PL Double Down On FFP Despite Now Having Fallen In Love With A Salary Cap

There have been plenty of twists and turns in the 2023/24 Premier League campaign so far and as we hit the true business end of the year both the title and European race has opened up, and some clubs now know that they are preparing for life back in the Championship next season.

Betting markets over the summer will certainly be busy as fans who like a flutter look at their available odds for what shenanigans and upsets might happen in the 2024/25 campaign, but given the peculiarity of 2023/24, there might be some new relevant odds and betting promos in the coming weeks given the situation football finds itself in.

As fans will know, even when the top flight table has played its last game this year and the final whistle on the game with the most stoppage time has been blown, that will not be the end of the story, as fans up and down the country are waiting to see what will happen with Everton and Nottingham Forest’s appeal against a points deduction for breaches of the Profit and Sustainability Rules.

Yes, having seemingly sat on the three figure charges levelled at Manchester City for their Financial Fair Play allegations, and knowing full well that a move away from FFP was on the cards, the Premier League decided that 2023/24 campaign would be full of points deduction confusion and it is bound to get messy.

Despite seemingly trying to draw that line in the sand though, the PL are pushing forward with their new financial baby – a salary cap model, based on the minimum revenue guaranteed via the broadcast deal in the English top flight.

They are argue that this will better level the playing field, when compared to FFP, amongst member clubs, but with suggestions that sides with greater riches and European revenue would get up to a 5x wriggle room on that baseline salary cap, many would point out that is still inherently favours the bigger teams and in no way would actually level the playing field.

At a recent meeting, PL clubs provisionally adopted the idea and 16 clubs voted in favour of now developing proper plans and regulations around the idea, which would involve the completion of both a final economic assessment and a legal analysis of how a spending cap model would function. Manchester City, Manchester United and Aston Villa voted against the plan, whilst Chelsea abstained.

The final plans are anticipated to be placed in front of clubs once again at the annual general meeting in June if sufficient progress has been made, and if voted through it would then replace the current PSR format for the 2025/26 season onwards.

A spending cap would basically limit what each individual club could spend on transfers, wages and agents’ fees, and although it is argued this would be a fairer model than the current regulations (which have long been wildly open to criticism that they unfairly favour clubs with the highest revenues), with a proposal that spending would be capped to between four to five times of the amount that the lowest earning PL club received in revenue – this suggestion clearly has flaws of its own.

For example, Leeds United finished in 19th place in the table back in the 2022/23 campaign, and as lowest earners, they still raked in £112 million in broadcast revenue. If others had another £336 million (at a four times cap) that is hardly a level playing field in a 12 month period.

Financial Fair Play was designed to prevent ‘unfair advantage’ and we have all seen how successful that has been, so why would this be any better as it is currently being suggested.

If anything, it would simply maintain the financial status quo, and if you go further, a good argument could be made that those sides who are newer to European competition would be largely cut off from using their own fresh financial advantage as they look to close the gap on the more established pack, as they would largely lose that through not being more established, as we cannot forget even if the PL allow four times spending, particularly newer clubs in Europe are constrained by UEFA FFP and a breach means non-involvement.

There are naturally plenty of other valid arguments, both for and against, what the ramifications of a spending cap could mean for modern football, and even on the above point surrounding clubs newer to Europe, an argument could be made that they would be freer to spend under the new rules, using their new additional revenue anyway – and whilst that would be true domestically, if they were denied European riches because of a mis-balance of rules, is that really an advantage domestically?

But equally, a very likely outcome is that spending in the top flight would continue to unsustainable levels, and most clubs would be paying even more of a premium just to stand still.

There will certainly be those in the wider world of football who remain curious and distrustful of what this new proposed plan is supposed to actually achieve.