FFP: How do the football spending limits work?

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 31 July 2024

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Football clubs must work under a strict policy of Financial Fair Play - or FFP - but what does it mean? And how does it work?

With the summer transfer window now open, clubs are in business, buying and selling players. But football’s governing bodies are keeping a close eye on how much they spend.

We take a look at how top-flight clubs in the Spanish league, La Liga, are managing the financial constraints.

(Image: Real Madrid unveils new signing, Kylian Mbappe, at Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, Spain, in July 2024. Credit: Getty Images)

Presented and produced by Ashish Sharma.

Transcript

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0:00.0	UEFA, the governing body of football in Europe, introduced something called Financial Fair Play.
0:05.2	UEFA has created a set of rules to try to stop reckless spending.
0:10.4	Hello, my name is Ashih Sharma and this is Business Daily on the BBC World Service.
0:16.7	Now, at the highest level, football is an extravagant sport.
0:20.4	You just heard reports there spanning
0:22.1	more than 10 years, talking about financial fair play, or FFP. It was introduced by UEFA after
0:29.1	research of over 600 clubs back in 2009 showed that 20% of them were at risk of financial
0:36.1	meltdown. FFP works differently in each country.
0:39.8	And this program will mainly focus on Spain.
0:42.6	And why Spain?
0:43.5	20 years ago, there were more than 30 Spanish club in bankruptcy proceeding
0:48.8	with massive unpaid salary to players,
0:53.1	high of the Spanish tax authority.
0:56.6	Well, in the case of a Spanish, you know, we lost the stadium. We lost home. We had to build
1:00.9	another one. That is hard because, you know, you lose some of the people that were Spanish
1:05.6	fans since kids because they're from the district. If you don't run things well, a lot of things
1:10.1	happen. To start with, you tend to go down into the divisions.
1:13.4	That already is half of the wages for the players and people lose their jobs.
1:17.6	Another reason for looking at La Liga is that it's home to two of the most iconic clubs in the world.
1:23.4	And in the case of one of them, Barcelona, was also home to arguably the greatest player ever.
1:29.2	Messi now will shoot low! Oh, Messi! Super play by little Messi!
1:36.0	It has to be Messi!
	...

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