Clubs across the top divisions of European leagues have recorded an overall profit for the first time, reversing years of losses before the implementation of financial fair play (FFP) rules, a Uefa analysis of the 2017 financial year has revealed.
The unprecedented “bottom line” profit, a total of €615m (£545m) made by the 700 top-flight clubs in Europe’s 55 national leagues, represents a fundamental turnaround since 2008-11, when clubs’ total losses amounted to more than €5bn (£4.4bn), Uefa said.
European football’s governing body introduced its FFP rules in response to those losses, as clubs competed with each other by overspending on escalating players’ wages, without any limits. Sefton Perry, head of Uefa’s intelligence centre analytics, said the excessive spending began to be staunched after the introduction of FFP, which limits losses clubs can make even if covered by a wealthy owner.
In 2016-17 clubs’ revenues grew faster than the wages they paid for the fourth year out of five, a reversal of football’s tendency before FFP’s introduction, when wages increased more than revenues ever year.
“The health of European club football has improved dramatically since 2012,” Perry said, “with losses declining every year and overall profitability being reported for the first time.”
Uefa’s latest “benchmarking” financial report also documented the commercial dominance of the Premier League compared with the other major leagues in Europe. The 20 clubs in England’s top division made total revenues of €5.3bn in the 2016-17 financial year, the most recent for which full information is available, almost double that of the league with the next highest total revenues, La Liga, whose clubs made €2.9bn.
Bundesliga clubs made €2.8bn during the same financial period, those in Serie A €2.1bn, and Ligue 1 €1.6bn, less than a third of Premier League clubs’ revenues. Of all Europe’s top clubs, only Barcelona, Juventus and Real Madrid received more TV revenue than even the 20th Premier League club in 2017, relegated Sunderland, who received £93m.
The Uefa president, Aleksander Ceferin, while celebrating European football’s “underlying health”, its first overall profit and a general 9% increase in revenues cautioned about the game’s widening financial gap. TV income is generally increasing and attendances growing across Europe – 2017-18 was a record year for crowds, with a total of 105 million people going to matches – but the report found that the “absolute revenue gaps” between leagues are increasing. Remarkably, the top 12 clubs with global sponsorship deals – the report does not name clubs individually – accounted for 39% of sponsorship and commercial revenues across Europe, almost double the 22% of 10 years ago.
Ceferin said: “Recent issues of this report have brought the challenges of polarisation and competitive balance into focus, illustrating how financial gaps are augmented by globalisation and technological change, and it is therefore more essential than ever that all stakeholders work together to keep football strong up and down the pyramid.
“Football will never be equal, it doesn’t live in a bubble, but I truly believe it is Uefa’s role as guardians of the European game to ensure that football in every one of the 55 member associations can exploit its full potential, and we will work to support this.”
Ceferin has proposed some limited ideas for improving “competitive balance”, which Uefa officials are exploring, but the top clubs’ efforts are aimed in the opposite direction, at increasing financial dominance, backed by threats of breaking away.
Perry noted that the game’s financial position is predicted to change considerably with the “increasingly rapid fragmentation of the media landscape” which includes streaming by internet platforms and perhaps by clubs themselves. “That will not be easy or painless,” he predicted.
The report also documented the modern prevalence of gambling companies sponsoring football clubs, finding they did so in 26 European leagues, and were the most common shirt sponsor in 10. The Premier League, in which nine clubs were sponsored by betting companies, had the second-highest level of such concentration, after Bulgaria’s top division.