New UEFA Financial Regulations - Football Expenses Must Not Exceed 70% of Club's Income

mazhar13

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  • New name: "financial sustainability regulations"
  • Conflicting interests
    • Some teams, including those with wealthy owners, wanted up to 85%.
    • Others, including multiple German clubs, wanted an even lower limit than 70%.
  • Teams can exceed the ratio by $10M as long as they have healthy balance sheets and not broken the rules in the past.
  • If the rules are broken, the following sporting and/or financial penalties may apply (including but not exclusive to):
    • Fines
    • Expulsion from the competition
    • Relegation to a lower-tier UEFA competition (e.g. CL to EL or EL to ECL)
      • Reminder: from 2024 onwards, the UEFA competitions will be league-based for the first phase before entering the knockout stages
The new regulations are a little bit tighter than what used to be present (where clubs were allowed to spend a little more than what they earned over a number of years), but just like the original FFP regulations, these don't do much to curb the bigger clubs' spending, especially since the revenues are continuing to increase. English teams, in particular, will continue to be able to spend their money unless they really screw up. The Italian teams might face some trouble unless they make their finances more sustainable, which they're slowly going towards.

We'll see if UEFA will even properly enforce this. They failed to properly enforce the rules against PSG when they were found to breach the rules whilst they enforced them for less rich teams (including AC Milan at the time).
 
I'm sure they'll be properly and rigorously enforced.
 
It's no different to any other form of taxes club's will find sufficient ways to balance the books.
 
Wonder if we'll see a lot more sketchy loan deals as a way to get around contract amortization
 
Big Ben Foster said:
Wonder if we'll see a lot more sketchy loan deals as a way to get around contract amortization
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If the loanee will pay the majority of the wages, then I can see this working, but I don't know how many clubs would be willing to pay the majority of the wages. There are also clubs like PSG and Real Madrid that spend a huge, huge amount on wages and struggle to offload their players as a result.
 
Skills said:
Wait, so where does the other 30% go?

Owners?
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Non-football expenses such as investments into the facilities (stadium, training ground, etc.), women's/underage teams, or other non-footballing ventures (such as the basketball teams)
 
70% is a very high number.

Not only will there be a thousand loopholes but very few clubs will be above that number even without loopholes.

Might as well have done nothing at all.
 
Fines are pointless because the clubs that will break these rules don't care about fines.
 
Skills said:
Wait, so where does the other 30% go?
Owners?
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Beat me to it. First thought.
Powderfinger said:
70% is a very high number.
Not only will there be a thousand loopholes but very few clubs will be above that number even without loopholes.
Might as well have done nothing at all.
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Seems a low number to me. I want my club to spend as much as possible of its earnings on 'football matters'.
Though I agree about loopholes, this is all designed to protect the existing big clubs from newcomers in the first place. Real won't be touched.
 
mazhar13 said:
Non-football expenses such as investments into the facilities (stadium, training ground, etc.), women's/underage teams, or other non-footballing ventures (such as the basketball teams)
Click to expand...

If your revenue is close to £600m a season, you're not going to manage to spend £180m every single season on stadium, training ground etc.

If you look at our numbers from 2019 (i.e. pre-covid effected seasons)

Revenue : 620m
Amortisation + Wages: 462m
= 75%

That's an extra 5% in dividends baked in for the Glazers.
 
adexkola said:
Intra-league salary caps + revenue sharing, or I hope this gets wrecked and discarded (pending when power is seized)
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European League's will have salary caps around the same time, the owners start lifting trophies before the players.
 
Apprantly City heard about this and are preparing a new £3bn, five year deal with Etihad. All above board of course.
 
Skills said:
European League's will have salary caps around the same time, the owners start lifting trophies before the players.
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Scenes when the Glazers accept the PL trophy and hand to Hannibal in the 2029/30 season

This regulation does nothing to level the playing field. It entrenches the advantages of the big traditional clubs. If inequality is accepted then feck regulations like this and FFP
 
Dave Smith said:
Apprantly City heard about this and are preparing a new £3bn, five year deal with Etihad. All above board of course.
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They'll just start paying players off the books - if they're not doing it already. Expensive gifts in Abu Dhabi where they can't be audited or checked.
 
Skills said:
If your revenue is close to £600m a season, you're not going to manage to spend £180m every single season on stadium, training ground etc.

If you look at our numbers from 2019 (i.e. pre-covid effected seasons)

Revenue : 620m
Amortisation + Wages: 462m
= 75%

That's an extra 5% in dividends baked in for the Glazers.
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I was pointing out examples of various expenses that can apply to teams outside of the football operations. They don't have to be massive revamps; they could be the introduction of, say, new medical equipment, the installation of new cameras, new tracking devices for the players, etc. Obviously, this won't happen every season, but it's not like the remaining 30% is all going to the owners. The clubs still need to pay for regular maintenance, other non-footballing staff, energy bills, etc.

