How would you fix the growing financial disparity in football?

[BusbyMalone]

First off, this isn’t a thread strictly about oil clubs for state-owned clubs, but the money at the top of the game in general. There aren’t many teams that have spent more money than United over the past 7-8 years, so this isn’t a “woe is me” type of thread. We’ve spent 100s of millions, but we’ve spent it very poorly until recently.

There are also outliers like Leicester, who are one team that many like to point at when this kind of subject pops up as if it dispels any notion of financial disparity. “Well Leicester done it, they’re not in the financial elite” type of thing. But that was obviously a freak (albeit impressive) season, and I’m talking more about long-term trends. Obviously, you have Lille winning the title in France last year but, again, an outlier after PSG domination.

Now this consolidation of power and financial might has always been there to a certain extent. The biggest and best teams in the world have always accumulated the best players but, to my eyes at least, we are seeing a form of hyper-capitalism where transfer fees and wages are becoming even more egregious and, in some instances, pretty grotesque The pool of clubs that these players can go to are getting smaller and smaller.

And while we’ve always had a group of teams that have traditionally won the biggest prizes (my club being one of them) I think we've seen in the last decade or so more points being accumulated, more wins, more goals, and more records being broken than at any other time. The lack of competition is becoming more pronounced and is only going to become worse in time, IMO.

Got this from an article I was reading. The last decade alone has seen:

• a second Spanish treble
• a first German treble
• a first Italian treble
• a first English domestic treble
• three French domestic trebles in four years
• a first Champions League three-in-a-row in 42 years
• the first-ever 100-point season in Spain, Italy, and England
• ‘Invincible’ seasons in Italy, Portugal, Scotland, and seven other European leagues
• 13 of Europe’s 54 leagues currently seeing their longest run of titles by a single club or longest period of domination

tl;dr: Football has always been in the hands of the lucky few, but it's becoming worse.If you could fix the financial disparity in the game, how would you do it?

 

[Xaviesta]

I feel as though the horse has bolted. The days of a club being relegated 6 years after winning a European Cup if they feck things up badly enough are long gone.

 

[11101]

Actually enforcing FFP would have been a start.

Now probably the only way to reign it in is salary caps.

 

[RedRover]

Actually enforcing FFP would have been a start.

Now probably the only way to reign it in is salary caps.

FFP as a concept only allows the richer clubs to dominate and maintain the status quo.

Salary caps and limits on spending are the only way to address actual disparity, although nobody will actually want to do that.

 

[MUFC OK]

There should be an onus on clubs to support grassroots and power league football which is incentivised in some way.

The irony of the outrage at the ESL is that the PL is already essentially a super league already with the exception that relegation does happen. However, what are the realistic prospects of a team climbing up the pyramid to the PL without a huge influx of cash from their owners?

Yo-yo teams like WBA, Watford, Norwich, Fulham, Bournemouth have a huge advantage over championship counterparts. £100m for a season in the PL, then £40m parachute payment first season, £30m second season.

 

[Teja]

I'd be for an updated FFP that takes into account the reality of modern football - we want competition in football - no club should just sit at the top forever purely because of historical privilege. However we should also accept that clubs like United / Barca / RM are absolutely tiny businesses despite having billions of fans around the world. Real Madrid for example make about 1/5th of what Lululemon makes or 1/10th of what chipotle grosses in a year. Profits are non existent.

Expecting a business like United / RM to compete with any sufficiently rich sugar daddy club is unfair. Nation state levels of wealth are even worse. In the long run, money speaks and results are just straight up correlated with signings / wages. If the Saudis buy Newcastle tomorrow, I have no doubt that they will be sitting at the same level as RM / Barca in 10 years. Unless you believe traditional clubs have no place in football and should fade into irrelevance slowly, the situation we have now is untenable.

The original FFP was designed as a way of addressing debt in football and to prevent clubs from going bankrupt. That seems extremely roundabout to me, just create something new that sets the playing field for fair competition across Europe.

 

[Vidyoyo]

I also genuinely feel it's too far gone. You'd need something radical like limits to transfer fees and/or wage caps collectively for the whole team (as opposed to individuals) but who's going to enforce it? UEFA and FIFA have too many invested interests in the money that comes in. Cynical, I know.

 

[youmeletsfly]

I feel as though the horse has bolted. The days of a club being relegated 6 years after winning a European Cup if they feck things up badly enough are long gone.

You're right, mostly because there are a lot more financial avenues for clubs:
- social media
- investors
- banks lend money much easier
- you sell 1-2 good players and quickly grab 100 mil

I think it's a matter of "times have changed". We live in a world where you can really make money out of almost anything, so clubs need to be absolutely crazy to go from winning stuff to being relegated.

