Introduction
In July 2025, UEFA imposed sanctions on 12 clubs, including Chelsea, Barcelona, Lyon, and Aston Villa. Chelsea was fined €20 million for breaching the football earnings rule and €11 million for the squad cost rule, totalling €31 million in immediate penalties. Failure to meet improvement targets could push that figure beyond €80 million. Back in 2014, PSG and Manchester City were also hit with more than just fines — registration limits and other sporting restrictions applied too. Still, the current system has shifted from detect-and-fine to something more layered: clubs now commit to multi-year improvement plans, and UEFA monitors compliance season by season.
FFP — once known as Financial Fair Play — was overhauled in 2022 and is now formally called the UEFA Club Licensing and Financial Sustainability Regulations. Almost every football fan has heard the name. Far fewer can explain how the calculations actually work, what happens when a club breaks the rules, or how the system affects their own team. This column breaks down the structure of the current regulations, examines real sanction cases, and maps out the dual-layer framework that includes La Liga's own spending controls. From there, it considers what Apollo Sports Capital's investment in Atlético de Madrid — completed in March 2026 — can and cannot change under these rules.
Chapter 1 — Why the System Exists
In 2009, a UEFA study laid bare a stark reality. Across roughly 650 European clubs surveyed, more than half were posting losses. Net losses among top-division clubs totalled €1.6 billion. Late payments on wages, transfer fees, and taxes had become routine, and the risk of cascading club bankruptcies was real.
Michel Platini, UEFA president at the time, framed the initiative this way: "The idea is not to hurt clubs. The idea is to help them." The concept was endorsed in 2009, formally adopted as regulation in May 2010, and financial monitoring began in 2011. By 2012, prize money had already been withheld from 23 clubs over unpaid debts. The first major sanctions under the break-even requirement came in 2014.
One fundamental misconception deserves clearing up here. FFP was never designed to ban owners from investing in their clubs. Its core purpose is sustainability — ensuring clubs can operate within the boundaries of their own revenue. "Spend what you earn" is the principle. The system does not reject owner investment; it scrutinises the overall financial health of the club, investment included.
Chapter 2 — The Three Pillars
In 2022, UEFA redesigned the old FFP framework from the ground up. The common name shifted to Financial Sustainability Regulations, and the system was rebuilt around three pillars. No formulas are needed here. Understanding what each pillar measures — and why — is enough to grasp the architecture.
No Overdue Payables
The most basic pillar. It checks whether clubs are paying transfer fees, wages, taxes, and UEFA-related obligations on time. Reference dates fall on 30 June, 30 September, and 31 December each year, with compliance verified by the 15th of the following month. Debts overdue by more than 90 days are treated as an aggravating factor in sanctions.
It might sound obvious. Yet in 2012, UEFA withheld prize money from 23 clubs under this very rule. Atlético de Madrid was among them. The funds were released once the overdue balances were settled, but the episode illustrates just how dire club finances were in the system's early years.
Football Earnings Rule
An evolution of the old break-even requirement. It sets the maximum cumulative shortfall a club can record between football-related income and expenses over a three-year period. The baseline allowance is €5 million. If shareholder equity contributions fully cover the excess, that ceiling rises to a maximum of €60 million — double the €30 million limit under the old rules. The key detail: the €60 million is conditional on verified capital backing, not an automatic entitlement.
Another significant change sits alongside it: the fair value assessment of related-party transactions. Sponsorship deals between a club and its owner's companies are benchmarked against comparable market transactions. Inflating revenue through artificially large contracts with related entities no longer works on the books, at least in theory. This provision is the regulatory response to the criticism directed at PSG and Manchester City over inflated sponsorship income.
Squad Cost Rule
The biggest addition in the 2022 redesign. It requires that the combined total of player and coach wages, transfer amortisation, and agent fees stays within a set percentage of club revenue. The threshold was 90% for 2023-24, 80% for 2024-25, and reaches its permanent level of 70% from 2025-26 onward.
The structural logic is straightforward. Clubs with higher revenue can spend more. Those with lower revenue spend less. It is not a command to stop spending — it is a cap at 70% of what you earn. Growing revenue directly expands a club's competitive capacity under this framework.
In the July 2025 sanctions, Chelsea were found in breach of both the football earnings rule and the squad cost rule. Fines under the squad cost rule alone came to €11 million for Chelsea, €6 million for Aston Villa, €900,000 for Beşiktaş, and €400,000 for Panathinaikos. Those figures were calculated against the transitional 80% threshold. With the permanent 70% ceiling now in force from 2025-26, the number of clubs failing to comply is likely to grow.
Chapter 3 — What Happens When Clubs Break the Rules
The system offers a graduated menu of sanctions: warnings, fines, withholding of prize money, restrictions on registering new players for UEFA competitions, squad size reductions, exclusion from ongoing competitions, and bans from future ones. The full range exists in theory, but which level gets applied has evolved over time.
In 2014, PSG and Manchester City became the first major cases. Each club was fined €60 million — €40 million of which was conditional — and their squad registration for UEFA competitions was capped at 21 players instead of the usual 25. Transfer spending limits were also imposed. That was the first time the system showed real teeth.
In 2020, UEFA went further and banned Manchester City from the Champions League for two years. City appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which overturned the ban and reduced the penalty to a €10 million fine. Procedural issues, including time-barred evidence, were central to the ruling. Even so, the outcome fuelled broader doubts about FFP's enforcement power.
A sweeping round of sanctions came in 2022, just before the system's overhaul. PSG, Inter, Juventus, Roma, AC Milan, Marseille, Monaco, and Beşiktaş were collectively hit with fines totalling up to €172 million, conditional portions included. The amounts were not due immediately in full — they were tied to whether clubs met improvement targets.
