The pandemic of Covid-19 has caused a global health and economic crisis In a last year to forget, a scourge that has destabilized all societies and companies, to a greater or lesser extent, and from which the world of football has not escaped either.
The economic impact on professional football clubs in the Spanish state, in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons, has been enormous. The LaLiga Santander and LaLiga Smartbank clubs could lose between 800 and a billion euros in exploitation of their respective entities because of the impact of the coronavirus. Specifically the fork ranges from 825 to 1,029 million, according to a LaLiga study, made by ‘PricewaterhouseCoopers’.
All First and Second Division clubs have suffered in their flesh a brutal drop in their income in this journey marked by the pandemic, seeing reduced the inflow of money in concepts such as
attendance at stadiums
(all games behind closed doors), broadcasting, marketing, advertising and player transfers.
In parallel form, everyone has fastened their belts, containing the expenses, above all, in the game of buying players.
But the containment of spending in years 19/20 and 20/21 has not been enough to offset the steep drop in income. This imbalance between income and expenses derived from the crisis caused by the pandemic is what causes a negative result in the exploitation of the clubs: 825 million in a more optimistic scenario (fans can return to the stadiums in this last quarter of the League) or 1,029 million if we hold on to the possibly more realistic scenarioa (there is no audience for this season and all the games that remain to be played are behind closed doors in LaLiga).
The games are with empty doors, like this Athletic – Barça
How many millions have been stopped entering?
According to the aforementioned study, Spanish clubs would have stopped receiving 2,013 million euros accumulated in these two seasons, the total income due to the impact of the coronavirus: 366 in the 19/20 League and 1,647 in the 20/21.
It is still significant that three-quarters of this amount that has “flown” corresponds to the drop in income from player transfers and attendance at stadiums (240 games behind closed doors since the competition stopped on March 13 2020 until the end of the 19/20 campaign), two ‘balloons’ that have punctured due to the crisis derived from Covid and that are crushing and in what way the economy of the clubs.
Impact when spending
The economic crisis due to the pandemic has also cut the wings when it comes to investing in templates. Between the two years, Spanish football has stopped spending 748 million less than in the 18/19 campaign (191 million in 19/20 and 557 in 20/21). In the summer market last year, the clubs scratched their portfolio much less: 423 million this past summer compared to 1,270 in the summer of 2019, less than 67% invested in transfers. And for the next market it is estimated that spending on players will follow the same parameters, reducing by 66%.