No to be on topic in regards to the OP:

- Trying to enforce FFP would basically push the clubs towards the Super League, as football has become a huge money making machine. Most of the clubs (even us) are just being smart when breaking FFP rules. Enforcing it even harder will give the Super league even more leverage.

- Also, there isn't any legal way on how to force a club not to spend money as the competitions are owned by private companies, not governments. Even with governments it would be something really hard to enforce. We should also take in consideration that clubs are currently valued at 1-2-3-4-5 billion. People owning clubs need to move cash, they don't just buy players for wanting to win things and to have the better team, there are cases where you need to dump 300 mil into something that floats, and clubs kinda do float.

The way I see it, there are, unfortunately, two or three avenues this will go to:

1. Fifa/Uefa grant the bigger clubs more power and more money as they keep the money ball rolling and keep people interested in the game, leading to them dominating football even more.
2. They actually let the big clubs go into a Super League and small to medium sized clubs will compete in Fifa/Uefa competitions. The ones winning them will promote into the Super League (be it governed by Fifa/Uefa or by someone else, doesn't matter). This, even if it sounds odd, will have the big guns playing the big guns and so on. Financial disparity will not be so obvious in terms of the actual game.
3. Governments will intervene and push laws that will make sure the game is played fairly, be it on the pitch on the financial side. This is the most risky solution as it might kill the game.

The way I'd like to see it:
- They should to feck all and let the game evolve by itself, as it currently is. We live in a football world where we have a few established classes of clubs: selling clubs, buying clubs, clubs with massive social media following that keep the game alive, poor clubs that will evolve, poor clubs that won't. It's like nature, evolve or die and that's how it should be.
- Trying to intervene into governing every god damn thing will lead into the game being even more about politics and money. And, let's be honest, nobody can tell Ajax to not get 50 mil on 2-3 players each summer and nobody can tell those players to not go anywhere else, earn a shit ton of money and have a good career. The base of the issue is players wanting to have a better career and having the opportunity to do it at bigger clubs with and on more money, that's progress and governing that will stop it.
- No competition will ever be a level playing field, as the purpose of a competition is to push the boundaries and to evolve.
- Whatever they do I hope they don't involve governments and politics, as we all know this would lead to corruption and all sorts of things.
- Find a way to somehow redesign the FFP in a way it won't force bigger clubs to start a Super League, but that's too late.

The romantic side of football where everyone got a chance in a competition is kinda gone.
I know it sounds a bit dumb to let this continue, but, hopefully, the money bubble will burst and things will reset. All the other solutions don't impress me that much because they'd mean the same thing, take the game out of Fifa/Uefa's hands and give it to someone else, or to people like Agnelli/Perez or governments.

 

[Hughes35]

Proper financial fair play / all leagues introducing a wage cap similar to the one in La Liga.

I never thought i'd say it but fair play to the Spanish division.

 

[Gio]

Greater redistribution of TV money. It would not be that difficult to re-balance things which wouldn't really affect the big clubs (as in they will still have other massive revenue streams), but would significantly increase the competitiveness of the smaller-to-medium sized clubs. For example, you've got clubs in the Champions League receiving 500 times as much money as other clubs who have won their leagues in Europe. Without going as far as equally sharing out revenue, they could do a far more equitable job than the current shitshow.

I'm disappointed in UEFA though. In the immediate superleague backlash, they had the opportunity to strike while the iron is hot and take measures to undo the damage inflicted upon the fabric of the game in the last 25 years. And it seems they've done feck all as usual.

 

[tomaldinho1]

Depends on what the end goal is. For me you could just say feck it and create an ESL (as long as it has relegation), then make it interesting in that FFP only applies to clubs in the ESL and the divisions below can spend freely.

The sensible long term option is just to accept football for what it is right now, acknowledge it's got out of control and impose FFP properly and a salary cap and maybe even limit transfers per season. Essentially you have to make it so unprofitable to buy success that you have to maximise your academies and protect clubs who do develop players from being picked on by the bigger, richer clubs. The way FFP is set up it's very in favour of sugar daddies coming in and actually spending freely on infrastructure, training facilities etc. which is what we need for the future of the sport, not just owners who want to come in and buy ready made players.

 

[Kasper]

UEFA wide salary + transfer cap with 50+1 as a compulsory club structure with no exceptions.
That way you adress the financial disparity and strengthen competiteveness without creating a situation where owners are simply pocketing the surplusses that would result from salary caps and the money could instead go into e.g. more fan friendly infrastructure (lower ticket prices etc.).

However, that won't happen and instead we'll see a continuation of this boring power struggle between old oligarchies and new turbo capitalistic and morally bankrupt emerging players.