Then came July 2025. UEFA imposed measures on 12 clubs. Of the six found in breach of the football earnings rule, five entered multi-year improvement agreements with UEFA. FC Porto, the sixth, was fined €5 million under a separate arrangement. Under these agreements, clubs commit to a defined improvement plan and face annual reviews. Meet the targets, and the bulk of the fine is waived. Fall short, and registration limits or competition bans can be triggered. It is no longer a matter of paying a fine and moving on — compliance is monitored over years. Chelsea's four-year agreement carries an immediate €31 million payment, rising to over €80 million if targets are missed. Barcelona's two-year deal starts at €15 million, with a ceiling of €60 million. Lyon's four-year agreement begins at €12.5 million, up to €50 million.
Roma, still under monitoring from a 2022 agreement, slightly exceeded an intermediate target and was fined an additional €3 million. A different context from the new headline cases, but proof that entering an agreement is not the end of the story.
Chapter 4 — La Liga's Salary Cap: The Other Regulation
While UEFA's system applies to clubs in European competition, La Liga imposes its own salary cap — the LCPD (Límite de Coste de Plantilla Deportiva) — on every club in the league. Each club's cap is set by La Liga based on projected revenue and anticipated expenses, updated every season.
The 2025-26 figures make the hierarchy plain. Real Madrid's cap sits at roughly €761 million. Barcelona's was approximately €351 million as of summer 2025, with subsequent adjustments. Atlético's was around €327 million, reportedly rising to approximately €336 million after a March 2026 update. The gap between Real Madrid and Atlético is more than twofold.
What makes La Liga's rule particularly strict is its immediacy: a club that exceeds the cap simply cannot register new players. Barcelona's weeks-long delay in registering Jules Koundé in the summer of 2022, and the prolonged crisis over Dani Olmo's registration from late 2024 into 2025, are the most vivid examples of this rule in action. Where UEFA sanctions come after the fact — fines and improvement agreements — La Liga's cap operates as a real-time constraint: exceed it, and you cannot field the player.
Atlético feel this cap on a daily basis. Qualifying for the Champions League affects not just prize money but also the revenue projections that feed into the cap calculation. Growth in sponsorship and commercial income raises the ceiling and expands the room to manoeuvre. UEFA's system asks "are you losing too much?" La Liga's asks "can you afford this right now?" For Atlético, it is the latter question that shapes most transfer windows.
Chapter 5 — Apollo's Capital and FFP: What Changes and What Doesn't
In March 2026, Apollo Sports Capital (ASC) became Atlético de Madrid's majority shareholder. Reports indicate the acquisition covered approximately 55% of the club at an enterprise valuation of around €2.5 billion, including debt. The club officially confirmed the approval of up to €100 million in additional capital. Miguel Ángel Gil Marín continues as CEO and Enrique Cerezo as president.
A major fund has put money into the club. Does that free Atlético from FFP constraints? The answer is a clear no.
The squad cost rule is pegged to 70% of club revenue. Additional capital injected by an owner does not expand that spending ceiling unless it translates into operating revenue on the books. Under the football earnings rule, equity contributions can widen the acceptable loss window, but the fair value assessment of related-party transactions still applies — inflated sponsorship deals with Apollo-linked entities would not pass scrutiny.
So what is the capital for? The effect can be broken down into two areas.
The first is expanding the revenue base itself. Atlético is developing Ciudad del Deporte (City of Sport), a large-scale mixed-use complex around the Riyadh Air Metropolitano. The club has officially put the first phase at over €350 million, while the broader project has been reported at around €800 million in total. Once operational, it would create year-round revenue streams independent of matchdays, with the potential to lift Atlético's La Liga salary cap ceiling. Apollo's capital appears set to accelerate that development.
The second is financial stabilisation. The presence of additional capital can help contain the risk of overdue payments, steady cash flow, and improve external creditworthiness. Atlético have not appeared on any major UEFA sanction list since the 2012 prize-money freeze, having steadily strengthened their financial footing over the intervening years. Viewed in that context, Apollo's entry sits on the same trajectory. It is likely to work in the direction of reducing regulatory risk under the current framework.
Apollo has stated explicitly that Atlético is not part of a multi-club ownership strategy. Unlike City Football Group's model of acquiring clubs across the globe, this is a concentrated investment aimed at maximising the value of a single club. The capital is not designed to circumvent the rules. It is designed to raise the ceiling within them — not by inflating the transfer budget directly, but by broadening the revenue base so that the spending room grows as a consequence. That is the structural logic of Apollo's investment.
Conclusion
FFP is neither flawless nor fully fair. A system that caps spending at 70% of revenue converts income disparity directly into spending disparity. In a world where Real Madrid can deploy over €700 million, Atlético compete in the €300 million bracket. Whether state-backed clubs truly respect the fair value assessment of sponsorship income remains an open question.
Yet it is not hard to imagine what would happen without these regulations. Clubs would pile on debt until they collapsed, or financial muscle alone would determine every outcome. FFP has tried — imperfectly — to prevent both.
Atlético have built their revenue within this system, step by step. The move to the Metropolitano, the expansion of commercial income, sustained performance in Europe — together, these pushed revenue to approximately €416 million for 2024-25, according to reports. Apollo's entry extends that trajectory. It is not a war chest for a spending spree. It is an investment in the revenue infrastructure itself. If FFP says "spend what you earn," Atlético and Apollo's answer is to create more places to earn. Thinking through constraints rather than around them — that is something Simeone has been doing on the pitch for over 14 years. Off it, the logic is structurally the same.