2018-2019 EPL thread.....

[WeWonItAll(Most)]

So would it essentially force a small team like Kansas City Royals to have a smaller payroll of say 70 Mil whereas the Yankees and RedSox have 150Mil to spend? Kansas City wouldn't be allowed to buy players to get to that level of payroll? Trying to put it in terms I understand.

Man City is more financially successful so they can spend more in payroll than someone like Leeds.

Yes, though Man City (and PSG) is actually an example of what FFP is basically trying to stop from happening again. Man City does not, and definitely did not 10 years ago, produce enough revenue to spend the amount of money they have spent over the past decade to get to where they are now. They were bought out by the Abu Dabi United Group around 2008, which means they quite literally have the UAE government funding them and pumping hundreds of millions of dollar into the club. PSG essentially went down the same path but with Qatar instead of the UAE.

So using your baseball analogy and the numbers in it, FFP was created to essentially stop two scenarios from happening:

1) Jeff Bezos decides he wants to buy the Royals and expand their payroll to $200m. The Royals only produce enough revenue for a $70m payroll, so he pumps $130m of his personal money into the team each season so that they can have one of the best teams in baseball. This is basically what Chelsea did two decades ago, and what PSG and Man City have done in the last decade.

2) This one is more lengthy and imaginative: Say all the minor league teams are independent franchises and there is promotion and relegation between the MLB, AAA, AA, A. The Memphis Redbirds are sitting in AAA, where everyone's revenue per season is between about $5-15m. The Redbirds decide its a good idea to take out a loan to expand their payroll from $8m to $40m for the upcoming season. The logic is that they will now have the best team in AAA, win the championship, and get promoted to the MLB where the TV $$$ and what not is so much more lucrative that it will ensure that their revenue will at least be $70m the next season. The problem is, they don't get promoted. Now they have a $32 million dollar outstanding loan that they cannot pay off and their club in on the verge of collapse. This is somewhat like what Portsmouth, Leeds and Rangers did.


Scenario 1 is the part that makes it feel like FFP is the creation of a glass ceiling. From the perspective of non-major clubs, the major clubs that got big a long time ago (Man U, Barca, Liverpool, Real, etc.) don't like new money (City/PSG) and certainly don't want more new money. So now there's a FFP rule to keep you from breaking out of your spot in the hierarchy unless you're able to have a sustained level of success that leads to a natural growth in revenue. The problem is, if you have success and you aren't at the top of the food chain, you'll get ravaged by the big clubs during the transfer window. So it becomes a Catch 22 situation.