Coronavirus: European football faces economic danger

Text by: Nicolas Bamba Follow

With the Covid-19 pandemic, football has come to a halt almost everywhere in Europe. This situation seriously damages the financial health of many clubs. Some ask for help, many hunt down the slightest saving, and all wait for better days ... hoping not to go bankrupt before.

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Spring is usually synonymous with an intense period in the world of football. This is the moment when we enter the final stretch of the European cups and national championships. But this year 2020 is not like the others. The coronavirus is wreaking havoc, half of Earth's people live confined to stem the pandemic, and logically, the most popular sport of the world is stopped in Europe, with the notable exception of Belarus .

"Nothing will be the same again"

It had started with a few postponed or closed-door matches. And then, the spread of the virus ended up freezing almost all competitions around mid-March. Since then, we no longer play. The fight against the Covid-19 occupies all discussions, even among soccer players. There are many questions: we wonder when we will replay, if the interrupted competitions will resume and in what form, we are worried about the schedule and the physical condition of the players ... The concern is not only sporting.

Often criticized for the place it gives to money, European football is not immune to the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus. Miscellaneous income - sponsorship, marketing, and especially ticketing and TV rights - suddenly stopped at the same time as the competitions. And not all clubs are as rich as the big behemoths ... who themselves are not completely unscathed.

Aleksander Ceferin, President of UEFA, at the Congress of the European Football Authority on March 3, 2020 in Amsterdam. Yves Herman / Reuters

“ The crisis is also hitting clubs. Nothing will be as before after this terrible year , "said Aleksander Ceferin, UEFA president, in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on 28 March. UEFA is monitoring health developments closely but still cannot predict when football will resume. It does not exclude that this 2019-2020 season is " lost ".

Weakened wages and partial unemployment

In the meantime, anxiety is winning over the clubs. Even the wealthiest like FC Barcelona. The Catalan flagship was named the richest club in the world at the start of the year by the American magazine Forbes and the firm Deloitte, with 840 million euros in turnover. The complete stoppage of competitions must still be absorbed by Barça, which has the highest payroll in the world of football (more than 500 million euros). According to several Spanish media, the club loses 5 million euros every day.

To support this course, the Blaugrana announced on March 26, and after tough internal negotiations, a temporary reduction in player wages. Another European giant did the same on March 28: in Italy, Juventus announced to reduce the wages of its players and its coach from March to June, which will have a “ positive impact of 90 million euros on the 'financial year 2019-2020 '. In Germany, players from Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Borussia Mönchengladbach and even Schalke 04 have also given up part of their salary.

Manuel Neuer, goalkeeper of Bayern Munich, March 3, 2020. Thilo Schmuelgen / Reuters

In Spain, Atlético Madrid, which has already been close to bankruptcy in its history and has lived through lean years for this reason, has presented a plan for partial unemployment, like Barça and Espanyol Barcelona. " There is no room for selfishness, " said Aleksander Ceferin, who is open to a relaxation of the rules of financial fair play in this context. Manuel Neuer is on the same wavelength. At Bayern, the players agreed to cut their wages by 20%. “ It was not a difficult decision to make. It was obvious. We footballers are a particularly privileged professional group, for which it is obvious to make financial sacrifices when necessary, "the German goalkeeper told the TZ daily.

TV rights, another subject of tension

If the wealthiest clubs have the resources to endure this difficult period, this is not the case for the most modest. In France, concern is growing among presidents, who also fear a very flat summer transfer window, which would be another blow for clubs used to balancing their accounts by selling their players. Bernard Caïazzo, president of the Premier League union and chairman of the supervisory board of AS Saint-Etienne, told Le Parisien on March 20 that French football could lose a billion euros in total and " find itself in a situation bankruptcy ”. In Scotland too, we tremble: Dave Cormack, the president of Aberdeen, speaks of a " clearly untenable situation " over time.

In Germany, solidarity has already been established: the four richest and most powerful clubs, namely Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig and Bayer Leverkusen, have decided to jointly pay 20 million euros to help struggling Bundesliga clubs. " It is important that the strongest support the weakest, " said Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the Munich boss.

Borussia Dortmund, along side with the three other German Champions League clubs, will make € 20 million of financial support available for clubs of the Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga. pic.twitter.com/ZHHAvmrKh7

Another concern is troubling European football: the threats from football broadcasters, who are also facing the crisis and an expensive and undisclosed product. The lucrative Premier League, the English league, cost its broadcasters BT Sports and SkySports 815 million euros. The latter will surely not tolerate paying the full amount of these rights for a championship that does not resume. The same problem is found in each league. The daily L'Equipe indicates, in its editions of March 28 and 29, that Canal Plus, co-broadcaster of the French Ligue 1, refuses to honor its next draft in the Professional Football League (110 million euros to be paid on April 5), and the other co-broadcaster, beIN Sports, could do the same.

It is precisely so as not to lose even more money that certain clubs would like to resume competitions behind closed doors; ticketing would remain at zero, but revenue from TV rights would still fall. A possibility that is not on the agenda, however, the priority still being to stem the progress of the Covid-19. The world of football is taking its pain in patience and tightening its belt drastically, aware that it will take time to digest this crisis and its sports and economic repercussions.

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