by Simon Hughes
Television companies spotted the shift. The Football League received £6.3 million for a two-year agreement in 1986 but when that deal was renewed in 1988, the price had risen to £44 million over four years. During negotiations, ten clubs, led by ‘the Big Five’ (Arsenal, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur), threatened to leave and form their own ‘Super League’ but were eventually persuaded to stay. The main obstacle, as they saw it, was their affiliation to the Football League, which had organized league football for over a century.
The common basic narrative thereafter reads that in 1991 the Football Association ratified a plan to set up a Premier League. Starting in the 1992–93 season, its long-term aim was to reduce the number of games for top players to help the England team and to take maximum advantage of the commercial opportunities that an elite competition would bring.
In 1992, First Division clubs resigned from the Football League en masse and formed the Premier League as a limited company working out of an office at the Football Association’s then headquarters in Lancaster Gate. According to Parry, who was appointed as the Premier League’s chief executive in the February of that year, it was a chaotic period.
‘Ken Bates, Doug Ellis, and Ron Noades – there were some big personalities involved in the initial meeting and arriving at a common agreement was challenging to say the least,’ Parry remembers. ‘Disagreements were breaking out about the way the new league should be run and Sir Philip Carter of Everton acknowledged that a chair should be appointed in an attempt to try to bring a level of decorum. Unfortunately, I did not duck my head quickly enough.’
Parry produces a photograph on his mobile phone of a piece of Ernst Young letter-headed paper, which became a legal document detailing the agreement between the founder members. Parry says agreement was only reached after two chairmen from Premier League clubs had ‘chased each other around the room’, arguing with one another as they tried to find a resolution.
‘Symptomatic of the lack of trust, someone suggested we should write down what had been approved and have everybody sign it before we left the room. So I wrote out the constitution – one page of eight points, simplicity. You see the problems that FIFA have had in recent years and a lot of that is down to the sheer complexity and opacity of how the sport is run. The constitution of the Premier League was very transparent and revolutionary in world football in as much as that each club had a vote on key issues and there were no subcommittees; it couldn’t have been simpler. It was completely logical and the sort of thing you’d do if you were starting with a blank piece of paper. It was so eminently sensible, it was bound to work – although we didn’t expect results overnight.’
The division of money from any forthcoming television deal was the constitution’s most significant point.
‘You might forget that the concept of regular live football had only started on British television in 1983,’ Parry explains. ‘For the first half of 1985, because of a fall-out between the Football League, ITV and BBC, there wasn’t any football on television at all. There was a total deadlock over the contract. When you think now of the coverage, it’s incomprehensible that such a thing could happen. It was a warzone, with clubs arguing over how the money should be split, bigger clubs wanting a bigger slice of the pie, one fudged decision after another. I realized we had to find a way to satisfy everybody’s interests. The big clubs still wanted most of the money because they drove the audiences, while the smaller clubs, the Wimbledons for example, argued that the Premier League should be like the NFL, where the money is shared equally. The opinions were opposite and unrealistic. The solution was to share 50 per cent of the TV revenue between all of the clubs, 25 per cent would be shared on the basis of the number of appearances on TV and the remaining 25 per cent based on league performance. It’s a pretty smart formula and I can say that with confidence because it has remained unchanged. Few things in football remain unchanged.’
Terrestrial station ITV were favourites to win the new deal.
‘The bigger clubs were wedded to ITV; the smaller clubs were opposed to ITV,’ Parry says. ‘When we had the final vote for television rights in May 1992 – just three months before the launch of the Premier League – it went through 14–6, instead, in favour of Sky, which is the bare minimum you need for a majority vote in the constitution. Had it been 13–7, I don’t know what would have happened. The remarkable thing is, two clubs abstained. It turned out to be the biggest decision for English football in modern times yet two decided not to vote. It was a secret ballot, so I have no idea about the identity of those clubs, although I have my suspicions, as one chairman chose to send his secretary instead, which I suppose reflects priorities. I often wonder where football would be today had the vote gone against Sky. It was the tightest of decisions and there was a lot of resentment and bitterness between the clubs. The big clubs were not at all happy.’
Parry believed that Sky presented the better option for the future of football, even though it meant that its coverage was pay-per-view.
‘Previously, ITV had bought 100 per cent of the product and thrown 95 per cent of it away. If you’ve got rights, you should always have obligations and responsibilities as well. ITV showed just eighteen live games a year and the ITV season did not start by definition until September or October. From the start of the season and for the eight weeks that followed, there was no live football on television. How can that be right? At the very least you have to have one live game a weekend if you’re going to tell the whole story. And then you ask: what did they do in terms of promoting the game? The only football show was Saint and Greavsie. Sky promised us they’d create a channel devoted to sport. We’d never seen anything like that before. Sky only had two hundred thousand subscribers but they were ambitious and very convincing. And they delivered on their promises.’
Parry was aware of the way football was viewed. The Conservative government feared its union-like power to mobilize lots of people.
