félix stands out at Chelsea. Thanks as always for the great video

It sounds like they need a format similar to the MLS. A salary cap with the Beckham rule to curb the outrageous spending these teams do. Maybe instead of receiving a parachute payment on relegation, they get a payment on promotion to help the new teams compete better in the EPL.

I think this must be the fastest Bob Dylan induction we have ever had on the people channel

Nice pic of everton there when talking about prem teams on shaky ground 🤣

Completely agree with the vid, brilliant as always. But when we went up in 2019, the losses we made were due to promotion bonuses for the players, which turned out to be huge. Had we not gone up, our losses would've been minimal.

What are your thoughts on the EFL play offs? Cause many people believe it should be scrapped but personally for me I love the drama that unfolds in it

Plymouth Argyle are back in the Championship after about 13 years. We're one of the smallest clubs in it. I don't know what's going to happen but I can only hope for mid table security and obscurity rather than another bankruptcy.

There's a Bob Dylan song for every HITC video.

One of your best ever videos. Gives a great insight into what's really going on behind the scenes. Keep up the good work Alfie!

Welp you’ve smashed the algorithm with this one, and a great video to back it up so well done

One of your best videos in my opinion. Your cunning narrative seemed to peak in this one. I loved it! Poor Championship.

I used to look forward to opening videos of yours when I saw an upload. Far too often now I get to the end and look at the upload length to see how long I've wasted listening to you say a lot of words but say nothing. The channel has seemingly devolved in to bitter feeling rants about vague overarching ideas like *ooh money bad*, peppered with language like "hegemony" with absolutely no discussion or investigation in to comparisons and solutions. - What do the 10 next biggest Leagues in terms of revenue pay to their relegated Clubs? - What's the difference between those Leagues' percentage of relegated Clubs & their subsequent re-Promotions in comparison to the Premier League/Championship? - Is the rate of Club's going out of business similar or different in the Comparison Leagues to the Premier League/Championship? - Even expand that to the Top 100 Leagues in the World to get a more in-depth comparison and analysis. - Based empirically on the results where do parachute payments rank on their effectiveness? - Offer up solutions or tweaks that could be made and explain why they'd work better & what the potential pitfalls are. All of these points are just scratching the surface on how you could have made this video be actually worthwhile to watch. Saying over 25 minutes that "parachute payment bad because it makes other Clubs spend more & ignores their personal Club choice and all the benefits of parachute payments to try and make a personal opinion sound like a fact" is not.

You bring up valid points. I do have a selfish counterpoint though. As Leicester City fan, we've been pushing for European football the last few seasons and upgraded our player salaries accordingly. We missed out on Europe in 2012-2022 then that plus the financial impact of COVID hurt our bottom line and we couldn't afford new players. That was only 1 reason why we got relegated and there was many others. Now that we are though, we have players on salaries of a team in Europa League challenging for Champions league in the EFL championship. Without parachute payments my club may be at risk of folding. Again I agree it is not fair and teams like Hull get the short end. The best solution is to bring the Championship closer to Prem broadcasting but without that it seems like and either or. You either risk the Prem teams getting relegated like Leicester folding or Championship teams pushing beyond their means. Either way it sucks...

Great work 👍👍👍i hope you do a documentary on why Liverpool FC boos the national anthem

Football finance in general is so unsustainable

"Broken pipes, Broken tools, People bending broken rules" Thats a line from baggy trousers by madness isn't it?

Same applys for Germanys Tier 3 League, Most Clubs spends also far more Money, they had to climb Up to at least, the Second Bundesliga and its also crippeling the League a Lot.

When are you doing a report on the argentine first division league. That will teach you the true boundaries of "stupid"

As I hungarian I can confirm... That I'd love if Singapore was attached to us

remember being a huddersfield fan and thinking parachute payments being so unfair and then we got relegated from the prem and didn’t see a single penny from parachute payments and i wonder. if the parachute pavements were just about covering the wages of some of the players. left over

And then there’s Preston and Bristol City 😂😂😂 The accounts for Luton’s last two seasons have included no significant player sales, which for a club of our size is exceptional, but I still think that the losses will be relatively small, and as the gamble of promotion paid off, don’t expect ridiculous spending in the Premiership. 🧡🧡🎩🎩

Love the Everton pics at the most applicable content discussing relegation. If we don't get our shit together, we'll be in need of those payments this season. That said, I agree with the premise.

Wigan were ultimately docked 6 points last season (the latter three a few weeks after the conclusion). They’ve also been docked 8 points for this season. They are an interesting study. Basically, two occasions on which “affluent” foreign owners have scarpered within six months of winning EFL1.

Honestly, I love your narration voice Alfie, it is 1 of a kind

As a Reading fan this is brilliant. The reason we've had so many problems is because we tried to make the premier league with ridiculous salaries for the league and it was totally unsustainable. The league is so unfair with the parachute payments

Another great video, mate. Very informative. Cheers! Have a nice one.