 

[roonster09]

UEFA wide salary + transfer cap with 50+1 as a compulsory club structure with no exceptions.
That way you adress the financial disparity and strengthen competiteveness without creating a situation where owners are simply pocketing the surplusses that would result from salary caps and the money could instead go into e.g. more fan friendly infrastructure (lower ticket prices etc.).

However, that won't happen and instead we'll see a continuation of this boring power struggle between old oligarchies and new turbo capitalistic and morally bankrupt emerging players.

Problem with salary cap is we have seen clubs paying with multiple accounts, not sure how they can track that.

 

[OleBoiii]

Every solution I can think of will ultimately lead to us changing how the world works. The problem runs deeper than football. What we see is today is just the free market doing its thing.

We could introduce salary caps for players and managers and make an annual limit on how much clubs can spend that is the same for every club, regardless of wealth level. We'd of course have to set the limit reasonably low so that mid-table teams also can compete. Otherwise it makes no difference.

It goes without saying that this would have to be an international initiative. Otherwise the top players would just go to whatever country is willing to pay obscene money. Yeah, players would still probably move to the traditional top leagues, but the step up wouldn't necessarily be so crazy. And those leagues would also be more competitive.

Oh, and it also goes without saying that TV money must be evenly distributed.

It will never happen, of course. But it's the only thing that could work in the long term.

 

[Zen86]

Establishing parity even in the Premier League is a big enough challenge, let alone across Europe. I agree that the game is a bit too fubar to be reined back in at this point. The only way I see the sport changing is if someone sets up a football league with caps and controls in place from the beginning (which obviously won't happen).

 

[Gandalf]

Obviously this is all pie in the sky as the will and means to enforce any restrictions does not exist but I would also add that as bad as the financial disparity can seem there are negatives to levelling the playing field.

I live in the States these days and salary caps and parity are a big watchword in a lot of their sports and to be honest the effect is underwhelming. In effect most American sports are run entirely as for profit businesses which is a major driver of the financial regulations in place, this guarantees owners steady profits regardless of team performance. The net result is owners who really don't care about winning other than as a nice bonus should it actually happen, winning to them is determined by their balance sheets. The effect of this on both players and fans is that most sport here is sterile and lacking in passion, there is lots of noise and flash on tv but having been to NFL games, MLB games and NBA games here the atmosphere does not even come close to any football ground I have visited at home. It is like everybody knows that the game itself is just a product like a hollywood blockbuster and the whole enterprise is completely soulless.

The opportunity to take over a club and pump money into it so that you can scale the heights has been a dream throughout footballing history and it attracts dreamers and romantics to invest in their boyhood teams when they strike it rich even if it does allow some less savory investors to purchase the likes of Citeh. That this is possible allows fans to dream that maybe their club could be next and taking that away from the game in the name of financial regulation could have far wider consequences than stopping a couple of Oil clubs from monopolizing things for a few years.

 

[Hulksmash]

Enforcing FFP has probably led to this Situation now and the Pressure of the Super League. FFP only ensures that the big clubs stays in the top forever.

I don't know what could fix the Situation because Sponsors are transfering huge amount of money in the clubs , and people are buying shirts around the Globe.

It's not like only Oil Clubs like Chelsea , PSG are pumping money in , it's us consumer too with shirt buying, ticket buying and paying huge amount for TV subscription.

 

[giorno]

Superleague baby!!!

...as in, a literal european superleague including *all* the european domestic leagues

 

[tomaldinho1]

Enforcing FFP has probably led to this Situation now and the Pressure of the Super League. FFP only ensures that the big clubs stays in the top forever.

I don't know what could fix the Situation because Sponsors are transfering huge amount of money in the clubs , and people are buying shirts around the Globe.

It's not like only Oil Clubs like Chelsea , PSG are pumping money in , it's us consumer too with shirt buying, ticket buying and paying huge amount for TV subscription.

FFP has not been enforced, hence the issues.

I feel like people really need to read up on FFP, it is 100% not designed to keep big clubs big but to promote sustainability. You can't start from ground zero, there is 100+ years of history with most clubs and rightly or wrongly some will naturally start in a position of strength an others at a disadvantage, what matters with FFP is that it is universal and every club follows the same rules. FFP encourages any owner who wants to come in and properly build a club. Stadiums, infra, academies, local area regeneration...it's all massively beneficial to everyone in the long run.

 

[njred]

Would have to be a spending cap for me. Some kind of formula would need to be enforced for the limit I suppose. Maybe take the top 10 teams over the last 5 years and get and average number of money spent? Or just leave that up to the number crunchers. Either way a cap on spending not salary would be a start then maybe implement some kind of wage cap when the time is right.