The COVID-19 pandemic has left Europe’s clubs with a massive seven billion euro-crater in their bank accounts, a UEFA report concluded on Thursday.
The virus interrupted the past two seasons, with many games, played to empty terraces, ending an uninterrupted rise in revenue over the previous 20 years.
Without gate receipts, sponsorship down, and television rights receipts hit, clubs suffered a four billion euros hit in 2019-2020 and three billion in 2020-2021.
Lockdowns imposed to reduce the spread of the virus that has killed nearly 2 million in Europe and 5.69 million worldwide cut off the clubs’ financial lifeblood – The Football Fans.
Ticket sales were dived by 4.4bn euros, while there was a forecast 1.7bn drop in sponsorship and a 0.9bn reduction in television rights.
These figures correlate with the forecast loss contained in UEFA’s report in May 2021 which put at 7.2bn euros the loss for Europe’s 711 top flight sides.
The latest UEFA study includes the results of these same 711 clubs for the year 2020, as well as the financial statements of 95 major teams for the year 2021, particularly marked by games played behind closed doors.
These long months of empty stadiums caused a hectic decrease in ticketing revenues, plummeting by 88 percent in 2021 compared to 2019. Sluggish transfer market –
Impact of Covid On The Transfer Market
“Revenues due to transfers decreased by 40 percent during summer 2020, January 2021, and summer 2021 transfer windows” compared to their original level, the European body pointed out.
European clubs spent 3.8 billion euros in the summer of 2021, compared to 6.5 billion in the summer transfer window of 2019.
But UEFA also stressed signs of recovery that have been observed in recent months as “fans seem to have more appetite than ever to return to the stadium”.
It also noted a rebound in the January transfer window which closed on Monday with an estimated 950 million euros spent last month in Europe, according to UEFA.
