After having energetically but uncritically rejected the hypothesis of a Super League that could somehow increase revenues (especially for the top clubs, but cascading for the entire system, according to the promoters), UEFA is dealing with the cost financial of the pandemic. And it's a heavy bill: according to a report released on May 21, the European football organization has quantified at 8,7 billion the overall impact of Covid on the turnover of clubs from 55 national leagues across the continent. The analysis refers to last season and to the one that is about to end, and establishes that in the best case scenario a European football club has lost "only" 10% of its revenues: the 711 clubs in the most important leagues have lost 7,2 billion , and according to Deloitte the top 20 clubs alone have sold over 2 billion.
The data from UEFA in the end is even worse than that assumed in February by now former president of ECA Andrea Agnelli, who was the main proponent of the Superlega together with Real Madrid patron Florentino Perez: according to the Juventus number one, the shortfall for the European teams would have been included in a range between 6,5 and 8,5 billion euros. According to a Deloitte study which refers only to the 2019-2020 season, it was obviously all the lack of revenue from the stadiums, which are only now reopening after more than a year (-17% for the top 20 clubs, at 257 million ), but above all the drastic downsizing of television rights, which alone account for almost 1 billion (-23%), considering only the 20 major clubs, among which, as Italians, there are Juventus, Inter and Napoli.
Returning to the UEFA report which refers to 711 clubs and the last two seasons, stadium revenues lose between 3,6 and 4 billion, commercial revenues up to 2,7 billion, TV rights up to 1,4 billion. The only culprit of the crisis is not only Covid, but also a mismanagement of the golden years, which were not few: from 1999 to 2019, the turnover of European clubs grew by 8,2% CAGR, a enormous progression, which led the top 711 to total revenues of 23 billion euros, of which 9,2 billion in the hands of the 20 biggest clubs (in 2019 for Italy there were four, in addition to Juventus, Inter and Napoli also Roma ). But already something creaked. Meanwhile, players' salaries have ballooned to the point of absorbing over 60% of the turnover, an anomalous figure for any type of company. The players themselves have made a modest effort to lend a hand in the pandemic: in total, in all the clubs on the continent, just a billion wages have been cut over the last two seasons.
And that's not all. Even their agents have become real leeches for the club's coffers: since 2015, well before Covid, players' agents only in Serie A have they pocketed the beauty of almost 1 billion euros in commissions. An absolutely abnormal figure, if we consider that in 2015 the prosecutors' profits were worth a total of 84 million, and then shot up to 187 million in 2019. Juventus alone, also and above all for the Ronaldo operation, paid 190 million into the agents' pockets. million euros in 6 years. Inter and Roma exceed 100 million, it remains just below Milan. The result is that, in addition to the crazy salaries of some football players, we find prosecutors like Jonathan Barnett, who in 2020 alone, in the midst of the pandemic, brought home 142 million in commissions; or the usual suspects such as Jorge Mendes and Mino Raiola with 85 and 70 million.
It will be good for them too to hypothesize a slimming diet, given that the survival of the entire system is at stake: according to UEFA, 120 clubs throughout Europe risk disappearing due to this crisis. And many of those who survive will do so with maxi loans, a bit like it is doing the same Inter champion of Italy, who still has to pay a few months' salaries and the Scudetto prizes, and in order not to reduce the project of a winning cycle he obtained 275 million from the US fund Oaktree.
