Financial Fair Play and Football

Will Financial Fair Play Make Football a Fairer Game?

In the later 21st century, it has become more common for rich oil sheiks to buy clubs and invest huge sums of money. This leads to big injustice and domination for these clubs in the transfer market. Therefore they have acquired a new rule called Financial Fair Play (FFP). Which prevents a club from spending more money than they earn in revenues. If a club defies the rule, it leads to severe punishments such as being banned from playing in Champions League or even being strived from titles. If a club can’t have financial liabilities, only clubs with good budgets will be able to spend money. Consequently, the rule will only make the gap even bigger between the rich and the poor clubs. In addition, by acquiring this rule it will lead to that the owners will invest money illegally into the club so they will be able to afford the expenses. To avoid all this, they must remove the rule.

Firstly, FFP will make it harder for small clubs to compete against the big clubs. UEFA introduced the rule to give all teams equal opportunities, but the reality is that the big clubs, those who have long been dominating, will keep dominating. By procuring Financial Fair Play it will make it harder for smaller clubs to challenge. Because if they’re not allowed to loan money from banks, the revenue will only come from sponsorships, ticket sales, TV-broadcasting and commercials. For a big club like FC Barcelona, who already has a large global supporter base, earns much more money from TV-broadcasting, ticket sales and commercials than for example a club like Chelsea FC (Mourinho, 2015). Therefore they can keep invest unattached. While the clubs that doesn’t have this large supporter base will have less money to invest with. In other words, the gap will only increase.

Secondly, FFP doesn’t show any regards to high taxes, therefore countries that have high taxes will have it more difficult to afford the wages. Another argument against the FFP is that the rule doesn’t show any regards to countries with high taxes. Jacques Messeca writes in his article, A Comparative Approach of the Tax and Social Burden in European Football, on evershed.com (2014) that this problem will be a big issue for FFP in the future and for the countries involved. This creates big injustice for clubs in these where they have high taxes since much of the revenue will be lost. Paris Saint Germain is a club located in France. Recently, the club where bought by a rich oil sheik. The club has been struggling a lot with FFP just because France is a country with high taxes. Since the rule doesn’t show any regards to this, the club must pay nearly double wages for the players to get the same salary as other player gets in other countries.

On the other hand, financial fair play will provide a more fair game, which leads to that every club will have same opportunities. Firstly, by acquiring the FFP rule it will prevent wealthy oil sheiks from pumping money into the club and make Football a fairer sport by rules. Which means that every club will have the same opportunities. Also, by having their revenues from sponsorships, ticket sales, TV-broadcasting and commercials, clubs won’t be able to buy expensive players and will have to build a strong youth academy.

Furthermore, owners will provide money illegally into the club. Truthfully, the teams will have the same opportunities on the field. But on the other hand, it will not prevent wealthy owners from deposit money into their clubs. Instead, they will illegally deposit money to the club by signing ridiculously expensive sponsorship deals. Thus they will keep invest unattached. Often when a club builds a strong youth academy, they have been spending huge amount of money on it. A good example is Brommapojkarna from Sweden. They have the best academy in Sweden and develop many talents. However the amount of money they put into their academy is huge comparing to others Swedish teams. What I want to conclude is that a club has to prioritize on what to spend their money on. Some clubs are investing in young talents while others are investing in fully developed players.

To summarize all this, the FFP rule has to be stopped, because you will never be able to create a sport where everybody has the same conditions and with FFP it will only worse the situation. There is a reason why football is the world’s most dominating sport and it’s because it’s unpredictable, you can’t tell what’s going to happen. I think instead of making the sport inferior, you should find ways of making the sport better.