Daily Mail article..... a big fine looms...

£80m LOSS £60m FINE! QPR face record-breaking punishment for wildly overspending on dozens of players in failed battle to stay in Premier League


Queens Park Rangers are on course to be hit with the biggest fine in British football history, which, in a worse-case scenario, could top £60 million.
Ironically, it will be imposed because of the amount of money they are losing — believed to be a huge £80m for last season — and will compound their financial troubles, perhaps sparking meltdown.
They have racked up big debts and massive annual losses largely through signing dozens of players on huge contracts in recent seasons, including Chris Samba, Park Ji-Sung, Julio Cesar, Jermaine Jenas, Loic Remy and others, most of whom remain on the club’s books, draining their resources with contracts worth up to £100,000 a week.
Big money signing: Jermaine Jenas signed by Harry Redknapp in January 2013 from Tottenham on 18-month contract worth £50,000 a week

If QPR are promoted this season, the fine will be levied in January 2015 by the Football League under their new Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules, which will see overspending clubs ‘taxed’ on their losses. Rangers are currently favourites to go up to the Premier League from the Championship this season. They could avoid a fine — or at least postpone it — if they fail to get promoted. In that case, they will be hit with a lengthy transfer embargo.
The mathematics are complicated, but in broad terms, Championship clubs will pay a £1 fine for every £1 they lose over £18m in the 2013-14 financial year.
Short stay: Chris Samba Spent six months at QPR to July 2013 on £100,000 a week. His 10 Premier League games cost £2.5m in wages

Sources familiar with QPR’s financial situation have told The Mail on Sunday that the club will post losses for 2012-13 of about £80m. The club are not obliged to publish those accounts until next spring and have declined to comment.
Rangers are two-thirds owned by Malaysian businessman Tony Fernandes and one-third by the Mittal family. Fernandes’s majority shareholding gives him ultimate power and it is he who sanctioned the hiring of Mark Hughes and then Harry Redknapp, allowing both to sign large groups of players.
It is expected that the club will record another massive deficit for the current season, and it is the losses in 2013-14 that will be measured to calculate any fine.
If QPR’s losses for the season are £80m, the fine will be about £62m. That would equate to roughly all of QPR’s Premier League income (if they are promoted) for next season. Even if 2013-14 losses are as ‘low’ as £60m, a fine of more than £40m would follow.
‘This is the first season in which clubs will ultimately face sanctions [for over-spending],’ a Football League spokesman told The Mail on Sunday. ‘Clubs have to submit their accounts for 2013-14 to us by December 1, 2014, with sanctions levied early in 2015. If a club being sanctioned are in the Premier League by then, the fine will need to be paid.’
QPR’s accounts for 2012-13, in which they were relegated from the Premier League, have not been made public, nor will the club confirm when they will be. Asked to comment on their expected losses last season and this season, and on the potentially destructive fines, a Loftus Road spokesman said: ‘The club will be making no comment on [these] matters at this time.’
Expensive hands: Julio Cesar signed from Inter Milan on four-year deal in summer 2012. Out of favour now, but earning £90,000 a week
Expensive hands: Julio Cesar signed from Inter Milan on four-year deal in summer 2012. Out of favour now, but earning £90,000 a week
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the Football League plan to donate fines levied under their FFP rules to charity. It had previously been expected that fines paid by overspending clubs would be shared among clubs who stayed within the rules and did not lose huge amounts while trying to ‘buy’ success. But a senior FL source says giving the fines to charity is now the preferred option ‘for a number of political reasons’.
The last publicly available accounts for QPR relate to the 2011-12 season, when they made a loss of £22.6m, had debts of £89m and a wage bill that had almost doubled year-on-year from £29.7m to £58.4m.

Park Ji-Sung moved from Manchester United in July 2012 for £2m. Now on loan at PSV with QPR paying most of his £70,000-a-week wage
That huge wage bill was before they signed high-earning players like Samba, Park, Rob Green, Junior Hoilett, Ryan Nelsen, Jose Bosingwa, Julio Cesar, Stephane Mbia, Remy and Jenas.
The wage bill for QPR’s relegation season is expected to be about £90m, or, by itself, about 150 per cent of the club’s total income of about £65m. A ‘sensible’ wage ratio is closer to 50 per cent of turnover. They have cut some costs since last season, releasing or selling 11 players in the summer including Samba, Bosingwa and Anton Ferdinand.
But they also signed eight new players on permanent deals and loaned three others including Benoit Assou-Ekotto from Tottenham and Niko Kranjcar from Dynamo Kiev.
QPR’s income will also have plunged between last season in the Premier League and this season in the Championship, largely through reduction in TV money.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...cord-fine-losing-80million.html#ixzz2kr9lFb5b
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Pennies from heaven - sounds like we need some of this.......

