UEFA’s Financial Fair Play may cause more harm than good

UEFA's Financial Fair Play may cause more harm than good

An increase in the level of debt and a drop in television revenue has led to 72 clubs in The Football League of England, which consists of the Championship, League one and League two agreeing to adopt UEFA's Financial Fair play system in time for the 2012/2013 season. Financial Fair Play attempts to give every top division club in Europe a fair chance to compete.

It intends to do this, by forcing clubs to "break-even" or earn as much as they spend, so that they don't go into major losses. It also states that clubs that don't conform to this rule, once implemented, will not be allowed to take part in the UEFA Champions League. Such drastic measures would obviously have adverse affects on big money spenders, or would they?

Although initially, bigger clubs may have to make concessions, bridging the gap between themselves and the smaller clubs, the most important factors in a clubs total turnover are things like ticket sales, media and commercial, and once they adjust themselves to this new system, the revenue they make will be way higher than that of a smaller club.

For example, Real Madrid have a total turnover of ufffd359.1m which is an amount that a Liga B club would never match. This would mean that the total profit made by Real would be miles ahead of other clubs, thus instead of closing the gap between them, it just makes that gap even larger, making the clubs with the highest turnover, the clubs that can acquire the best players. There are huge arguments over Michel Platini's attempt to level the playing field to give all teams a fair chance in Europe. But do its adverse effects outweigh its potential advantages?