UEFA plans to dramatically change its flagship regulation over the past decade, according to various reports in Europe. The financial fair play, UEFA’s most significant regulatory move, was created to address two major threats to European football’s competitiveness: financial debts and multi-billionaires and principalities The Persian Gulf invested huge sums in football, to increase their soft power.
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The logical basis behind the regulation is that a team will not spend on salaries and acquisitions of players more than its revenues independently from broadcasting rights, sponsorships, ticket sales and the sale of assets and players. In practice what happened is that the rich groups invested more than middle and lower class groups, which widened the economic gaps, and in practice widened the professional gaps more – and you guessed it, the economic gaps as well.
From the beginning of the financial fair play the number of teams winning titles has decreased, the number of clubs that can afford to acquire quality players has decreased and the Premier League, the world’s lucrative football league, is taking more and more distance from other leagues in Europe. Meanwhile, sheikh-owned clubs and oligarchs have been able to increase revenue with the help of “sponsorship agreements” with strategic partners and the construction of revenue pipelines from around the world – things only billionaires and principalities can invest in. So it turned out that Fair Play was not fair at all; The gaps have widened and teams without multi-billionaire owners simply cannot compete without getting into deep debt – making it difficult for them to set up a competitive team, hurting their revenue and so on.
The New York Times reported that this week UEFA announced to its staff that it was abolishing financial fair play and replacing the regulation with a new law designed to “maintain the sustainability of football.”
The UEFA talked for a long time about an American-style salary cap and a luxury tax on teams that spend particularly high sums, but eventually came to an agreement with the clubs that a team would not be able to spend more than 70% of its revenue on player salaries. The basic fairness he brings. The math is simple. A team that makes 100 million euros will not be able to invest in its players the same amount of a team that makes 200 million euros – this is the amendment they worked on for five years at the VAPA led by Alexander Chaprin.
On April 7, the UEFA will make the official decision and allow a three-year adjustment period to the new reality that is no different from the existing reality. It is estimated that European football teams lost around 7-8 billion euros because of the corona. The surviving teams will adapt faster To limit spending – which will give them a significant advantage in the player market as well as in European competitions.In Europe are already concerned about the apparent hegemony of the Premier League.
According to Deloitte’s Silver League ‘, 11 of the 20 richest teams in the world are English. Deloitte are expecting the English league to widen the gaps from the other leagues due to a massive increase of more than 30% in revenue from broadcasting rights outside the UK. In the near future 13, and perhaps 14 of the most lucrative teams in Europe will be English. This means that a team like Wolves will be able to spend more money on the salaries of its players than, about 85% of all other teams in Europe.
In addition, teams owned by the Gulf states will be able to bring in revenue from companies from the Gulf and increase their “natural” revenues similar to Manchester City, number one in the Money League and Paris Saint-Germain, which is building on a place in the top five of the Money League.
The news of the UEFA may particularly hurt the Spanish and Italian groups, many of which do not meet the 70% income / wage ratio.
It should also be said that Paris Saint-Germain had a considerable influence on the UEFA in making this decision. 85% of wage income, while teams from Germany demanded a rate of less than 70% .At the end they reached a more appropriate conclusion for Paris.
The UEFA stresses that there will be heavy penalties for non-compliance with the rules. From dropping points in European tournaments to being shot in the Champions League or “relegated” (to the Europa League or the Conference League), but Manchester City were also due to fly out of the Champions League due to financial fair play offenses And it did not happen.
So what will the football world look like after the implementation of the new UEFA regulation? Not much different. The rich will continue to get stronger and richer, the middle class clubs will continue to have a hard time maintaining their status over time and the poor will become poorer.