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Parachute payment problems for the English Football League

http://pearsonblog.campaignserver.co.uk/?p=7849

The English Premier League (EPL) has negotiated a record TV deal which will generate £5.5 billion of revenue over the next 3 years – beginning in the season 2013–14. This represents a 70% increase on the previous deal. Controversy has arisen over some initial proposals put forward by the EPL as to how the money will be spent. The owners of the clubs in the Championship of the English Football League (EFL) are particularly concerned about the size of the proposed payments to the three teams relegated from the EPL.

Some 30 years ago the money generated from the sale of television rights was equally shared between all the teams in the then four divisions of the English Football League (EFL). In 1992 the top division of the English Football League broke away and formed the English Premier League (EPL). This newly formed EPL negotiated a separate television deal and kept the majority of the money. However, some payments were and still are made to the teams in the EFL and to organisations such as the League Managers Association and Professional Footballers Association. For example in 2011-–12 the EPL donated £189.4 million of the £1.2 billion generated from that year’s TV deal.

The majority of the money donated by the EPL is spent in two main ways. First, some money is redistributed to all the teams in the EFL: i.e. The Championship, League 1 and League 2. These are known as ‘solidarity payments’ and in 2011–12 the EPL spent £49.8 million on this scheme. Each club in the Championship received £2.3 million. It has been proposed that the amount paid into this scheme should be increased by 5% in the season 2013–14. Second, a relatively large amount of money is paid over a four-year period to the three teams relegated each season from the EPL into the Championship. These are known as ‘parachute payments’ and in the season 2011–12 the EPL spent £90.9 million on this scheme. The rationale for having parachute payments is to help the relegated teams adjust their wage bills to the much lower revenue streams that come from playing in the Championship. Proposed changes to the scheme are outlined in Table 1.

The chairmen of the football league clubs met on the 20th March 2013 and a number of them expressed concerns about the relatively large increase in the parachute payments compared to the solidarity payments. They were particularly concerned that the changes to the funding would damage the competitive balance of the Championship.

Competitive balance refers to how the most talented players are distributed amongst the teams in a league. For example, are the majority of the most talented footballers playing for just a couple of the teams? In this case the league is competitively imbalanced and the teams with the best players will tend to win far more games than the other teams. The outcome of the league will be very predictable. If the most talented players were more evenly spread across all the teams in the league, then it would be more competitively balanced. Matches and the outcome of the league would become more unpredictable.

Does the level of competitive balance matter? Some sports economists have argued that it may have a significant impact on the success of the league. This is because fans may value the unpredictability of the results. It follows that closer and more unpredictable results will generate higher match-day attendances and increase the revenues of the clubs.

This is an interesting argument and is the opposite of what economic theory would predict for most markets. For example, the standard prediction would be that as firms outperform their rivals, they generate more revenue and profit. If they manage to drive all their rivals out of business, they would become a pure monopoly and make large abnormal profits. However in professional team sports the outcome may differ significantly. If the unpredictability of the league is highly valued by fans, then teams will generate more revenue when they have strong and evenly matched rivals.

It has been reported that further discussions about the distribution of the money will take place this month with the owners of the championship clubs arguing that there should be smaller increases in parachute payments and much larger increases in solidarity payments. Representatives of the EPL have argued that the parachute payments do not distort competition and make the championship predictable. They point out that at present only one of the top six teams in the championship (Hull) receives parachute payments, while only one of the teams promoted from the Championship in the season 2012–13 (West Ham) received these payments.

 

Absolutely ridicoulus article. Never seen so many unfounded accusations in one place. It's the same old drivel regurgitated again.

The numbers are made up which have been confirmed over and over again. Almost all the players named in the article are off our books, and have been from the season started.

In the words of Neil Warnock, "don't let the truth get in the way of a good story".

 

I kind of agree with Norway. More fluff from the daily fail. The only difference being that whoever wrote this fluff has done so in a slightly more thought out way than usual, with some thought it seems put into the numbers. As I say fluff, but lets wait till the accounts come out from HQ. until then any thoughts of some sort of financial penalty can just wait...

