Premier League are giving Everton £10m less prize money than Man United despite finishing above them

Everton have had an uneasy if not outright hostile relationship with the Premier League in recent years. To many Toffees, Manchester United are ring leaders of its so-called ‘red cartel’.

When Man United had around £75m worth of ‘exceptional costs’ related to Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s part-takeover and revenue lost during the pandemic approved by the Premier League, it helped them comply with 2023-24 Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) and convinced some that they had received special treatment.

After all, there had been no allowances of that scale when Everton were hit with two separate points deductions for breaching PSR in 2021-22 and 2022-23, had there?

The truth, TBR Football understands, is that there was very little backlash within the football finance industry, with executives accepting that the exceptional costs were legitimate.

And when the Premier League comes to assess compliance with PSR in 2024-25, Everton will likely be given the same grace for costs associated with Dan Friedkin’s takeover.

At one stage, there was genuine antipathy between the Premier League and Everton, who felt they were made an example of during their PSR troubles. The accusation was that the league wanted to prove to the government that they could self regulate – and there was certainly some truth in that.

Everton later sided with Manchester City in their fight against the Premier League’s Associated Party Transaction (APT) Rules.

Incidentally, the Toffees eventually switched sides, but one of the outcomes of that case was that the league rewrote its rules on interest-free shareholder loans, of which Everton were the biggest recipient at the time.

Had it not been for Dan Friedkin, who converted the loans from Farhad Moshiri to equity after he bought the club, those borrowings could have now had a nominal fair market value rate applied for PSR purposes under the new APT Rules.