Friday, May 21, 2021
UEFA: Billions of euros are missing
Pandemic hits 52 professional clubs particularly hard
In most of the major football leagues in Europe, the 2019/20 season could be played to the end despite the Corona interruption. Nevertheless, UEFA registers that the clubs have lost billions of euros in revenue. Among other things, this leads to a new negative record.
The corona pandemic has caused an unprecedented financial slump in European professional football. In its report on the European club landscape, the European Football Union assumes losses of 7.2 billion euros in the top professional leagues alone. In addition, there is a minus of 1.5 billion euros in the lower classes.
“Clubs that are particularly dependent on viewer income have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic,” said the UEFA report. The losses from ticket sales are therefore up to 4 billion, from sponsoring another 2.7 billion and from broadcasting rights 1.4 billion euros. According to the report, ticket revenue losses are currently € 85 million per week. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the European professional clubs have had to do without around 210 million stadium visitors. Overall, the lack of income therefore added up to more than four million euros.
This is one of the reasons why, according to UEFA, 15 top division and 37 second division clubs from 24 different countries across Europe have faced withdrawal or exclusion from the league and / or insolvency proceedings since the beginning of 2020. With 42 clubs in the 2020 calendar year, the previous negative record of 34 cases from 2011 was exceeded. Accordingly, transfer expenses in summer 2020 also decreased by 39 percent compared to the previous year. In the transfer period in January 2021, spending fell by as much as 56 percent compared to the comparison values in the previous year. Savings in salaries and operating costs could only partially compensate for the losses.
Meanwhile, according to UEFA, the crisis was at least partially mitigated by the fact that 38 top leagues ended their 2019/20 seasons. The Bundesliga, for example, paused from mid-March to May, but then resumed play and completed all 34 match days as well as the relegation. In the event of a cancellation or a longer interruption, more than a dozen of the 36 German professional clubs would also have threatened to become insolvent.
But the implementation of gaming operations during Corona times also required great efforts. Since August 2020, 1,432 games have been played in UEFA club and national team competitions, with a total of 163,844 Covid-19 tests carried out. Only one percent of the planned games had to be canceled.
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