UEFA fines Barça half a million for erroneously declaring benefits

2023-07-14 18:41:44

The first Chamber of the UEFA Club Financial Control Committee (CFCB) has imposed a fine of 500,000 euros to Barcelona “for erroneously declaring, in the 2022 financial year, benefits from the disposal of intangible assets (other than player transfers) that are not relevant income according to the regulations.”

Barça has received notification from the football organization and will present a appeal to the Appeals Committee for the proposed punishment and does not rule out reaching the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The Barcelona club presented on October 9 in the assembly some profit of 98 million euros after taxes, accounts that were approved by the delegates. The budget for the 2022-23 campaign, recently completed, contemplated a budget of 1,255 million with forecasts of a surplus of 274 million.

The economic improvement of Barça, which had declared losses in the two previous years, is motivated by the income from the so-called levers. Barça sold 25% of the television rights to the Sixth Street fund in two batches: 10% (received 207.5 million euros) in June and 15% (400 million) in July 2022. Later, in August, it sold 25% of Barça Studios to the company Socios.com for 100 million and later, before the end of the month, 24.5% of Barça Studios to Orpheus Media, for 100 million more.

The club understands that the operations carried out were approved and accepted by LaLiga and, therefore, cannot deserve a sanction from UEFA, beyond the fact that the entity considers the sanction “disproportionate”. The first sale of 10% of television facilitated that the accounts were positive, in the same way that the following ones guaranteed those of the present campaign.

In addition to the penalty for the Barça team, Manchester United (300,000 euros) and Konyaspor from Turkey and APOEL from Cyprus (100,000) were also fined for declaring minor balance deficits. Other clubs were punished with 10,000 euros for not presenting complete and accurate information on the breakeven point within the established period.

new regulation

The UEFA Executive Committee approved in April 2022 the new Financial Sustainability and Club Licensing Regulations to facilitate solvency, stability and control of costs and establishing the spending limit on salaries, transfers and agent fees at 70% of club income.

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The new regulation contemplates a period of adaptation of the clubs during three seasons, in which initially the cost of the 90% of income total sports staff in the 2023-2024 campaign, 80% in 2024-2025 and subsequently 70%.

UEFA introduced Financial Fair Play in 2010 and the current reform, which modifies the rules in force since 2018, pursues sustainability and responsibility with solvency requirements -with greater demands on compliance with overdue debts-, stability -with the ‘Football Earnings’ rule to measure balance in results- and cost control.