March 11 – LaLiga’ clubs generated total revenues of €3.818 billion in the covid-impacted 2020/21 season, a 24.1% drop in revenue on the 2019/20 season.
The latest Economic Report from LaLiga shows the main drops in revenue coming from matchday revenue (-53%) and player transfer fees (-52%).
Overall losses for LaLiga as a whole, where €892 million of which almost 60% was incurred by Barcelona.
However, LaLiga praised its clubs saying that “high financial solvency and responsibility at most clubs has helped Spanish professional football overcome this crisis.”
The league said it expects a strong recovery in the 2021/22 season, “with complete normalisation expected to be achieved in the 23/24 season”.
“The outlook for the current 2021/22 season is that it will be the start of the recovery period, where revenue will once again surpass the €4 billion income mark, as well as a forecasted increase of +180% in EBITDA and +66% in terms of both EBIT and NR,” said La Liga.
Looking at the 2020/21 season laLiga recognised that 71% of clubs reported a negative net result but that “the majority of clubs have a positive EBITDA (62% of them) and that, in theworst periods of the crisis, have reduced their Gross Financial Debt (GFD) level in the season(55% of the clubs).”
Looking at cost structures across LaLiga, staff (including players), make up 46% of costs,followed by player amortisation (16%). For the first time, however, expenditure on wages fellby 5.4%, a reaction to the drop in revenues, with player amortisation reduced by 6.6%. LaLiga also highlighted club’s collective reduction in operating expenses of 13.4%.
LaLiga compares the performance of its clubs favourably to the rest of Europe, highlighting figures from UEFA that show “the decline in ordinary turnover amounted to €7 billion in thetwo seasons with COVID. Including player transfer revenues, the total revenue erosion inEuropean professional football as a whole, amounts to more than €10 billion.”
The league also caveated Barcelona’s accounting for 58% of the overall losses in terms ofEBIT, 56% of the losses in terms of net result and 26% of the gross financial debt (GFD) saying that 50% of the losses correspond to “accounting conventions associated with the extraordinary write-down of its balance sheet, with no immediate financial impact”.
Where new money has been needed to fund clubs, owners and shareholders have committed capital increases of about €215 million across the league.
For the future LaLiga points to the ‘transformational’ nature of a number of deals done including the CVC capital raise to fund the “Boost LaLiga Plan, LaLiga Tech, expansion of joint-ventures at international level, the successful sale of audiovisual rights in domestic and foreign markets, as well as the signing of important sponsorship agreements during the pandemic.”
“In short, Spanish professional football has overcome the most acute phase of the crisiscaused by COVID-19, and has done substantially better than other leading competitions interms of the impact on revenues and results, despite significant adjustments on an ad-hoc basis, especially in the last completed season, 2020-21.”
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1713928781labto1713928781ofdlr1713928781owedi1713928781sni@n1713928781osloh1713928781cin.l1713928781uap1713928781