FFP

[SamTheMouse]

Because I'm too much of a lazy get to look for the answer, I thought I'd ask you guys instead.

With the rebuild of the North Stand and loss of revenue that will result, are Villa allowed to offset that missing revenue when it comes to the PSR/SCR calculation?

I think so yes, certainly for EPL calculations, who knows what those wankers at UEFA will decide.

Thanks. I was starting to think I'd imagined it.

The last I heard, none of us had found evidence confirming this.

If it's true, we need to find a creative accountant willing to certify that the North Stand generates several billion pounds in annual revenue.

[Dogtanian]

I don't think the issue will be the investment, more the loss of revenue.

[paul_e]

Nope, it's really unclear in the UEFA regs. There are hints that they support teams wanting to improve facilities, etc and it's very clear that the development costs are excluded but there's nothing specific saying that lost revenue can be accounted for.

Does the fact we don’t own the ground but lease it help?

Could it be claimed that the landlord is improving by facilities not the tenant?

Again there's nothing in the UEFA regs that makes it clear. The investment part is easy, you can split all the costs for the work, including all the design work, exploratory work, etc into a bucket that is outside the checks, that would be true regardless of how we structure the ownership.

Lsot revenue is the bit that's unclear. The Premier league rules have an acknowledgement for this that makes it clear that you can absorb losses to the same value of the lost income (with some restrictions) but UEFA don't seem to make any mention of it in their documentation. That either means you can't do it at all and we'll have to make up the difference elsewhere or it means that clubs need to submit plans for approval and have them added into a special agreement with UEFA, not massively dissimilar to the restrictive one we had to sign up for last summer. In this scenario it would be something like (but with far more legalese):

Aston Villa have proposed a loss of income of €xxM due to work on the stadium in preparation for the hosting of Euro 2028 matches. UEFA have reviewed the figures and have agreed to allow for extraordinary losses during 2026 and 2027 to the value of €xxm and €xxm.

I'm pretty sure this is what will actually happen because we can make a very strong argument that because the stadium upgrades need to be completed for the Euros (and with plenty of time to spare as there are certain deadlines to meet beyond just bneing ready for thr first game) we had no choice but to go ahead with this work now or withdraw from hosting games. I might be wrong but I just can't see UEFA wanting to get into an argument over this or making it too difficult for us.