Crystal Palace has become the fifteenth English football club to win a European title after beating Spanish club Rayo Vallecano in the Conference League final. It’s a significant achievement for Palace, but the club’s success will have wider reverberations across the league next season.
For the second season in succession England will have a record nine clubs in European competition. Arsenal, Man City, Man Utd, Villa and Liverpool will play in the Champions league; Bournemouth, Sunderland and Palace will compete in the Europa League, while Brighton has qualified for the Conference League.
The Premier league has earned an extra firth place in the Champions League due to England’s ‘coefficient ranking’, used by UEFA to calculate how clubs perform in Europe, with the better performers gaining additional places. Palace earn a place in the Europa for winning this season’s Conference.
While there are the same record number of nine teams in Europe next season as last, there is one significant difference as four teams next season are in the Europa League, which plays its matches on a Thursday. This means that those teams cannot play a match the following Saturday. So, assuming those four teams are not playing each other, in a league of 20 teams and 10 matches a weekend, four out of ten will not be able to be played on Saturday, and will have to move to Sunday or Monday – and that is before factoring in matches being selected for television.
The upshot is that it could be commonplace that only three or four premier league matches are played in the traditional Saturday 3pm slot next season. This will not please a great many traditionalists.
It also complicates the selection of clubs for televised matches. With nine teams unable to play on Fridays or Mondays during European weeks, only eleven teams are able to play on those days. Broadcasting rights holders inevitably wish to select the most ‘attractive’ matches to televise, meaning the likes of Spurs, Newcastle and Chelsea being significantly more likely to be chosen than Coventry, Ipswich or Hull. This will result in even more matches for those selected teams moving from Saturday afternoons. So Tottenham fans, for example, will need to get used to far more Friday and Monday games than they usually have.
However, the flip side to that for supporters of the clubs not in Europe is that they should have an advantage in the Premier League by not playing so many games and having the distraction of Europe. For the major clubs, their squads are big enough to handle the additional games, but for the likes of Brighton, Sunderland and Bournemouth it could become a tricky season, especially if they suffer some injuries to key players.
A further advantage coming for clubs that haven’t qualified for European competition is the new system of financial regulation which is being introduced into the Premier League from 1 July. The new regulation replaces the metrics used from profit and sustainability to ‘squad cost ratio’. This basically means that the more clubs earn, the more they can spend. For the Premier League, clubs are limited to spending 85% of revenue, with a potential to spend up to 115%. This will apply to the eleven teams not in Europe.
However, UEFA has decided to limit clubs in its competitions to 70% of revenue, with the intention of trying to level the playing field and giving different clubs the opportunity to qualify for Europe. This will be a major advantage for the eleven clubs not in Europe, and especially for the likes of Tottenham and Chelsea who have huge revenue.
What all this amounts to is that we may be witnessing a slow, but steady changing of the guard in English football. This season two of the three promoted clubs to the Premier league avoided relegation, while of the three being promoted into the Premier league for next season, only one was relegated the previous season. While the fans of Wolves, West Ham, Southampton and Leicester may not agree, having new clubs compete at the top end is refreshing to see, and is one of the reasons why the Premier League is considered the best in the World – and long may it continue.
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David Little is a Partner at Bishop & Sewell in our expert Sports Law and Corporate & Commercial
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The above is accurate as at 3 June 2026.
The information above may be subject to change. The content of this note should not be considered legal advice, and each matter should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
