The terms that keep recurring in football finance, defined precisely and linked to the analysis that works through them.
23 terms
The corporate form Spanish professional clubs were forced into in 1990.
Spain's 1990 Sports Act required professional clubs to convert into sporting corporations with share capital and shareholders, so that someone with assets would answer for the debts. Only four clubs escaped, by holding positive net equity across the four preceding years. Spain repealed the obligation in 2022, thirty-two years later.
A member of an association-owned club, holding no shares and nothing to sell.
Under the Spanish associative model the club has no share capital. Members hold nothing tradable and the club's assets are not divisible among them. Nobody can buy the club because there is nothing to buy. Members elect the president, but standing requires conditions very few can meet.
The guarantee a candidate for the presidency must post.
At Real Madrid, standing for president requires a €187 million bank guarantee backed by the candidate's personal assets, plus twenty years of membership. There are no shares to buy; there is a guarantee almost nobody can sign.
A state's investment vehicle, legally distinct from the government funding it.
Football ownership rules test control, not where the money came from. A sovereign fund is a separate legal person, so structuring governance such that the fund — rather than the ministry — appoints the board turns the answer to "does the state control this club?" into no.
One owner holding interests in more than one club.
Owning several clubs is legal and common. UEFA's Article 5 only engages when two clubs from the same group reach the same European competition in the same season. It is a competition-integrity rule dressed as an ownership rule.
The test UEFA uses to decide whether someone controls a club.
A May 2024 circular set the indicators the CFCB treats as evidence: a shareholding above 30%, significant financial investment, positions held in both clubs, and patterns of player transfers between related clubs. The last is behavioural rather than legal — if the share register does not say it, look at whether the clubs behave like one business.
An individual euro ceiling per club, not one cap for everyone.
LaLiga sets each club a limit from its own forecast revenue. It covers wages, social security, agents' fees and transfer amortisation. What matters most is the timing: it is *ex ante*, refusing the registration before the player can play rather than punishing afterwards.
UEFA's break-even regime from 2011 to 2022, now replaced.
It required relevant income to cover relevant costs over three years, with an acceptable deviation of €30 million. It measured the *gap* between income and costs rather than spending, so a club with enormous income could carry enormous costs. Replaced in 2022, though the name survives in ordinary speech.
UEFA's limit: squad costs may not exceed 70% of revenue.
Squad costs are player and head coach wages, amortisation and impairment of transfer fees, and agents' fees, divided by football revenue plus net profit or loss on player sales. It phased in — 90% in 2023/24, 80% in 2024/25 — and has been at full strength since 2025/26. A ratio cannot be fixed by an owner writing a cheque, because a cheque is not football revenue.
Break-even's descendant: how much loss UEFA tolerates over three years.
The acceptable deviation rose from €30m to €60 million over three years, and up to €90 million for a club in good financial health. On its own that is a loosening; it did not arrive on its own, because cost control came with it.
The Premier League's loss regime, no longer in force from 2026/27.
It allowed losses of up to £105 million over three years with secure owner funding. It was a loss test whose only meaningful sanction was a points deduction, with nothing in between: Everton were docked ten points, reduced to six, then two more; Nottingham Forest four.
PSR's replacement: 85% of revenue, in force from 2026/27.
Passed on 21 November 2025 by exactly fourteen votes of twenty, the bare minimum. It limits squad spending to 85% of football revenue plus net profit or loss on player sales, and excludes staff outside the playing squad.
115% — past this the Premier League deducts points rather than charging a levy.
Every club starts with a 30% multi-year allowance above the 85% limit. Between the two it is non-compliant but pays a proportionate levy instead of losing points. Cross 115% and sporting sanction begins: six fixed points plus one for every £6.5m over, arithmetic a club can run in advance.
A rejected proposal tying maximum spend to the poorest club's income.
It would have capped every club at a multiple of the central distribution received by the lowest earner — a hard ceiling on the biggest clubs. Voted on the same day as the SCR, and defeated. It was the only proposal that would have compressed the hierarchy rather than preserving it in proportion.
Spreading a signing's fee across the length of the contract.
A transfer fee is not charged in full in the year of purchase; it is spread across the contract. That is why an academy graduate sold is close to pure profit — their book value is zero — and why a squad can be worth far more than the balance sheet says.
The seller finances part of the price the buyer pays them.
Elliott lent RedBird roughly €560 million at 8% to buy Milan from them in 2022. It is ordinary in private equity, but it leaves the seller with an interest in the asset sold, which is what opened the question of who really controlled the club.
The €853m of Champions League money allocated on past achievement.
Of the ~€2.032 billion UEFA distributed in 2024/25, €853 million is allocated by each club's ten-year and five-year coefficient and its broadcast market share. Roughly 42% of the pot depends not on this year's team but on what the club did before and how big its market is.
A running score of European results that also distributes money.
It does more than seed draws: it feeds the value pillar. A club with a decade in the Champions League collects a larger coefficient share, which raises revenue, which raises permitted spending under the 70% rule, which raises its chance of qualifying again. A compounding loop.
UEFA's body for enforcing the financial and multi-club rules.
It rules on licensing, sanctions breaches and accepts settlement agreements. On 30 June 2026 it closed the 2025/26 monitoring cycle by sanctioning fourteen clubs, nine of them for exceeding the 70% squad cost ratio.
The arbitral body where appeals against UEFA end up.
On 11 August 2025 it dismissed Crystal Palace's multi-club ownership appeal: they had won the FA Cup but were dropped to the Conference League. It also upheld the exclusions of Drogheda United and FC DAC 1904.
Parking shares with an independent third party to satisfy Article 5.
In 2024/25 the shares in Girona and Nice were transferred to an independent trustee supervised by the CFCB until 1 July 2025. It is a compliance mechanism rather than a remedy: it suspends a formal power for exactly as long as the regulation requires.