‘Remember, football was on the verge of getting beaten into submission by Thatcher. Its reputation was really, really low. The other big challenge the clubs had was the Taylor Report after Hillsborough, which meant that stadiums had to be all-seater. Where was the money coming from for that? Football was on a downward slope. The clubs were losing money; there was hundreds of millions to find. You have to remember it wasn’t as if Sky invented the Premier League; we were already there. We were looking to transform and take control of our destiny.
‘Sky were a risk,’ Parry continues. ‘They were on the verge of going bust. They were haemorrhaging cash and looking for something to give them a boost. What could be better than football, a live unscripted drama, to boost your ratings? They really gambled the house on the Premier League – an all or nothing bet. Sam Chisholm, who was first chief executive of Sky, a great character, a hewn-out-of-granite New Zealander, described the relationship between Sky and the Premier League as the greatest corporate romance of all time. And he is probably right.’
The first deal Parry helped broker with Sky as well as the BBC, who took the Premier League’s highlights package, was worth £42.5 million a season between the twenty clubs. The previous one, across all ninety-two league clubs, which included coverage of the League Cup, was worth just £11 million. When a second deal was agreed in 1996, the fee soared to a whopping £170 million a year, a 400 per cent increase.
‘They were astonishing step-changes,’ Parry admits. ‘We were much pilloried at the time and I became public enemy number one – something that I had to get used to. The Premier League was the pariah of Europe for having sixty live games on pay-per-view television. This was going to be the end of football. UEFA used to call it the “so-called English model”. It’s pretty rich now when you think nearly every game in the Champions League – a competition organized by UEFA – is on pay TV.’
That the Premier League’s inaugural competitive season was conducted without a sponsor was indicative of the other problems Parry fac
ed. Ken Bates, the notorious Chelsea chairman, gave an interview where he claimed he was going to his farm to spend time with his pigs, a ‘better class of people’, after the biggest clubs formed a voting block, with Chelsea left on the outside of that group.
There were fierce debates on the issue of Sky screening live Monday-night football. Parry said Liverpool were strongly against the idea, with David Moores arguing it was against the interest of supporters. Oldham Athletic were one of the clubs in favour.
Parry learned diplomacy.
‘I’d never describe myself as a politician,’ he says. ‘What you had to be was a good listener. What you couldn’t do was fudge and compromise, try to please everybody. That’s why I certainly wasn’t a politician. Otherwise, the Premier League would have imploded before it even began. You have to stick to certain principles while trying to cajole and persuade those who are doubtful. [You have to] get everybody to see sense, the greater good.’
He gets asked all of the time if he feels any sense of pride in the way football is covered by Sky now, with the astronomical sums of money involved. In 2015, Sky won a major power battle with BT Sport as the Premier League broadcast rights were sold in a staggering £5.1 billion deal for three seasons.
‘Sometimes you look back and think we created a monster, with the twenty-four-hour news stations. Sometimes with the countdown to the transfer deadline, it’s so over the top you think, Just leave it. But if we were going to transform football, we needed to take it to new audiences and there’s an inverted snobbery about how it shouldn’t appeal to other people. Why not? Why shouldn’t it be universal? Why shouldn’t we have different cross sections of society inside the stadiums? Why shouldn’t there be a safe environment and capacity attendances? I only wish live football was more accessible to children.’
Arsenal were favourites to win the first Premier League title. Instead, Manchester United overturned twenty-six years of fallow league history by lifting the new trophy for the first time in May 1993. Gallingly for Parry, he handed over the trophy to United’s captain Bryan Robson at Old Trafford. Video footage shows the cranes behind the Stretford End. United were ready to capitalize on their accomplishments in a way Liverpool never were.
‘Liverpool were very much part of the Big Five who were driving the change. David Dein of Arsenal was unquestionably the main voice and the most persistent. He kept cajoling the Big Five. Liverpool were right in there but it was tricky for them because Sir John Smith, the chairman, was on the Football League management committee. So Peter Robinson and Noel White were the leaders and totally, totally supportive of the drive towards Premier League football.
‘Yes, United cottoned on to the change more rapidly. Martin Edwards deserves a lot of credit for transforming United but you have to still bear in mind he was on the verge of selling to Michael Knighton in 1989, a deal that fell through at the eleventh hour. It wasn’t as if United had a strategic plan. They said, “Let’s see which way this goes; let’s form a public company and float it.”
‘United rode a perfect storm; they did it at exactly the right time. Were they smarter, with more foresight than anyone else? I don’t think so. I remember speaking to Martin in those early days and looking out across Old Trafford. He was telling me how they were buying up land from the Trafford Park Estates. They were investing in space, enabling them to make the stadium bigger. This was one of the things that held Liverpool back for so many years, with Anfield being in a residential area and the ownership issues surrounding that. United were better placed because they were surrounded by wasteland rather than family homes. But they did at least have the foresight to appreciate that.’
At the Premier League, Parry knew he had a prime job for as long as he wanted it, having completed the two biggest television deals in history. He was missing something in his career, though. Saturday was a day off and usually he attended games as a guest. ‘I saw the buzz of winning and losing, the excitement of being at a club at the sharp end of results. The greater challenge.’
