West Ham United narrowly avoid £202m FFP breach thanks to UEFA allowance
West Ham released their financial accounts for the year ending on 31 May 2023 on 29 December, and they showed the club were almost in breach of UEFA Financial Fair Play regulations, according to Sean Whetstone.
The West Ham news source reported via the 6foot2 website [29 December] that the Hammers are allowed an FFP allowance of 80% for wages, transfers and agent fees, translating to a £189.28million budget.
With their overall wages at £136.8million and transfer and agent fees at £65.3million, West Ham exceeded that allowance at £202million.
However, UEFA rules allow the Hammers to exclude non-playing and coach staff wages, as well as money put towards infrastructure, community projects, the academy, women’s football and training facilities, which brings them back under the budget.
Flying close to the sun
While the Hammers would have been entirely aware of how close they came to breaching the UEFA FFP rules, and would have budgeted as such, they will still need to be careful not to fly too close to the sun through fear of their wings getting burnt.
The allowances made by UEFA would already have been in mind for the Hammers, so the eventual sum ending up in the allowed budget would have been calculated and measured before the official documents were released.
Having seen Everton handed a ten-point deduction, and with the investigation ongoing into an alleged 115 breaches of financial rules by Manchester City, Premier League clubs will be hyper-aware of financial constraints and will be desperate to avoid any issues.
The decision for Premier League clubs to realise their finances at the end of the year on 31 December rather than the previous date of 31 March reportedly left some clubs worried about potential breaches as they feared a similar fate to Everton [The Telegraph].
In other West Ham news, Marseille are eyeing a deal for one Hammers ace.