The Carabao Cup is dying – this radical new format could save it
It's time to reform the cup before it gets knocked out.
It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to deduce how the League Cup died.
Clues have been liberally scattered throughout recent seasons pointing to a competition that feels increasingly more like a nuisance than a joy.
Managers display as much enthusiasm for the cup as they do for a VAR call ruling their striker's toenails offside. Pep Guardiola famously told reporters he didn't want to "waste any energy" on the tournament and explicitly stated he was starting his "second team" in a cup match. Accordingly, starting line-ups are patchworks of forgotten men and tomorrow's boys.
Their disdain is effectively endorsed by boardrooms across the land. The winners, who may have fought through six rounds prior to the final, are rewarded with a cheque for £100,000. Owners stand more chance of earning that cash via an appearance on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? than a gruelling, multi-month football tournament.
Why should Premier League chairmen care about the cup, given that it wouldn't even cover the weekly salary scooped by 2025 final match-winner Alexander Isak? Why should they care when the prize money for finishing one place higher in the top flight is worth roughly £2.7 million? Why should they jeopardise a minimum financial reward of £100 million by simply existing in the Premier League by exposing their star striker to another game that could shatter his ACL?
Of course, that's all well and good for Premier League and relatively cash-flush Championship teams, but what about the League One and League Two outfits who rely on varied competitions for cash? Well, few of them truly benefit anyway, certainly not on a consistent annual basis.
Just four teams from League One and League Two have reached the quarter-finals in the last 10 years. Each of them collected a meagre £15,000 for their exploits, apart from Burton who stunned the nation by making it to the semi-finals where they were thrashed 9-0 by Manchester City at the Etihad. They took home a £25,000 windfall.
There are other financial incentives along the way. Scoring a big tie away to a Premier League giant or a big stadium can add zeroes to a club's bottom line. However, the ultimate result of everything above leads to the big problem: a total apathy towards the early rounds of the cup from fanbases who should feel they can win it. And that harms the all-important gate money. There's no point drawing a Premier League team if their fans swerve the tie.
After the first half of the Carabao Cup third round in 2025/26, approximately 500,000 bums have occupied more than 1,000,000 combined seats across 60 matches. When people say grounds look half full, they're almost statistically correct.
Apathy is most apparent when focusing on Premier League teams, who – like it or not – should be the headline acts in this competition. They should be the star attractions, drawing in big crowds to enjoy their big talents. But they're not.
The Fans' View on... the Carabao Cup
Jay Mottershead, Stretford Paddock (Manchester United)
Carabao Cup 2025/26 second round
(L2) Grimsby Town 2-2 Manchester United (PRM)
Grimsby Town won 12-11 on penalties.
There’s been quite a few lows as a Manchester United fan in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era but few were quite as egregious as watching the Reds being dumped out of the Carabao Cup by League Two Grimsby Town.
It may seem like sour grapes to be knocked out in the second round of any cup competition and then claim it’s actually the competition and not United that needs changing, but in this case maybe both things can be true.
While the open-heart surgery the United side requires is a much-talked-about topic, and rightly so, those debates can be saved for another day. There’s the other question of whether the Carabao needs a shake-up – and it’s a valid one. It is in real danger of becoming even less than an afterthought.
The winners tend to finish high enough in the Premier League to have qualified for the Champions League, so the carrot of Conference League qualification for those who lift the trophy is rendered meaningless.
In its defence, it remains the first opportunity each season to lift silverware and the final is still a trip to Wembley, but could the joruney be a little more enticing?
Would a Champions League spot for the winner escalate its importance or maybe even fixtures abroad? Perhaps the powers-that-be could use it as a petri dish for some innovative ideas regarding new rules – multiball matches anyone? No? OK, fair enough.
Does the Carabao need a shake-up? Maybe, though not as much as the United squad. One rule they could change is that teams from League Two aren’t allowed to win against Premier League opposition, that one would’ve saved me and many other Reds a lot of angst…
Everton attracted over 48,000 excited fans, giddy to soak up their new Hill Dickinson Stadium, but they are an outlier compared to other Premier League teams. Sunderland shut several of their stands for their clash with League One Huddersfield despite selling out every home game in the top flight. However, their 22,000 crowd still ranked as the second-highest attendance in the competition this term.