Parry was approached by an unnamed Premier League club and was close to being appointed as their chief executive. ‘But then I thought, if I am going to join a club it has to be Liverpool. I knew Peter Robinson really well and he’d told me that he realized one day he would have to plan for his successor. So I called him out of the blue and said, “Peter, I’d quite like your job.”’
Robinson was respected as one of football’s most efficient administrators, having run Liverpool on a day-to-day basis since Bill Shankly’s time as manager. So much needed doing at Anfield, however. In the aftermath of the Taylor Report, the stadium had been upgraded yet there remained a desire to expand. The club wanted to revolutionize its youth system, moving away from the old Vernon Sangster sports centre and playing fields in the shadow of Anfield to a modern site elsewhere. The team also needed rebuilding. By 1997, there was a feeling on the board that it might be time to replace the manager, Roy Evans, a son of the fabled Boot Room.
Privately, Robinson had decided to retire in 2000 but that was still three years away. At a board meeting, Robinson suggested that it might be prudent to recruit Parry, admitting that although his farewell would be long, a gradual changeover would be beneficial to both Parry and the club.
Parry’s first defined project was dealing with the academy.
‘Liverpool had already bought the land in Kirkby and in my last year with the Premier League I’d worked with Howard Wilkinson on the charter for quality, defining the expectations for new academies. As I’d written the rules, it was logical that I’d take this on. Liverpool invested more than £12 million in the project, which was a huge sum of money, greater than any figure they’d spent on a player. Liverpool had seen the great work that Steve Heighway had done previously, bringing through Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen and Jamie Carragher. Rightly, the club had a lot of faith in Steve and wanted to back him as much as they could.’
There were no other specific mandates.
‘But it was made clear that the target for the club was to win the Premier League,’ Parry says. ‘The requirement was to at the very least be a contender. We did not want to be out of the running in November. There was no financial brief of how much money the club should earn. David [Moores] wanted to win the league because that was the point of the club’s existence. Every day’s work was geared towards making that happen. Silverware mattered. We took the cup competitions seriously and wanted to win trophies as well. It wasn’t good enough to throw everything at the Premier League.’
Within twelve months of Parry’s appointment, Parry and Robinson would not be the only pair sharing a job inside Anfield. The chairman, David Moores, had agreed to remove Evans as manager only to change his mind at the last minute.
‘Nineteen ninety-seven to ninety-eight was a disappointing season, although to be fair to Roy [Evans] it would have been considered a very pleasing season today, with Champions League qualification being secured – although the basis for sealing that has changed completely since then and that cannot be ignored. We were way off being where we wanted to be. So we discussed at length – over weeks and months – what we were going to do to get back up there rapidly and stay there. Chelsea and Manchester City did not have lots of money. The playing field was a lot more even than it is now. At least every club was deriving revenues from football rather than massive influxes of investment. Getting into the Champions League was easier and we saw that as a launch pad rather than a goal.
‘The original thinking was to try to bolster the existing staff. Ronnie Moran was retiring, so it was a chance to bring in new ideas and refresh the coaching. The debate evolved into one about making a further step. We looked at the impact of the Champions League and how the game was developing internationally and realized we needed someone with a Continental pedigree as manager.’
Tom Saunders was the first person to mention Gérard Houllier as a candidate who could help improve Liverpool. Saunders had served in the British army in No
rth Africa during the Second World War and after returning home he became a head teacher at West Derby Comprehensive, close to Liverpool’s Melwood training ground. When, in 1968, he became youth development officer at Anfield under Bill Shankly, it was the first appointment of its kind in English football.
‘Tom was very much the wise elder statesman. He offered tremendous football knowledge and at that time was the link between the boardroom and Melwood. He was the greatest of individuals. He recognized Gérard’s achievements in France and was convinced that he was up on current trends: what was happening in Europe, identifying the key players abroad.’
Parry knew Houllier through his work with the Premier League and had travelled to Paris to canvass opinion on Continental youth-development programmes.
‘Gérard was always unfailingly helpful and sparing with his time. I was a massive fan of his. It was very important too that he was an Anglophile. [He] spoke the language, knew Liverpool, had lived and taught here, and most importantly understood the values of the club. That was massively important. Gérard was a great find.’
The recruitment of Houllier was complicated because he’d already received offers to manage Celtic and Sheffield Wednesday. Initially, Liverpool were only prepared to offer him a coaching role.
‘Gérard clearly favoured Liverpool but he was also clearly keen to come in and manage. He didn’t want to be an assistant and he didn’t want to sit upstairs.’
Parry speaks about the managerial job-share that followed as an ‘experiment that ultimately failed’. He pauses in order to find the answer as to why it did not work out and why Roy Evans eventually approached the board first about resigning.
‘Liverpool being Liverpool, I think it was a genuine attempt to bring in something new while preserving the best of the old. I guess for a variety of different reasons it became clear early on that it was going to be, to say the very least, challenging to make it work between Gérard and Roy. But let’s be clear: nobody was trying to make it not work. Nobody was trying to sabotage it. Nobody was trying to undermine it. It just didn’t work.’