A Long Article on the Grim Financial State of Football

Soccer: Is European football eating itself - ESPN
UEFA, European soccer's governing body, will implement its Financial Fair Play scheme by the 2012-13 season. It will ban teams that spend more than they earn from continental competitions. Clubs like Chelsea and Manchester City would be in danger of missing out on the tournament, the Champions League, that they spend so heavily to gain access to.
For anyone interested in a solid review of the economics of the biggest clubs in the football world, click on the link above and give yourself some time to read.  For those not interested in the entire thing, I've extracted one paragraph related to UEFA's attempt to legislate some fiscal responsibility.  Assuming that Chelsea and Citeh are employing some of the highest profile players in the world and that they may well not meet UEFA's requirements, would you feel that the Champions League was significantly devalued by their absence?  Would you still watch knowing that there was an "uncrowned" potential champion sitting at home forced to watch from afar?

I'm curious to know if fans worldwide are willing to support UEFA if they try to create some financial sanity or if audiences will vote "no" to the changes by paying less attention and thus costing UEFA money in the form of reduced audiences in person and on television.


10 comments:

  1. G-man5:06 PM

    Soccernomics has a fascinating chapter on runninf soccer club as a business. Highly recommended reading!

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  2. well City aren't in it now and it doesn't appear to be adversely affecting the audiences :P

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  3. i think that debt is a real issue and should be eliminated. it is not fair that clubs keep piling up more debt and the players make in one week what i earn my whole life, for playing a game and no one is responsible.

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  4. to answer your question, the team i root for, arsenal is financially responsible, so they would not miss out. if any other big team did, i would not bat an eye. the champions league is the penultimate club competition. because you play a year after you qualify, there have been examples of top teams, not being there, whether they are in europa league or not. there have been instances that a team is just not the same a year after qualifying. it could be much better or worse. many times a big team goes out early, because it is not the same as the year before.

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  5. Anonymous12:36 AM

    why should fifa be able to tell an owner of a company (team) how they can spend their money? If a owner is rich and wants to spend more then why should they not be able to? If you want to make it fair then there should be a cap, if it is about debt then it should be on the owner who is pissing away their own money. If the club is publically owned then board should be acting in the interests of the owners....People are so quick to say that teams shouldnt have debt, but the same people are complainging when their club doesnt bring in the big names.

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  6. Great read.
    a LOVE the idea of a Cap. Will regulate players salaries. Or maybe CAP a team's transfer fee per year. Either way, it'll be a LONG time until Fifa fixes this problem.

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  7. Neat link and interesting stuff so far as time has allowed me to explore it. Great blog guys - thanks for all the excellent work!

    In terms of this debate, I'm an Arsenal follower as much for the economics as the football. I love Wenger's approach and would rather we were a profitable enterprise and, whilst competitive, won nothing as such - rather than some ghastly mockery of good sense like the wretched Citeh.

    Everything about Citeh and Chelsea's ludicrous flights of madness is morally despicable and borderline pathetic.

    However, I wouldn't for a second presume to tell people how to spend/invest/waste their money. If the money is spent poorly and managed poorly, then the team will ultimately fail. It may take a decade, but ultimately the market won't sustain true waste for too long in the grand scheme of things. I take the long term, free market view and say let them do what they like, don't police it and in the round it will all work itself out.

    In terms of applying the label of "fairness" to the whole circus, its a laughable endeavour with all the pompous lip service to political correctness over sanity you'd expect from the prigs at UEFA/FIFA/FA/etc.

    Life is not fair; some people are born blind to live in wheelchairs, some born to run 9 second 100m. Pretending it's fair and holding people back or punishing them for their choices within an unfair world is daft.

    [usual caveats of murder, incitement to violence, et. obviously apply]

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  8. Birty7:53 AM

    FC United is the future of football. a community based club run by the fans for the fans and for the benefit of the local community.

    as an english based fan of both types of football i look in awe at the collective bargaining agreement and salary caps of the NFL. The whole structure and economics of the NFL is so amazingly equal and, dare I say, socialist that it puts the profit chasing capitalist style of the Premier League to shame.

    Could there be a salary cap? probably not, and only because football is global. if the english league imposed a salary cap but the spanish didn't then all the players would flock to spain. so it would require fifa to do something and they find it hard enough keeping their own house in order.

    sorry, i'll get off my high horse now.

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  9. UEFA can tell the owner because UEFA manage the competition: They set the entry requirements. The general concept seems like a good idea to me (although we'll see how it is actually implemented). The statement made above to the effect that when clubs overspend it is not ultimately sustainable is completely true, and that is the problem: they still do it and then go under, which is bad for the sport as a whole.

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  10. G-man9:28 PM

    The more I think about it, the more likely this will not really happen. Reasonable responce of Chelsea, Man U, Real, Barca and the like would be to simply withdraw from Champions League and form their own tournament, a Super League of sorts.

    UEFA will not let that happen. Potential for "fiscally responsive" Champions League final between, say, Lyon and Ajax, would, while likely promising thrilling football, be too much of a financial disaster.

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