For yet another season, Barcelona continue to struggle to balance the books. According to what LaLiga revealed this Thursday at an event in Madrid attended by the president of the association, Javier Tebas, and the corporate general manager, Javier Gómez, the entity chaired by Joan Laporta has increased the salary limit of its squad from 204 million euros last February to 426 after the transfer market this summer, although it still has not met the fair play The club is still far behind Real Madrid. The club has 754 million euros – the highest figure in its history – to cover the salaries of the team that its coach, Carlo Ancelotti, has. The other side of the coin is Sevilla, which last year did not qualify for the Champions League, which meant it lost around 70 million euros. With a squad designed to play in Europe, the Sevillian team has gone from having a limit of 168.7 million in September 2023 to 2.49 at the start of this campaign, the lowest in the First Division.
The so-called cap on the cost of the sporting squad (LCPD) is the fundamental measure of LaLiga’s economic control system. It is calculated based on the difference between the clubs’ estimated income for the season that begins and the expenses, which range from rents and salaries to losses that must be recovered from previous years or debts that must be repaid in the short term. The LCPD does not mean that a club must spend that amount on salaries for its players, but rather it is an estimate of what they can pay based on their economic situation. It is also a warning for entities that have a cost of staff and expenses higher than the limit stipulated by LaLiga, such as Barcelona or Sevilla. If the teams that are in the red do not act to reduce expenses or increase income, they run the risk of not being able to pay their creditors and suffer loss of points or even administrative relegation.
Barça still cannot register players normally because they do not comply with the fair play financial. Laporta said at the beginning of September that the club was 60 million euros away from returning to the 1:1 rule, meaning that the club can invest in signings the amount it frees up from selling players or saving on wages. Meanwhile, as the club continues to overspend, it can only use 20% of the income from the sale of players and 60% of the wages it reduces to improve its squad. “Barcelona is closer to the 1:1 rule thanks to the fact that it has increased its income and significantly reduced its wage bill. It has done a great job because in the economic aspect it has reduced the wage bill and has made very important efforts,” said Tebas.
The Blaugrana club, which has only signed Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor this summer, has managed to increase its salary cap thanks to the departures of Dest, Cancelo, João Félix, Marc Guiu, Chadi Riad, Oriol Romeu (on loan), Julián Araujo, Gündogan, Sergi Roberto, Mika Faye, Lenglet (on loan) and Vitor Roque (on loan). Also due to the payment of a sponsor and the use of article 31.11 of the regulations, which allows clubs that are refurbishing their stadium (the Camp Nou is under construction) not to charge the income lost by ticketing and subscriptions this year, but during the three years following the reform.
“They are increasingly getting to know better how the system works. fair play “The club is financially struggling, but they still have to sort everything out, although a club with that level of turnover is on the right track if it reduces its expenses,” added Tebas. In fact, Olmo’s registration in LaLiga – for the moment, only until December – was not achieved because the salary mass had been sufficiently released, but thanks to the rule that allows a player to be registered due to another’s injury: Christensen suffered a tendinopathy in his left Achilles heel and the Spanish international was cleared to make his debut in the tournament.
In February 2022, after the losses suffered during the pandemic (97 million in the 2019-2020 campaign), Barcelona had a negative wage margin of -144 million. With the famous levers (the name that Laporta gave to the operations in which he sold 25% of the television rights and 49% of Barça Studios), the club began to redirect a critical financial situation that has not yet been fully resolved. The president of Barcelona said at the beginning of September that the negotiation with Nike for a new sponsorship contract for sports kits will be key to balancing the accounts and returning to the 1:1 rule, although at the moment the American multinational and the Catalan club have not reached an agreement.
With the improvements achieved in the club’s financial situation, Barça has overtaken Atlético as the team with the second highest salary cap. The club headed by Enrique Cerezo, which carried out a capital increase worth 70.8 million euros last June, has 310 million for the salaries of its players after the signings of Julián Álvarez, Gallagher, Le Normand, Sorloth, Lenglet (on loan) and Musso. At the bottom of the big three are Real Sociedad (159.2), Villarreal (135.8), Betis (108.9) and Athletic Club (100.8). At the bottom, in addition to Sevilla, is Espanyol (8.8), which is burdened by having been relegated to the Second Division two seasons ago without reducing its salaries, so it will now have to balance its books.
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