The Catalan club misreported income in order to meet FFP obligations
Barcelona are facing harsher sanctions from UEFA after the European football governing body identified what it believes to be a second serious breach of Financial Fair Play (FFP) protocol.
The initial breach, which led to a €500,000 fine, involved the club misreporting income from the sale of 10% of its television rights in 2022. The funds were declared by the club as “other operating income”, but UEFA ruled that the transaction should have been treated as a loss of intangible assets, which meant that it wouldn’t have helped the club meet their FFP obligations.
Barcelona later did a similar deal in which it sold another 15% of its TV rights for an estimated €400 million, triggering further concern from UEFA.
Due to the repeat nature of the infractions, UEFA now want to escalate the matter with a series of punitive measures, according to The Times.
Should UEFA confirm that Barcelona have again breached FFP rules, potential sanctions could include reducing their squad size in the Champions League, awarding a fine much bigger than the original €500,000, or point deductions in UEFA tournaments.
Reducing their squad size means lowering the number of players the club can register for European competitions. As for points deduction, that is only likely to happen in an extreme-case scenario.
