They don’t call the Championship play-off final the richest game in football for nothing.

Such is the disparity between the riches of the Premier League and the relative frugality of the second tier of English football that the top flight has become a financial promised land.

England may be the most obvious example, but the dynamic is replicated across the main European leagues.

Football is a results business and there is no better way to balance the books than by winning promotion or avoiding relegation. 

It is the reason why Europe’s top five leagues, with the exception of the Bundesliga, introduced the so-called parachute payments to help soften the financial blow of relegation.

Unlike in England, Spain and France, where the payments are tied to broadcasting revenue, Serie A clubs receive a pre-determined fee upon relegation.

The three relegated teams can split up to €60m (£50m) between them and are divided in three categories depending on previous performances in Serie A. If the total parachute payments are less than €60m, the remaining amount rolls over to the following season.

Clubs who are relegated to Serie B after spending just one season in the top flight are classified as Tier A club and receive €10m, while those who have spent two of the previous three seasons – even if not consecutive – in Serie A are considered Tier B clubs and entitled to €15m compensation.

Clubs in Tier C, meanwhile, have spent three of the previous four seasons – even if not consecutive – in Serie A and receive a €25m payment.

For example, last season Frosinone received €10m, while Sassuolo and Salernitana pocketed €25m each. 

As it stands this season, Monza and Empoli would pocket €25m each, while Venezia would receive €10m.

According to Calcio e Finanza, the 28 clubs that received parachute payments over the past decade pocketed an average of €15m, a figure which amounts to 40% of the average turnover for a Serie B club.

The figure, however, is some way short of covering all the operating costs, including player salaries and amortisation which averaged €31.5m over the same period.

From a financial standpoint, relegation results in a 24% drop in annual turnover on average to €37m, while costs remain stable and losses after taxes go from an average of €9.6m a year in Serie A to €11.6m in calcio’s second tier.

Serie B clubs face a 19% shortfall despite the parachute payments. In layman’s terms, the income drops drastically, while the expenses remain broadly unchanged.

The numbers speak for themselves. 

Serie B’s current TV rights deal with DAZN is worth around €13m per year over the next three years, a drop in the ocean compared to the €900m the DAZN-Sky partnership has paid for Serie A TV rights for the five-year period 2024-2029.

The value of the Serie B TV rights is also marginal when compared to €75m that Serie A paid into the division’s coffers last season within calcio’s so-called “mutuality framework”.

Introduced in 2008 by the Melandri Law to ensure sustainability across Italian football, the rule stipulates 10% of the amount Serie A receives from TV rights must trickle down the calcio pyramid.

For the 2023/24 season, this figure stood at €130m, of which approximately €75m went into Serie B, with €27m to the Lega Pro and €13m each to the National Amateur League and the FIGC (the Italian FA).

Parachute payments in Serie A were lower than those handed out by the Premier League to clubs relegated to the Championship, which are directly linked to TV revenue.

The payments are made over three years with clubs receiving 55% of the Premier League’s basic broadcast revenue share in their first year after relegation, a figure which drops to 45% the following year and then to 20% if the club was in the Premier League for more than one season before relegation.

This season, parachute payments rose by 10% with Burnley, Sheffield United and Luton Town each receiving £49m (€59m) after returning to the Championship. 

The disparity in parachute payments is broadly in line with the chasm in the value of TV rights between England and Italy.

In December 2023, the Premier League signed a record £6.7bn domestic deal which will cover the four years from the 2025-26 season and be worth £1.67bn per year.

To put the figure into context, that works out to €2bn a year, compared to Serie A’s €180m per season. 

Similarly, the most recent deal signed between the EFL and Sky Sports is worth a record £935m over five years to be divided across 72 clubs, with Championship clubs to get an extra 46% in TV revenue.

But parachute payments have often been a source of debate. In England, EFL chairman Rick Parry described them in 2020 as “an evil that must be eradicated” for contributing to a widening gap between the clubs that received them and those that did not.

Two years ago, a report from Sheffield Hallam University found that 40% of the clubs receiving parachute payments between 2016 and 2021 were promoted to the Premier League club over the five-year period.

As a result, the soon-to-be-introduced independent football regulator in England will have the power to crack down on parachute payments.

The numbers paint a broadly similar picture in Italy, where parachute payments have not been as thorny an issue as they have been in England.

A quarter of the 28 clubs relegated between 2014 and 2024 – excluding Livorno and Parma who went bust – returned to Serie A at the first time of asking, either through automatic promotion or the play-offs.

Half of the 28 teams relegated took part in the play-offs but missed out on promotion, while 21.4% of the teams failed to reach the play-offs. Benevento were the only team over the 10-year period to be relegated to Serie C.

This season has somewhat bucked the trend, because while Sassuolo have all but sealed a return to Serie A, Frosinone are closer to the relegation play-offs.

Salernitana are faring even worse and could become only the second team in the past decade to be relegated twice in a row.

In short, don’t be surprised to see one of Serie B-bound Monza and Venezia back in the top flight sooner rather than later.