Club is unhappy with how proceeds are distributed

iFollow EFL football league

League One football club Accrington Stanley wants to leave the EFL’s iFollow OTT platform.

Club chairman and major shareholder Andy Holt has writted an open letter to EFL chairman Rick Parry, signalling the club’s desire to no longer have the club’s matches streamed through the platform.

If Accrington goes ahead with this, it will still have to pay a royalty on all sales of subscription products which returns to the EFL, except for UK Match Passes, where the selling club retains 100% of net revenue, as all EFL clubs are bound by its broadcast agreements.

In the letter, Holt lists his points of contention with the OTT platform, with his major issue being how its income is distributed to clubs. He also claims that the club did not originally want to join iFollow but was threatened with a loss of income if it did not, and that he was not given proper notice of when a league-wide vote on the issue was going to take place. It is understood that Accrington Stanley were represented at the Conference where the vote took place, and received both the advance papers and a subsequent survey which was used for some voting.

Holt states that he would be happy with the iFollow platform if income was split in the same way as the competition’s TV deal, or if the home club got the income from each match.

For context, Colchester United chairman Robbie Cowling explained how revenues were split during the pandemic in September 2020, revealing that at that point larger clubs would earn more money than smaller clubs even when playing away from home. Cowling explained that the home team keeps all revenue from passes bought via its website, as well as the first 500 bought via the away team.

In the case of one match against Bolton that month, Colchester sold 452 passes while Bolton sold 2,252 - meaning that Colchester only received income from about 35% of the passes despite being the home side. 

Last summer the EFL revealed that its 72 clubs received £42 million between them from the iFollow platform during the 2020/21 season, with over 360,000 fans from 175 countries using the service during a season in which supporters were unable to enter stadiums for large parts. It did not reveal how those revenues were split between the clubs, except that revenues from iFollow are distributed divisionally rather than split across the entire league, so that income stays in the division it was created.

You can read the full letter below.

Andy Holt Accrington Stanley EFL iFollow letter (2)

Andy Holt Accrington Stanley EFL iFollow letter

•    Accrington Stanley were represented at the Conference and received both the advance papers and the subsequent survey.