A week when we learnt that UEFA may soon fine-tune its much talked-about Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations seems a good time to highlight an aspect of the European football body’s payment distribution system that is anything but fair – and which we now know we are stuck with until at least 2018.
It has played a part in extinguishing the hopes of past European champions such as Glasgow Celtic, Red Star Belgrade and Ajax Amsterdam of winning the title again in the foreseeable future. It goes some way towards explaining why 35 of the last 36 Champions League finalists have been based in countries that are among Europe’s five biggest television markets.
The exception, incidentally, is the 2004 victory by a Porto side handled by José Mourinho in what I still think is the Special One’s greatest achievement as a football manager.
What I have in mind is the “market pool” element in UEFA’s unnecessarily complicated mechanism for distributing prize money from club competitions to participating clubs.
According to UEFA, this is the part of the overall pot distributed “according to the proportional value of each TV market represented by the clubs taking part” and then “split among the clubs participating from a given association”.
To be clear then, the divvying up of this money depends far less on anything clubs accomplish on the pitch, besides qualifying for the competition in the first place, than on where they happen to be based. If they are from a big, rich country, they are quids in; if from a relatively poor or a small one, well that is just too bad.
Consider the market pool payments received by some of the clubs in last season’s Champions League competition. Juventus, this year’s finalists, who were eliminated after finishing third in their group, got €34.26 million. Shakhtar Donetsk, who also came third in their group while accumulating two more points than the Italians, got €3.19 million, less than one-tenth as much.
How can that be fair? The full spread of market pool payments among last season’s 32 Champions League participants was actually from €2.12 million paid to Viktoria Plzeň to €36.78 million received by one of the world’s richest clubs, Paris Saint-Germain. That is a 17-fold difference. Bear in mind too that clubs from England, Germany, Spain, Italy and to some extent France already have a built-in advantage over rivals from other countries because of the size of the TV deals that their respective national leagues are able to negotiate.
One might have hoped that the announcement a few weeks ago of a new distribution system covering 2015-18 would have yielded reform of a mechanism that helps to lock in the superiority of clubs that happen to be based in one of a small number of national markets. But no, there has been no more than a tinkering around at the edges.
According to UEFA, the overall amount forecast to be available each season for distribution to clubs qualifying for the Champions League is €1.26 billion. Of this, not far off €500 million will continue to be distributed in line with the market pool principles. All that has changed is that the proportion of the overall sum allocated to this market pool is being cut from 45% to 40%. Big deal.
UEFA even, it seems to me, comes close to acknowledging the unfairness of the market pool mechanism when discussing its system of “solidarity payments” to clubs not qualified for UEFA club competitions.
Under this, a total of €112 million, equivalent to 5% of gross revenues from the Champions League and Europa League, is to be distributed to national associations and/or leagues for clubs which have not made it to the group stage of either competition.
In 2015-18, UEFA explains, this money “will no longer be exclusively based on their market value”. Instead, “60% of the available amounts will be distributed in equal shares amongst all national associations and/or leagues and only 40% will follow the market value.
“This will ensure a fairer distribution of solidarity amounts to European clubs.”
For how much longer will the rest of Europe be willing to put up with a system that helps to entrench Champions League dominance by clubs from a tiny minority of European countries, rather than trying to combat it?
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938.