Well doesn't explain Chelsea.
Football Finance
- Thread starter King Binny
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I know, i was kiddin' around a chara
63%.
They avoid bonus payments by winning fuck all.
Good one!
Yeah, Villa were in a mess in 2023. The calculations I did of the UEFA football costs ratio (target for this season is 80%) had them over 100% (it includes amortisation as well as wages).Outdated and still interesting.
They've sailed close to the wind on Premier League style PSR and got away with it as they had the profit on Grealish propping them up, but that's now dropped out. They may still be getting away with it due to player sales (principally Douglas Luiz) but it's no surprise that they are one of the clubs shilling for City right now around the challenges to the associated party rules.
I imagine they are doing the smart thing and looking for a deal that delivers City whilst merely toasting their arses rather than burning them
One other thing to share around FFP and the like. In the early days of FSG's ownership the club was summoned to a UEFA hearing for failure to comply with FFP - we'd made some chunky losses, some of which were legacy issues from the Hicks and Gillet era, some of which were just about the process of turning things around, and some of which were business / footballing decisions which hadn't paid off. We'd done a capital restructuring to allow us to access a higher loss limit (as the losses would be largely covered by equity injections) but we were still a bit over.
I was told that the hearing was like the scenes in the Godfather II where Michael Corleone gets called before the senate hearings - really formal, parliament style set-up, quite intimidating. Our people were sitting, mic'ed up, behind a desk in front of a big UEFA panel.
In our evidence, we went through the processes we used to monitor our compliance, to show that we took things seriously. A lot of this focused around the process of forecasting, how we regularly projected our financial results over a 5-year period, including determining how much we could spend on players whilst still remaining within the FFP limits. This was just something the club had always done, and was also something FSG were very keen on - we would constantly be re-forecasting for them. It became part of our monthly reporting process, and was often done more than once a month, particularly in the later stages of the season where progress in the league and particularly in Europe could swing profits quite significantly (including triggering bonuses, contingent transfer payments, prize money etc). In truth it was a real pain. The baseball financial model meant that the Red Sox could forecast pretty accurately - lots of guaranteed games, very controllable revenues, easy to predict. The only time there would be a major difference was if they made the World Series, and if that happened they were all so pleased in a sporting sense that they didn't care the numbers were wrong. With football this wasn't so easy and it was something of an education exercise to explain to them why we couldn't be so accurate - a late goal in a game could make a huge difference.
UEFA were really impressed with this whole process, the attention to detail and the responsible principles behind it all. It was a large part of why they didn't hand down any fines (we were in breach, but only to a minor extent, and the fact we had processes for monitoring persuaded them we weren't being reckless). And on top of that was the narrative, largely already in the public domain, that adherence to FFP was a huge part of FSG's business case for buying the club - they were persuaded that FFP would make it possible for them to compete on a level playing field with other clubs in England and across Europe. They expected that it would eventually constrain Chelsea (albeit they would still have an in-built advantage from historic spending before FFP was introduced), that Man United had earned their financially dominant position by fair means, and that it was possible to copy what they did and catch them up. Ditto Arsenal, who had the Emirates (plus we had their former CFO who was tasked with looking into stadium options). FSG had no inkling that other clubs (principally City) would not take the rules as seriously as they did.
But back to the forecasting, we had assumed that all clubs would do this kind of work, but apparently not (or if they did, it wasn't something they presented to UEFA). It was an area where FSG's financial discipline put us in a good position.
I was told that the hearing was like the scenes in the Godfather II where Michael Corleone gets called before the senate hearings - really formal, parliament style set-up, quite intimidating. Our people were sitting, mic'ed up, behind a desk in front of a big UEFA panel.
In our evidence, we went through the processes we used to monitor our compliance, to show that we took things seriously. A lot of this focused around the process of forecasting, how we regularly projected our financial results over a 5-year period, including determining how much we could spend on players whilst still remaining within the FFP limits. This was just something the club had always done, and was also something FSG were very keen on - we would constantly be re-forecasting for them. It became part of our monthly reporting process, and was often done more than once a month, particularly in the later stages of the season where progress in the league and particularly in Europe could swing profits quite significantly (including triggering bonuses, contingent transfer payments, prize money etc). In truth it was a real pain. The baseball financial model meant that the Red Sox could forecast pretty accurately - lots of guaranteed games, very controllable revenues, easy to predict. The only time there would be a major difference was if they made the World Series, and if that happened they were all so pleased in a sporting sense that they didn't care the numbers were wrong. With football this wasn't so easy and it was something of an education exercise to explain to them why we couldn't be so accurate - a late goal in a game could make a huge difference.
UEFA were really impressed with this whole process, the attention to detail and the responsible principles behind it all. It was a large part of why they didn't hand down any fines (we were in breach, but only to a minor extent, and the fact we had processes for monitoring persuaded them we weren't being reckless). And on top of that was the narrative, largely already in the public domain, that adherence to FFP was a huge part of FSG's business case for buying the club - they were persuaded that FFP would make it possible for them to compete on a level playing field with other clubs in England and across Europe. They expected that it would eventually constrain Chelsea (albeit they would still have an in-built advantage from historic spending before FFP was introduced), that Man United had earned their financially dominant position by fair means, and that it was possible to copy what they did and catch them up. Ditto Arsenal, who had the Emirates (plus we had their former CFO who was tasked with looking into stadium options). FSG had no inkling that other clubs (principally City) would not take the rules as seriously as they did.
But back to the forecasting, we had assumed that all clubs would do this kind of work, but apparently not (or if they did, it wasn't something they presented to UEFA). It was an area where FSG's financial discipline put us in a good position.
Their support for City was mainly on the associated party rules, so I suspect they were planning some over-priced sponsorships to dig them out. But they lost that vote so it didn't get them anywhere.
But I do think they could, and should, be on a really sticky wicket with UEFA's new rules (as in the potential fines could wipe out any benefit of being in the Champions League).
Villa’s owners also have $billions worth of business with City’s owners.
Our operating income is decent. Last year it was $80m off but other years its been closer and in some cases it eclipsed them
en.wikipedia.org
Forbes list of the most valuable football clubs - Wikipedia
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