Uefa plans tough financial rules

[BBC Sport]

Uefa will withhold prize money and issue transfer bans on clubs failing to meet new financial fair play rules.

More...

 

[Jamie.]

£20m prize money from the Champions League being withdrawn?

And a flimsy transfer ban that could be broke in one appeal to the court of arbitration for sport?

Not really the 'zero tolerance' straight out of Europe policy that UEFA led us all to believe then?

And so the back pedaling begins...

 

[Mike.]

£20m prize money from the Champions League being withdrawn?

And a flimsy transfer ban that could be broke in one appeal to the court of arbitration for sport?

Not really the 'zero tolerance' straight out of Europe policy that UEFA led us all to believe then?

And so the back pedaling begins...

Not back pedalling to be fair, it was going to be scaled to be effect. The aim isnt just to punish clubs, but to also help them. The media jumped on the "zero tolerance" and didnt bother to mention in between. Out of Europe was always the harshest penalty

 

[Jamie.]

ECA directors last year (When the air was a whiff of 'fear' and 'oh no FFP is coming with zero tolerance') were all in unison saying ''this is terrible, it's impossible. Clubs can simply not grow with this.''

This year all the comments are ''FFP? No problem. Manchester City? Let them do what they want, we wont complain.''

Get the sense that the clubs have already got their own little ways around this and these comments just send out the wrong signal for me. Club directors are crafty businessmen and unless they were planning something similar to City (Knowing they will probably get away with it) then they would come out and start a stampede on UEFA/City over their strategy. But they didn't which suggests to me that something has been struck in the back office's of the ECA, either UEFA have told clubs they will give an extra £20m per year leniency as long as the capital deficit wasn't in the form of debt or the ECA directors simply have found themselves a way around it in their own ways. If I was looking at a headline last year 'UEFA take zero tolerance stance on FFP' then a year later I see 'Transfer bans and taking away prize money is the first steps' then I would be more inclined to stretch the regulations is all I'm saying.

 

[Mike.]

ECA directors last year (When the air was a whiff of 'fear' and 'oh no FFP is coming with zero tolerance') were all in unison saying ''this is terrible, it's impossible. Clubs can simply not grow with this.''

This year all the comments are ''FFP? No problem. Manchester City? Let them do what they want, we wont complain.''

Get the sense that the clubs have already got their own little ways around this and these comments just send out the wrong signal for me. Club directors are crafty businessmen and unless they were planning something similar to City (Knowing they will probably get away with it) then they would come out and start a stampede on UEFA/City over their strategy. But they didn't which suggests to me that something has been struck in the back office's of the ECA, either UEFA have told clubs they will give an extra £20m per year leniency as long as the capital deficit wasn't in the form of debt or the ECA directors simply have found themselves a way around it in their own ways. If I was looking at a headline last year 'UEFA take zero tolerance stance on FFP' then a year later I see 'Transfer bans and taking away prize money is the first steps' then I would be more inclined to stretch the regulations is all I'm saying.

Depends which ECA directors you talk to. Some have been loving it from the start. As usual it basically comes down to posturing.. and the key fact that they can push to UEFA to take action if they feel a club isnt following the rules. Also most have realised, actually its not has hard as you think to get yourselves in order. Unless you're City

 

[Jamie.]

City, Malaga, PSG are all the serious potential offenders with this, I mean it would not surprise me to see some sort of 'fair market value' set for sponsorship deals between the 3 of them in the next 3 years. That's the major avenue I have thought of for City and other clubs in similar positions, some sort of market collusion between 3-4 clubs with sponsorship deals and UEFA essentially can't really enforce it. They could exclude those deals if it wasn't deemed 'fair market value' but if 3-4 clubs setup a new bracket of the market then it makes it exceptionally hard for UEFA to enforce it.