 

its Daily Mail, so not really worried about it

 

More media bollox.........

 

Is this the "huge" penalty we were facing when we last won this league, all over again? Or is there more to it this time? and as aked above, why are we targeted when we know there are a few other clubs aroud that spend money like there's no tomorrow

 

Financially you'd be better off, but that's the whole point of the FFP rules in the Football League, to make it so that gambling with money you don't have won't give you a reward. If all owners can do in that situation is lose then they should stop doing it. Obviously your situation is complicated by the fact you had the existing contracts when the rules were passed which makes the punishment harsh, but at the same time you carried on going out and signing big players in Championship terms, Austin for example won't be cheap.

Chelsea and Man City will have to comply with the PL FFP rules, and the UEFA ones (which are different from each other and from the FL ones). The PL rules say that over 3 years clubs are allowed to have lost about £100M, but that figure is coming down each year (always for the previous 3 seasons) for a number of years until no losses are allowed. That's to allow for existing contracts to run out and be replaced with more appropriate ones, rather than automatically hitting them with a big fine because of existing contracts committing them to the spending (not 100% on the punishment, but I think it's points penalties). In terms of the UEFA rules I'm not entirely sure when it kicks in properly, but clubs outside the rules won't be granted a European licence, so that would mean Man City and Chelsea being excluded from the Champions League if they overspend.

You're being named because you're in the promotion race and probably the biggest fine would be given to you. (If you get promoted you pay the fine, if you don't get promoted you just have a transfer embargo until you fall back inside the rules so other clubs aren't a consideration)

 

They have failed to note that relegated clubs within the transition period are allowed to 'measure' their losses against their Premier League income, otherwise every relegated club would face financial ruin. They've picked on us simply because of the deals we did in our two seasons in the PL. In fact an article I read when this was brought in stated clubs that spent big before the rules were brought in would be better placed than those who didn't as their wage bills would be measured against PL spending in the previous season. It's the usual scare-mongering...

 

Thanks Ricardo I'm not entirely sure it's fair on us, as the regulations hadn't been passed when Hughes p@ssed all our money in the wind, however I would say that!

I'd guess that there are a few others that will be in for large fines - Leicester, Forest and Watford spring to mind.

I do think as a general rule that clubs coming back down from the Premiership should be given a years grace to get their house in order, or apply the penalty by the football league calendar rather than the yearly calendar, as otherwise clubs will essentially be penalized for half a year when they were working within different financial constraints while they were in the Premiership.

I should say that I was happy that we spent money to try and stay in the Premiership, and since we were relegated think we've done fairly well in trying to get our club back on FFP tracks.

 

Sooper, can you elaborate? How does that apply to us? (Sorry, it's late and my brain's given up!)

 

They take expenditure figures for the previous seasons and use it as the 'norm' against which the calculations are made. So clubs that have big losses in those seasons are given an allowance based on those losses. It's why clubs like Man City and Chelsea continue to spend massively. Relegated PL clubs are given additional 'weighting' in the calculations which is why those that spent biggest in the PL will not be hammered in the transitional period...

 

International weekend, not much to report. The Mail know the rule, they know we're near the top of the league. Throw some ifs and maybes around and you've filled another page. There will be a fine if we go up but it won't be close to £60m.

 

So Mark Hughes knew what he was doing after all?

DT will be pleased

 

Yet another article rubbishing little ol' QPR. I suppose it keeps the "journalist" off the streets!

 

Fear not ye worried people. If the Journo had bothered to even read the FL FFP, which is based on UEFA FFP, fines are not being implemented till the 2014/15 season. Of course we will probably be in breach of them this season, but even if a fine was implemented it would be nowhere near the figure spouted. But seeing as no fines are being implemented this season, what a load of crock.

Let's just pray we do get promotion this season, as next season would look very bleak otherwise.

http://www.football-league.co.uk/page/FLExplainedDetail/0,,10794~2748246,00.html

 

I don't give must weight on this story.
TF said it time and time that no one, including Samba, was paid more than 65K a week and yet this journo is still reeling out the 100K figure, I know who I believe. This article is based purely on speculation from people who have no idea of the figures installed. I am sure TF knows what he is doing.

 

It's the Mail the paper and their readers should be executed or tortured until they understand exactly where they are going wrong in life

I am a QPR fan and do t give a **** if anything good or bad happens

It is what it is

This is this

 

In fairness to the journo, he does say that in the article.