What the hell is going on with clubs finances?!

I like these posts
It kind of makes me hope people are looking for fairness in footy

But
How does that play out when we are in debt to our chairman to over £100m and we will never have to pay it back.
 
FFP either needs to be reformed and/or strengthened or something like a salary cap should be introduced. Each team can spend the same amount per year on player wages.
There needs to be a way to spread out the players in a fairer way.
 
Was reading an Athletic article today and apparently the majority of clubs in the National League are running at a significant loss.

That's chasing the glory of League Two.
 
The huge elephant in the room is still footballers wages......and agents.

Until players stop getting paid ridiculous amounts the current problems will continue.

Oh, and stop the top teams hoovering up all of the young talent. Lot of clubs survived developing good young players then selling them on for a couple of million - kept the clubs financially ticking over. Now, the top clubs hoard these players, loan them out for 4-5 seasons, then either sell or release them.

Whole football model is pretty f*cked isn't it? But as with society, until those at the bottom start challenging the system, the only change will be for the worse - the rich clubs get even richer and the poor clubs go under.
 
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Our club has lost money in all but 2 of Gibson's seasons as Chairman.
That does not mean we have fallen foul of FFP regulation at all. Owners can inject equity to part offset losses and can extend loans that are convertible to equity to part offset losses. Clubs can deduct spend on Academy, Community, Women's football spend. They are still real world expenses, but they are FFP exempt.
Clubs can also revalue Fixed Assets and whether they realise that gain through sales or not, it can be used to offset losses for FFP. (We've legitimately done it with Ground/Training ground).

I think there are 2 huge issues:

1. The PL FFP allowable losses and funding allowances are enormous, and completely inconsistent with EFL. PL clubs can lose ridiculous amounts and owners inject ridiculous amounts to offset. See Fulham, Aston Villa, Brighton, Everton.
2. Most significantly, the FFP rules are simply not enforced, not in real time and with opaque penalties.

Football generates huge income. Spending that is fine, but the issue now is that the players, staff and agents take so very much, that the incredible football income is simply not enough. Hence owners chasing capital gains, and/or insatiable vanity, will inject or loan additional fortunes that are hoovered up like coke at a Bullingdon Club reunion.

There has to be joined up thinking across PL/EFL. There has to be real time scorecards re FFP and there has to be transparent, immediate penalties for misdemeanors.

PL giants who gather most young talent, then withdraw it from the sport, only to farm it out on loan to sell for huge profit, or drop them and fracture their options of a career, should have a limit on the size of their academies; on the number of players they can have registered on their books; on the number of loans they can make; on the charges and conditions they can make on loaning players out; on the profit they can make on disposal of their young players. There are rules, but they are too weak and not enforced.
Much like our society as a whole, there should be better regulation, better compliance, better enforcement of clearer penalties and a re-distribution of excess wealth.
 
Oh and another thing that needs to be managed in fans expectations in terms of spending. There seemed to be a good number of our fan base who thought it would be a good idea to spend £20m+ on a single striker in the summer. It’s just not realistic for a club like us at the moment and even so, do you really want that risk all in one basket. If we did have that money, we should be looking at it more like how can we make it more affordable for fans to support the club, what improvements can we bring to enhance the fan match day experience, what infrastructure improvements can we invest in.
Thing is, if the reward is a guaranteed £120m, it is a good investment.

If an agent said to us before the season, I’ve got a lightly used Chupa Akpom here and he will guaranteed score you 25 goals by April, it’s £25m… It’s actually good economics to take it.

Problem is there’s no guarantees, it’s all a gamble. But the rewards are huge.
 
Salary caps are good in theory but who can enforce it.

We currently have people investing in Wrexham so they can rumoured to pay £5k a week salaries to players ot play in front of 1,200 people at some games in the National League.
 
The huge elephant in the room is still footballers wages......and agents.

Until players stop getting paid ridiculous amounts the current problems will continue.

Oh, and stop the top teams hoovering up all of the young talent. Lot of clubs survived developing good young players then selling them on for a couple of million - kept the clubs financially ticking over. Now, the top clubs hoard these players, loan them out for 4-5 seasons, then either sell or release them.

Whole football model is pretty f*cked isn't it? But as with society, until those at the bottom start challenging the system, the only change will be for the worse - the rich clubs get even richer and the poor clubs go under.
See I’m not sure it is the wages.

