At least one Premier League club is hatching a plan to charge stakeholders such as Sky Sports and BT Sport for manager and player interviews.
Commercial chiefs at a top-six side want to deny broadcasters the free access they currently get to their star names unless they are willing to pay for the privilege.
Sky are stumping up £4.1billion for five of the seven live packages in the current domestic TV rights deal, while BT are paying £960million for the other two.
Yet that isn’t enough to satisfy greedy officials, who believe broadcasters should have to pay extra for face time with members of their management staff and playing squad.
The club want to introduce the interview levy ahead of the 2019-20 season when the next TV rights deal begins.
One proposal would see the additional interview charges worked into that deal and if other clubs agree to follow suit then it could end up costing broadcasters even bigger fortunes than those they spend already.
The last TV rights deal, which kicked in at the start of this season, saw Premier League clubs land a £10.4bn windfall.
It consisted of £5.3bn for domestic rights and £5.1bn for overseas.
