The Premier League’s move from Profit and Sustainability Rules to the Squad Cost Ratio takes effect for the 2026/27 season. Clubs approved it in November 2025. The final PSR assessment lands this spring. From next season, a club’s permitted spend on wages, transfer fees and agent commissions is capped at 70% of football-related income for clubs in European competition, and 85% for clubs playing only domestically.
SCR is not a finance reform, it is an operating change
Most coverage has framed this as a finance reform. It is not. It is a change in how commercial revenue translates into squad capacity, and it puts the commercial team inside the sporting equation for the first time.
Under PSR, commercial revenue was a P&L contribution measured over a rolling three-year window. Under SCR, every additional pound of football-related income directly increases the club’s permitted spend on the pitch in the same period. The CCO’s pipeline is now effectively a sporting input, rather than a finance line item.
The CCO is now part of the squad equation. The clubs that operationalise that first will, in two seasons’ time, look like they are out-performing their commercial size.
That sounds like a structural advantage for clubs with strong commercial functions. The problem is the calendar.
The calendar mismatch most clubs have not solved
We work with Premier League clubs and their stadium campuses on how off-field revenue is built and operated. The pattern is consistent. Major partnership deals run on planning cycles of 12 to 18 months. Transfer windows run on 6 to 8 weeks. The two have never needed to be synchronised, because the link between them was indirect. Under SCR, the link is direct, and the calendar mismatch becomes a real cost.
Why short-cycle revenue is now worth more per pound
There is a second-order point worth mentioning. Long-cycle revenue, multi-year partnerships, broadcast distributions, and naming rights, is now in some ways less valuable per pound than short-cycle revenue. Matchday hospitality, dynamic ticket yield, in-window partner activations, retail spikes. The short-cycle revenue shows up where it can move squad spending. The long-cycle money shows up where it cannot.
That is not an argument for walking away from long-term partnerships. It is an argument for building the operating layer that lets commercial revenue be recognised, attributed and converted on the same calendar that sport actually runs on.
The work we are doing on this
That is the work we do at Earl . It is also, for the avoidance of doubt, where most clubs are at least 18 months behind where SCR will need them to be by next August.