Norwich were champions in 18/19 without parachute payments? Also showing our stadium when talking about financial insecurity when our whole model is about not spending outside of our means and being financially secure is odd tbh

Keep the parachute payments and then have a limit on wages vs revenue percentage with the parachute not counting towards said revenue. Thoughts?

I mean the flipside is what you have in North American sports where, despite revenue sharing, you have teams that are reluctant to spend money on payroll (cough, Oakland A's, cough) and then end up relocating anyways (cough, Oakland A's, cough) because there's no incentive to win and no peril if you lose lol

Another top video mate. Any chance you can do 7 implications of the new World Club Cup in 2025, what it will mean to FIFA in their cold war with Uefa, the prize money, television rights, player welfare fitness etc. Thanks again for all the great content.

Can we get an episode based on the Gibraltar 2nd division some seriously dodgyness going on as u well know 😊

As a Watford fan I’m looking very much forward to another season of signing more managers than players. I’m thinking 6-7 managers this season

It’s difficult. You make the case for reducing or removing completely parachute payments but I think they’re necessary for clubs to still be able to pay the high earners they could afford in the premier league but can’t offload when relegated. Perhaps there should be a rule that it’s only to be used to pay players from their premier league squad, not any new incomings. Also, as a Wigan fan, I think our situation both times was a bit different to what you suggest in the video when you lump us with other teams facing difficulty.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Highest standard of second tier football anyhwere in the world? That's what our 2. Bundesliga claims to be!

The fact you havent done one of your documentory style video on the histoory of wresxham and the hollywood tske over But if you have point me in that direction

The problem is that if you give them more money, they'll just spend more on players. Sadly, it might just have to be that the teams themselves have to spend reasonably and wait for karma to come around for those who won't.

as a wednesday fan who has seen us battle it out with these teams 8 or so years ago, it just feels absurd that southampton can reject £35mill bids for players and we have to struggle around with embargo’s and points deductions. Parachute payments are not fair play and it’s getting to a point now where i never see us getting close to promotion

Loved the analogy between broken Britain & the Championship, inspired work 😊❤

Praise should be given to Clubs like Rotherham who are one of a few actually sustainable clubs at this level

The creation of the premier league ruined English football. If only people had protested it with the same energy as they did with the super league then perhaps English football wouldn’t be in this state

@HITCSevens do you get cease & desist emails or fines for using getty images in your videos? Asking as another creator

Without sky and bt English football would totally collapse

Fact check: Norwich City also were not in receipt of parachute payments in the 2018/19 season. Not that it would have altered the point you were making at all. I will say, unless I'm mistaken, that a lot of those losses from promotion seasons likely include massive promotion bonuses, only paid out due to the massive expected increase in revenue in the PL. Feels slightly dishonest not to mention that, again even if it doesn't really change the point of the video.

Massive rewards that only a few can get, that everyone bankrupts themselves to try and achieve. EFL Championship is the greatest metaphor for capitalism conceivable.

Thankfully Birminghams new owners also purchased the ground back as well .

Lol at that dig at Preston/Bristol.

neutral fan, but newer fan since in the united states we have never really had the championship broadcast but espn plus has had it a couple seasons now and i do enjoy the smaller settings for the most part yes i know some of the stadiums in the championship are premier league sized and even bigger than some premiership grounds anyways the smaller stadiums have cams and mics closer to the fans and really pick up some excellent trash talking lol and obviously you hear the singing better.

However, the German second tier has the highest viewing figures :D

Can we please have a video about Maltese Football? Thank You

If Mark Corrigan agrees, so do I!!!

I live in the US and i’m in love with the lower tiers of football. But i feel like if there were more televised games, and if they were easier to access, they would have that extra money that they are constantly losing. it’s not EPL but it’s such a great league to watch. Give me an EFL package on a streaming service and i’m sold! I’d rather watch The Championship than The Saudi League.

Preston north end and Bristol city😂😂😂

Thing is the idea of just getting rid of parachute payments doesn’t fix this all that will do is force clubs that go down to go bust or be forced to sell at any cost more than likely resulting in the same outcome. The problem is the amount of passive income from tv revenue it so much and obv no secret that clubs are forced to pay too whack for salary’s and players which is fine for your super clubs but just creates this cycle of spending and bust to everyone who ain’t

The name the championship is really an oxymoron here because it gives the impression that its the highest tier of the football pyramid when its only the 2nd highest behind the EPL and when someone wins the championship they are merely gaining promotion to the EPL rather than being champions of the entire football pyramid so its very misleading it was once called the 2nd division which is far more accurate a description of the league being the 2nd tier of English football

Video idea: Greedy XI v Not-Greedy XI. Basically people who jumped to Saudi Arabia, China, or demanded crazy wages to sign a new contract, vs people who turned down Saudi Arabia or China or took pay cuts