Wolves attracted just 19,000, Brentford welcomed 15,000 albeit in a much smaller ground than others mentioned, Fulham dropped to just 11,000. Of the 51 teams to host a Carabao Cup match this season, only 14 grounds were filled above 50 per cent. Premier League new boys Burnley lodged the 25th-highest attendance with a paltry 7,019 fans in tow for their clash with Derby.
This is not an attack on fans. The cost of living is up, prices are high, there's enough football in enough forms to satiate all appetites and every match is also shown live on Sky Sports. The Carabao Cup is seen as an unnecessary expenditure for many, and an opportunity for tourists, casual fans and That YouTube Video Blogger You Hate to scoop easy tickets to big grounds usually rendered inaccessible to many.
The question remains: how do we fix this? Because despite the above, the League Cup remains a fixer-upper, not a structure consigned to demolition. From the quarter-finals onwards, it becomes rather exciting indeed. Just ask Newcastle fans. It remains one of just a few fleeting opportunities for teams outside the European elite to actually win something. The early rounds need a revamp, an injection of novelty and jeopardy.
Is it a simple case of upping prize money? Not entirely. Indirectly, a significant uplift may trigger a chain reaction from boardroom to dressing room if the competition is financially worth it. Greater cash, greater stakes, greater need to start greater players, greater interest from fans. But that wouldn't solve all the competition's woes.
Football authorities have toyed with the idea of hosting matches abroad in other competitions. Could the Carabao Cup set itself apart from the FA Cup by being played across the globe? Potentially, but travel logistics in an already-cramped schedule would almost entirely knock that idea on the head before it took flight.
Rather than scattering our 92 across the globe, I propose full-throttle regionalisation. It has already been implemented for the opening two rounds and is a nice way to enhance the odds of big away followings and derby clashes, but the principle could be taken further. NFL fans know it makes sense.
Imagine a competition starting with a single preliminary knockout round featuring a blend of Championship, League One and League Two teams to arrive at a lovely number of 64 teams. They would be divided into a pair of 32-team Carabao Cup North and Carabao Cup South conferences. Eight groups of four in each. Three matches per team.
Taking the northern strand as an example, the winners of each group would advance to regionalised northern quarter-finals and semi-finals before a showpiece Carabao Cup Northern Final hosted at a neutral club stadium in, you guessed it, the glorious North. The winners are handed the Carabao Cup trophy, they celebrate long into the night, they've done it, kings of the North. Hurrah!
The Fans' View on... the Carabao Cup
Gav Henderson, Roker Report (Sunderland)Carabao Cup 2025/26 second round
(PRM) Sunderland 1-1 Huddersfield (L1)
Huddersfield won 6-5 on penalties.
The problem each club faces is that we are all fighting our own battles and have our own reasons for why we may or may not take the competition particularly seriously.
Moving the League Cup to later in the calendar would benefit clubs like mine who have no choice but to prioritise Premier League football early in the season.
If we get to January and Sunderland are sat in the top half, way clear of the relegation zone, I'd imagine we'll take the FA Cup seriously, and that can only be a good thing for the competition and the clubs taking part.
The northern champions would then face the southern champions in an ultimate showdown at Wembley. Or this one could be exported around the globe on a rotational basis. Football's very own Super Bowl – a battle of champions.
You might hate that specific vision, it's not without flaws, but if the League Cup is to survive, it must become more than a pale imitation of the FA Cup, played in the exact same format without the non-league fairytales. A radical reshape would give the League Cup an identity of its own, and offer clubs a tap-in when it comes to marketing.
If clubs know they have three guaranteed group matches, they could include them in the cost of a season ticket with an opt-out clause. If the matches are pre-loaded onto a season card, fans will show up, but it's a tall order to ask those already shelling out hundreds to shell out more midway through a campaign. Three-match passes could be sold at a reasonable price. The prospect of leaping straight into the quarter-finals from a group would raise the stakes and capture the attention of the punters once again.
There are countless ways to shake up the cup, this could be one of them. What is certain – without reform, the League Cup is likely to find itself knocked out.
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Authors
Michael Potts is the Sport Editor for Radio Times, covering all of the biggest sporting events across the globe with previews, features, interviews and more. He has worked for Radio Times since 2019 and previously worked on the sport desk at Express.co.uk after starting his career writing features for What Culture. He achieved a first-class degree in Sports Journalism in 2014.