In our case, that extra 5% is likely to go to the Glazers given that they require external motivation to invest into the club. I do hope that this would go into our future cash reserves for further investment, but I wouldn't expect that with our current ownership.
 
adexkola said:
Scenes when the Glazers accept the PL trophy and hand to Hannibal in the 2029/30 season

This regulation does nothing to level the playing field. It entrenches the advantages of the big traditional clubs. If inequality is accepted then feck regulations like this and FFP
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Agreed. FFP is stupid. I have no issue with owners deciding they'd like to invest their own money into a football club - all FFP did was make the mega rich owners, try and bypass the regulations by faking income sources for their clubs.

The intent behind FFP should've been to stop the QPR situation where an owner spends big & then leaves the club saddled in financial debt. But there are better ways to address that than FFP.
 
This is so stupid and won't work, just make a wage and transfer cap please. I would love a wage cap that rewards loyalty. My proposal is every year a player spends in a club means 5% of his wage can be deducted from the cap. If a player joins at the age of 6 then he costs nothing towards the cap when he is 26 giving a team a ''wage spot'' for a potential star transfer. That would incentivize promoting local talents instead of filling teams with mediocre and expensive transfers. I think this would greatly rebalance football again and I think it's really needed. The best teams have historically been formed around a great generation of local talent and then making a few crucial transfers. These days it often feels like the other way round with the best teams made of only transfers and 1-2 local talents.
 
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Korwas said:
This is so stupid and won't work, just make a wage and transfer cap please. I would love a wage cap that rewards loyalty. My proposal is every year a player spends in a club means 5% of his wage can be deducted from the cap. If a player joins at the age of 6 then he costs nothing towards the cap when he is 26 giving a team a ''wage spot'' for a potential star transfer. That would incentivize promoting local talents instead of filling teams with mediocre and expensive transfers. I think this would greatly rebalance football again and I think it's really needed. The best teams have historically been formed around a great generation of local talent and then making a few crucial transfers. These days it often feels like the other way round with the best teams made of only transfers and 1-2 local talents.
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That's damn clever. There must be complications, but I like the principle.
 
Korwas said:
This is so stupid and won't work, just make a wage and transfer cap please. I would love a wage cap that rewards loyalty. My proposal is every year a player spends in a club means 5% of his wage can be deducted from the cap. If a player joins at the age of 6 then he costs nothing towards the cap when he is 26 giving a team a ''wage spot'' for a potential star transfer. That would incentivize promoting local talents instead of filling teams with mediocre and expensive transfers. I think this would greatly rebalance football again and I think it's really needed. The best teams have historically been formed around a great generation of local talent and then making a few crucial transfers. These days it often feels like the other way round with the best teams made of only transfers and 1-2 local talents.
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This is sort of like what the NBA has with the Bird Rights, where teams could award loyal players higher salaries. I wouldn't mind having something like this set up in football. The only problem is that the player unions would need to be supportive of wage caps. If they aren't, then I don't know if they'd ever be implemented.
 
Lack of contractual and transfer transparency will always hurt European football. If such limitations are to be setup, especially as it relates to expenses such as player wages and agent fees, then everybody should be in the clear about who makes what, for how long, and what bonuses are attached. This is so cut and dry in many other pro sports across the world.
 
Korwas said:
This is so stupid and won't work, just make a wage and transfer cap please. I would love a wage cap that rewards loyalty. My proposal is every year a player spends in a club means 5% of his wage can be deducted from the cap. If a player joins at the age of 6 then he costs nothing towards the cap when he is 26 giving a team a ''wage spot'' for a potential star transfer. That would incentivize promoting local talents instead of filling teams with mediocre and expensive transfers. I think this would greatly rebalance football again and I think it's really needed. The best teams have historically been formed around a great generation of local talent and then making a few crucial transfers. These days it often feels like the other way round with the best teams made of only transfers and 1-2 local talents.
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Yup. City have already proven 70% or 50% or any percentage means fecking nothing. They’ll just sponsor themselves again, and if they get caught, well, as per, feck all will happen.
Newcastle will already be planning the same.
 
Powderfinger said:
70% is a very high number.

Not only will there be a thousand loopholes but very few clubs will be above that number even without loopholes.

Might as well have done nothing at all.
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It's not nothing, assuming they acted in good faith (EUFA) 70% means no sugar daddy club.

Newcastle owner might be rich, but they can't just inject money and their actual income is still small (bar foul play off course)
 
Won't they just inflate the income with creative sponsorships.
 
Korwas said:
This is so stupid and won't work, just make a wage and transfer cap please. I would love a wage cap that rewards loyalty. My proposal is every year a player spends in a club means 5% of his wage can be deducted from the cap. If a player joins at the age of 6 then he costs nothing towards the cap when he is 26 giving a team a ''wage spot'' for a potential star transfer. That would incentivize promoting local talents instead of filling teams with mediocre and expensive transfers. I think this would greatly rebalance football again and I think it's really needed. The best teams have historically been formed around a great generation of local talent and then making a few crucial transfers. These days it often feels like the other way round with the best teams made of only transfers and 1-2 local talents.
Click to expand...

Hasn't it been said this would basically be illegal under EU regulations? Probably the main reason why UEFA hasn't tried to go this way.
 
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