The sums are absolutely insane, but have been for many years. Most clubs spend not far off 100% of their turnover on player wages - and one could definitely argue that the players who the fans turn out to watch are way more deserving of all that money than anyone else.

The more money comes into clubs, the more of it goes out to players. In a way that’s fair, because they are the show.

I think the problem is that clubs have way too many players; transfer fees are insane; and a new phenomenon is that to get around FFP but to still be in the high wage arms race, clubs like Chelsea are offering players 7-10 year contracts so they can amortise them over more years of accounting.

My solution would be a wage ceiling for players, a club salary cap and a true limit on squad numbers, but that’s socialism. You want to pay someone £250,000 a week? Fine, but he’s the only one you can do that for, you’ve got 24 places in your squad left and an annual budget of £120m for wages - and now £52m is gone on one player. Good luck.
 
Works in every American sport. Contracts are owned by the league.
American sport is completely different though. They don't have relegation/promotion and all clubs work on a franchise basis. If any clubs breached that agreement, the franchise agreement would be terminated. There's no way of enforcing a similar system in the UK without changing the entire way the league system works.

I don't think there's anything in the American sports system that could work anywhere but America.
 
The huge elephant in the room is still footballers wages......and agents.

Until players stop getting paid ridiculous amounts the current problems will continue.
and the problem of course is the trickle down effect. Until the Man City and Chelsea's of the world stop spending 350-400k/week on players then the wages further down can't readjust.

I don't think there's anything in the American sports system that could work anywhere but America.
Agreed
 
I love football and love Middlesbrough fc but the Big Bang can’t come quick enough.
Bang average players like britt and gestede will get the wage their talent allows. Greedy **** agents get a lot less money and we stop paying off managers huge sums for failure.
Massive reality check coming hopefully
 
I love football and love Middlesbrough fc but the Big Bang can’t come quick enough.
Bang average players like britt and gestede will get the wage their talent allows. Greedy **** agents get a lot less money and we stop paying off managers huge sums for failure.
Massive reality check coming hopefully
Wages didn't drop after the 2008 financial crisis. Nor did they drop after COVID. I can just see them going up and up and up.
 
Agents represent the players. Agents agitate for moves/new contracts and players become unsettled and the club suffers. Yet the club is responsible for paying them. Why?
 
Wages didn't drop after the 2008 financial crisis. Nor did they drop after COVID. I can just see them going up and up and up.
No, they won't because sooner or later there'll be another vanity business area that emerges to hoover up cash from people who have more money than sense.

When Ryan Reynolds realises that Wrexham won't ever win the Champions' League, he'll be gone.

Football - in England especially - is living in a twilight world where players are paid so much that the only people who can be owners are either billionaires or crooks.

The money is starting to dry up now, and the next few years will see a lot of clubs start to struggle. There could be just 40 pro clubs - as they are now - left by 2030.
 
No, they won't because sooner or later there'll be another vanity business area that emerges to hoover up cash from people who have more money than sense.

When Ryan Reynolds realises that Wrexham won't ever win the Champions' League, he'll be gone.

Football - in England especially - is living in a twilight world where players are paid so much that the only people who can be owners are either billionaires or crooks.

The money is starting to dry up now, and the next few years will see a lot of clubs start to struggle. There could be just 40 pro clubs - as they are now - left by 2030.
People have been saying that for a long long time. Do you have any evidence of the money beginning to dry up? Wages are rising. Transfer fees are rising. There are lots of wealthy people in the country who can afford a sky subscription.
 
People have been saying that for a long long time. Do you have any evidence of the money beginning to dry up? Wages are rising. Transfer fees are rising. There are lots of wealthy people in the country who can afford a sky subscription.
Sky are loosing subscribers, I’m not sure there’s any evidence wages are rising across the whole league, transfer fees are only going up as a few clubs are exploiting loopholes around long term contracts.

I think the last domestic PL deal was swept through as an extension under the same value as it would likely have lost money had it gone to auction.
 
Sky are loosing subscribers, I’m not sure there’s any evidence wages are rising across the whole league, transfer fees are only going up as a few clubs are exploiting loopholes around long term contracts.

I think the last domestic PL deal was swept through as an extension under the same value as it would likely have lost money had it gone to auction.
Yeah they lost 255k subscribers in Q4 last year dropping revenue by 13.8% they have been ordered to cut costs by their parent company Comcast. I expect the next TV deal will see a fair drop if this continues.
 
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