Football’s man in the middle: the Premier League CEO on keeping the peace

Passions have always run high in football. But when Richard Masters became the Premier League’s chief executive he surely never expected to be the target of a billboard campaign or face claims he was part of a sinister-sounding “red cartel”.

His broad remit includes continuing the English competition’s rapid growth, which has made it the most-watched football league in the world. Masters has to strike broadcasting and commercial deals to keep the game’s elite clubs flush with enough cash to pay the best on-pitch talent. And he has to keep the peace between the league’s 20 ultra-competitive clubs, whose owners range from Gulf petrostates and US billionaires to professional gamblers and a Greek shipping tycoon.

Maintaining that harmony has proved tricky in recent years following a lengthy investigation into alleged breaches of financial rules by some clubs. By far the most serious charges have been levelled against Manchester City. Some fans of the Abu Dhabi-owned side are believed to have been behind a mobile billboard criticising Masters that was parked outside the league’s London headquarters last October during a meeting of club chief executives. On it, the club crests of Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United (the so-called red cartel members) and Tottenham Hotspur were displayed under the heading “Richard’s Masters”.

Everton and Nottingham Forest have had points deducted in recent years. Being a punch bag for supporter anger online and on radio phone-ins cannot have been pleasant; even notable Manchester City fan Noel Gallagher called for his resignation. “The flipside of the popularity of the Premier League . . . is that it’s heavily scrutinised and everyone has a view,” Masters says, carefully. “You just have to accept it.”

“I don’t enjoy it,” he admits of the criticism, before adding a painful-sounding coda: “You just have to let it pass through you and move on.”

It is two years since Manchester City was accused of more than 100 breaches of Premier League rules, with the club and its rivals waiting for an independent commission to rule on the charges. The identities of the three-person panel have been kept secret, presumably to avoid them having to endure their own billboard campaign (or worse). A verdict could come any week. “I literally cannot say a word about it,” Masters says.

Others are more forthcoming. Javier Tebas, Masters’ counterpart at La Liga, said at the FT’s Business of Football Summit last week that the Spanish league had filed a complaint against City to the European Commission, claiming the way the club is funded breaches EU competition law. City has not commented on the matter.

A judgment would not mean the end of the saga, which has cast a shadow over several seasons of City’s success on the pitch. If the club is found to have breached the rules, the independent panel will not decide on sanctions: that will be a separate process and the club — and the league itself — will have the right to appeal.

So the dispute will rumble on and fans will, presumably, continue to cry foul. Does Masters worry it has damaged the league? “There is no happy alternative to enforcing the rules. The Premier League will survive the impact of all of this and come through it.” It certainly has not derailed its commercial success. The latest UK television rights deal was sold to Sky and TNT for a combined £6.7bn over four years, while international media deals have raked in more per year for the first time ever, lifting total commercial revenues to £12.25bn.

“The broadcast partners, fans around the world, our new sponsors have great confidence in the Premier League,” Masters says, sounding like the marketing man he once was. He got his break in another sport, having ditched life as a trainee surveyor (“I didn’t like that at all”) to work for an advertising agency before ending up running marketing for the England and Wales Cricket Board. There followed a stint at the English Football League, which runs the sport’s lower divisions, before he landed at the Premier League in 2006, where he worked under former chief executive Richard Scudamore.

When Scudamore stepped aside in 2018, media executive Susanna Dinnage was picked to succeed him but backed out. Then David Pemsel, former chief executive of Guardian Media Group, was appointed but quit before he had even started after The Sun splashed its front page with a story — which was later retracted — about his private life. Masters was named interim boss and, ultimately, CEO. “Sitting here today, it doesn’t really matter to me how it happened. I’m so delighted to have had the opportunity to do it.”

He is guarded, calm and doesn’t give much away but maybe that is what is required when you have to manage 20 egos in fierce competition with each other every week. Premier League accounts show Masters’ pay package was more than £1.8mn in 2022, a small fraction of what his peers running US sports leagues can make. “It’s just a different market,” he says, rather wistfully. Presumably he wouldn’t say no to the multiple millions that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell receives every year? “$42mn,” he says (it’s actually closer to $64mn). “Not that I track it or anything.”

The great arrival of foreign ownership in the Premier League began under Scudamore, when buyers such as Roman Abramovich bought their way into English football’s top table. The Russians have gone but the international trend has continued under Masters; 15 of the league’s 20 clubs now have overseas owners. “We are neutral to the geographical map of our ownership. However, we’ve always been, like UK plc, open to foreign investment”, which has been “good for English football”.

These owners hail from different markets with different expectations: major US sports, such as American football, are run on a closed franchise model with none of the relegation peril found at the bottom of the Premier League. Some fans lament this influx of often distant international buyers but Masters defends it. “There has been a temptation to think that because the Premier League has 10 American owners and 15 who aren’t from the UK, that somehow the history and traditions of English football would be eroded from the inside. That hasn’t been the case.”

“Our international owners understand and respect the history and traditions of the game and football culture. In 10 years’ time the Premier League will probably look quite similar but will have changed quite a lot at the same time.” What changes does he anticipate: American klaxons calling time instead of the referee’s whistle? “No, but I think technology is obviously going to be part of it. We haven’t quite wrestled the AI revolution to the ground yet.” He points to the evolution of video assistant referees, a bugbear of many supporters who hate the lengthy delays that slow down the action. “I believe in VAR and I believe it will get there . . . I know with fans perhaps the jury’s still out.”

Masters has other items in his in-tray beyond the looming result of the Manchester City investigation. The UK government has committed to creating a new football regulator to ensure clubs are run sustainably and that revenue is properly distributed from the Premier League down to the other professional and amateur leagues that make up the English football “pyramid”.

Masters has accepted the regulator is coming but is concerned about over-reach and the uncertainty it could create, particularly over a proposed “backstop” power that will give it the ability to intervene in payment negotiations between the Premier League and Football League. The Premier League gives £1.6bn to the rest of the “pyramid” on a voluntary, negotiated basis, more than any other sports league. That money helps ensure newly-promoted clubs have the finances to compete and that relegated teams do not go to the wall after exiting the top flight.

He is worried any uncertainty might deter investment and limit the ability of clubs to “create the competitive edge that English football has”.

The UK government does not want to limit the Premier League’s success, he says. But there is a “lack of clarity in the bill . . . we think improvements can be made. A light-touch regulator that works with the leagues is going to be better for the long-term aspirations of the whole pyramid.

“Our job really is to create a regulatory system that generates growth, that is pro-aspiration, but within a sensible, monitored, and regulated system.” It sounds like Sir Keir Starmer has just entered the room. “We just want to get the balance right.”

There are other battles to be fought. Fifa, football’s world governing body, keeps adjusting the international match calendar and “release protocols” for players, meaning more games and more injury risk. There is a “complete lack of consultation”, he says. The Premier League and its peers in Europe have started legal action, claiming an “abuse of dominance” by Fifa.

But every now and then, fans and football authorities come together. When a group of clubs — including the ones who wear red shirts — said they would join a proposed European Super League three years ago, the outcry was intense and the plan was swiftly dropped. “Fans, authorities, the government, pretty much everyone rejected the idea. We’ve changed our rules and learnt lessons.” And no chance of the Premier League turning into a US-style closed contest with fixed membership? “I don’t think that’s necessary or desirable,” says Masters. Fans can rest easy for now.

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