Say if PSG/Malaga sign new sponsorship deals in the ball park of City's, UEFA can't really enforce the clause because they are in a market and in that market it could be deemed 'fair'. So tricky enforcing these regulations, if there was one billionaire who could afford to do what City did then fine it could be enforced but most clubs now are owned by billionaires. Inter/AC/Malaga/City/PSG will all try measures like the above to position themselves better. Because if they do not then Arsenal/Bayern will be the biggest clubs in Europe (Top 2 bracket) because of their revenue and structure in recent years.

 

[Mike.]

City, Malaga, PSG are all the serious potential offenders with this, I mean it would not surprise me to see some sort of 'fair market value' set for sponsorship deals between the 3 of them in the next 3 years. That's the major avenue I have thought of for City and other clubs in similar positions, some sort of market collusion between 3-4 clubs with sponsorship deals and UEFA essentially can't really enforce it. They could exclude those deals if it wasn't deemed 'fair market value' but if 3-4 clubs setup a new bracket of the market then it makes it exceptionally hard for UEFA to enforce it.

Say if PSG/Malaga sign new sponsorship deals in the ball park of City's, UEFA can't really enforce the clause because they are in a market and in that market it could be deemed 'fair'. So tricky enforcing these regulations, if there was one billionaire who could afford to do what City did then fine it could be enforced but most clubs now are owned by billionaires. Inter/AC/Malaga/City/PSG will all try measures like the above to position themselves better. Because if they do not then Arsenal/Bayern will be the biggest clubs in Europe (Top 2 bracket) because of their revenue and structure in recent years.

But again UEFA can have the upper hand here, because we know the relative size of the clubs, and you can still determine whether it is "market value", also it wouldn't be hugely hard to to spot if they were colluding to artificially raise the level (not sure i explained that well, hope you see what i mean)

 

[Joel`]

City, Malaga, PSG are all the serious potential offenders with this, I mean it would not surprise me to see some sort of 'fair market value' set for sponsorship deals between the 3 of them in the next 3 years. That's the major avenue I have thought of for City and other clubs in similar positions, some sort of market collusion between 3-4 clubs with sponsorship deals and UEFA essentially can't really enforce it. They could exclude those deals if it wasn't deemed 'fair market value' but if 3-4 clubs setup a new bracket of the market then it makes it exceptionally hard for UEFA to enforce it.

Say if PSG/Malaga sign new sponsorship deals in the ball park of City's, UEFA can't really enforce the clause because they are in a market and in that market it could be deemed 'fair'. So tricky enforcing these regulations, if there was one billionaire who could afford to do what City did then fine it could be enforced but most clubs now are owned by billionaires. Inter/AC/Malaga/City/PSG will all try measures like the above to position themselves better. Because if they do not then Arsenal/Bayern will be the biggest clubs in Europe (Top 2 bracket) because of their revenue and structure in recent years.

Market collusion is unfair, uncompetitive and certainly doesn't represent a fair market value, and most of all, it's illegal. UEFA are idiots if they allow it.

Economics isn't as simplistic as you make it sound, you don't decide fair market value by just looking at two clubs, you decide it by actually analysing the history of the market, by what clubs offer their sponsors in return for their sponsorship. Real Madrid are juggernauts of sport, they offer by far the most revenue for their sponsors, thus command the highest fee. City's deal isn't just in the same ball park as Madrid's, it eclipsed it. Considering fair market value is determined by supply/demand equilibrium in the free market, and no one is going to offer City such a high price in the free market - it isn't fair value, no matter how you cut it.

 

[Jamie.]

Well we'll wait and see how the interpretation of 'fair value' is enforced. My opinion is that there are so many loose terms in the legislation that I can see FFP being very lenient on clubs with rich owners. I can see this phasing out in 5-10 years and being essentially a financial regulation that cracks down on clubs with debts without sufficient revenue rather than clubs with rich owners who wipe the slate clean but that's my own interpretation/prediction on this.

 

[Roymo]

Is anyone really against FFP?
...excluding corrupt Sepp and his oh-so accomidating pockets.