Financial Fair Play, squad-cost limits, transfer amortisation, release clauses and media money — the rules that decide what a club can spend, turned into formulas you can follow.
Football finance looks complicated because four separate rulebooks are in play at once. Read them in this order and each one stops contradicting the last.
Break-even tests, permitted losses and squad-cost ratios: the rule compares eligible revenue with eligible costs over a window and sets a line between them.
A fee is capitalised and written down over the contract. Instalments, add-ons, release clauses and agent fees sit on top of that headline number as separate layers.
Member clubs, 50+1, multi-club groups and funds decide how much outside capital can arrive — and who carries the losses when the project fails.
Broadcast pools, distribution formulas, matchday income and sponsorship. Media money is pooled; commercial deals are tested at fair value.
How a breach is found, decided and appealed — case by case.
The mechanics behind a transfer fee, layer by layer.
Type your own numbers and watch the mechanics move: how a fee is written down per season, what a squad cost ratio turns into as a share of revenue, and how much room is left under a loss limit. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Open the calculatorsShort answers to the questions we get most often.
No. Amortisation is an accounting allocation of a cost that was agreed earlier. Cash may leave in instalments at different times, so the accounting view and the cash view rarely move together.
Not by itself. It compares eligible revenue with eligible costs and sets a permitted loss line. How much a club can spend depends on how much qualifying revenue it can generate or count.
A ceiling expressed as a percentage: qualifying squad cost — wages, amortisation and agent fees — divided by qualifying revenue, tested over a reference period.
Because it decides who may put money in, how much, and whether that money counts as revenue, equity or a loan for the purposes of the rules.
Distribution formulas usually combine a broadly equal element with performance-based and facility-based elements. The weights differ by competition.
No. It is general information about how the rules are constructed. It is not investment, accounting, tax or legal advice, and rules are applied case by case by the bodies that write them.
