It was sort of buried on Thursday, probably because it was the day that Michel Platini announced that he would not be challenging Sepp Blatter for the Fifa presidency. But, in that very same press conference, Gianni Infantino, the Uefa general secretary, made a remarkable revelation.
For the first time in the five seasons that Uefa has been keeping count, growth in revenues among the 700-odd clubs in their benchmarking report outpaced the rise in wages: 5.7 per cent to 3.7 per cent.
Infantino cited it as evidence that Financial Fair Play was working in achieving its stated goal: reducing losses and making European football sustainable. Indeed, he also pointed out that the cumulative losses of European clubs went from £1.35 billion in 2011 to £635 million in 2013.
It will be telling to see if the fact that wages are rising more slowly than revenues is a one-off or whether the trend continues. If it does, a whole new can of worms could be opened up.
Wages are the single biggest expense for any football club. In England, according to the Deloitte report, they hover about 70 per cent of turnover. Virtuous clubs around the Continent can drive them down to 40 per cent, at profligate ones they exceed revenue by some margin.
Advertisement
Conventional wisdom has it that it makes sense for wages to be the biggest expense because, ultimately, it is the players who determine the club’s fortunes and they are the ones who ought to be rewarded. Broadly speaking, it is correct, though there are some caveats, particularly for clubs who do not play regular European football (where a big chunk of the revenue comes from prize money) and do not have huge sponsorship deals (where the size of the cheque is often commensurate with the attention/interest that the top players command).
If, say, a mid-table Championship club suddenly halved their wage bill, odds are that their revenues would be affected only over time.
The story is different for top-flight clubs, particularly those competing in Europe. Prize money matters more — particularly in the Champions League — and you pay top dollar to reward the players who get you that prize money. Equally, top players on higher wages command more exposure, which strengthens the brand and increases the value of sponsorships and commercial partnerships.
The question is what chunk of revenues players should get. Because so many top clubs operated in the red for so long — which is why they wanted FFP in the first place — it hasn’t really been an issue. When your employer is losing money, in part because of your salary, it is tough to ask for a pay rise. But you wonder if, now that losses are declining and revenue growth is outpacing wages, that could soon change.
When clubs start making profits, there are only so many places it can go, other than rewarding those who helped to generate the profits (ie, the workforce, or players). Some measures, such as spending on infrastructure, youth academies or — gasp! — lower ticket prices, are viewed favourably by fans. Others, such as paying out dividends to owners and shareholders, are not.
Advertisement
Were football a business like any other, of course, no one could complain. Owners put up the cash and, if there are profits, they take their slice since they risked their own capital in the first place. But football is different. We have different expectations of how a club should behave, largely because clubs are seen as public trusts and fans as captive customers.
In the National Football League, which, overall, is a profitable entity, they approach this in a standard way. There is a salary cap, limiting the amount that clubs can spend on wages. But there is also a salary floor — 89 per cent of the cap — which ensures that teams spend money on wages and share revenue with players.
Could European football reach this point? A situation where clubs break even or are profitable and players demand their share of the spoils?
It is a long way off, because, for now, in many instances there are still wealthy owners bankrolling losses. It could well be that revenues outpacing wages was just a blip and not a trend.
But if it continues, at some point, the question of how those profits should be split will come to the fore.