Research-Thesis: Analysis of the financial performance and health of belgian football clubs after the implementation of UEFA financial fair play, and comparison with the situation beforehand.

Abstract

Following the financial crisis that affected European professional football in the late 2000s, UEFA introduced Financial Fair Play regulations in 2010, with progressive implementation from the 2011–2012 season onwards. These regulations were designed to restore financial discipline across European clubs by imposing a break-even requirement and prohibiting overdue payables. While their aggregate impact on the Big Five leagues has been extensively studied, no empirical research had previously examined their financial consequences on Belgian professional football clubs, a structurally distinct small-market league heavily reliant on player trading and commercial income rather than broadcasting revenues. This thesis analyses the evolution of the financial performance and financial health of 23 Belgian professional football clubs over the period 2007–2016, comparing the five years preceding FFP implementation with the five years following it. Fourteen financial ratios are computed from annual accounts filed with the National Bank of Belgium, organised along two dimensions: solvency and profitability. The descriptive analysis is complemented by fixed effects panel regressions, and conducted across both individual and consolidated accounts, the latter representing a methodological contribution absent from prior work in this field. The results lead to the conclusion that FFP is not associated with any statistically significant improvement in the financial health of Belgian clubs over the study period. Solvency deteriorated, profitability declined, and wage-to-revenue ratios increased for virtually all clubs, directly contradicting the regulation's stated objectives. Divisional status emerges as the dominant determinant of financial health, while the financial divide between the Top 5 clubs and the remaining clubs widened after FFP. These findings suggest that a regulation calibrated for Europe's largest leagues is insufficiently adapted to the structural realities of smaller football markets, where financial sustainability requires not only spending discipline, but also revenue growth, access to capital, and structural governance reforms.