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European football, anti-money laundering triggers: EUR 30 billion to be traced

From 2029 professional clubs and agents will be 'obliged parties': purchases, disposals mergers and commissions will be targeted

by Alessandro Galimberti

STADIO SAN SIRO

3' min read

Translated by AI

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Versione italiana

Key points

3' min read

Translated by AI

For feedback, please contact
english@ilsole24ore.com

Versione italiana

TV rights, player disposals, broker agents' commissions, box office receipts, hospitality receipts, merchandising revenue.

The European football system generates more than EUR 30 billion in revenues every year, according to the latest UEFA report 'The European Club Finance and Investment Landscape' - which only considers the elite professional leagues (Premiere League, La Liga, Serie A, etc.) - billions that still travel on preferential tracks and with few rules controlling financial flows.

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A world apart

A world apart, in short, which has only recently come within the reach of the EU's anti-money laundering regulations (EU Regulation 2024/1624) and which within three years - July 2029 - will therefore have to come into line with the obligations to control financial flows, tracing transactions, changes of ownership, player exchanges, agents' commissions and, above all, identifying the entities that inject or receive money from the golden football system.

The risks and full awareness of the attraction of capital of dubious origin, and of people not exactly from official circles, also emerged in a recent question to the Senate, addressed to Minister Andrea Abodi. The holder of the Sports Ministry, in his reply, had said that he 'shares the concerns about situations that in some contexts may cast doubt on the economic and financial soundness, but above all on the requirements of honour of those who are part of the football system' and that there is 'awareness of the fact that the dynamics referred to in the question (transfers at symbolic prices, opacity in the corporate structures, risk of criminal infiltration, money laundering and usury) require a constant increase in the level of attention by the competent administrations, in close coordination with the sports authorities, while respecting the relative and different roles'.

Companies and prosecutors in the crosshairs

The instrumentation for these new objectives comes from Regulation 2024/1624, which identifies new figures of 'obliged entities' for AML checks, a sort of sentinels placed at the entrance of the metaphorical European football arena.

In particular: football agents (procurers) and professional football clubs are called upon to check and, if necessary, report to their country's anti-money laundering authorities:

- transactions with investors

- operations with sponsors

- transactions with football agents or other intermediaries

- transactions for the purpose of transferring a player.

Within the framework of full traceability of financial transactions on the football planet, however, corners of more or less marked opacity are bound to survive. In fact, the Regulation allows Member States to discretely exempt, in whole or in part, "professional football clubs in the top division of the national championship that have a total annual turnover of less than EUR 5 million" (only a theoretical hypothesis for the continent's top 5 leagues), and also to keep professional clubs in the minor leagues (for Italia, Serie B and C) on the margins of the anti-money laundering spotlight on the basis of the "proven low level of risk represented by the nature and operational size of the companies".

Returns continue to rise

The growth of the football system on a continental level, to return to the Uefa 2025 Report, is also evident in historical perspective: between 2015 and 2025, the revenues of European clubs increased at a rate of more than EUR 1.3 billion per year, from less than EUR 17 billion to the more than EUR 30 billion forecast in the year just ended.

The five main leagues (Premier League first, followed by Spain, Germany, Italia and France) continue to account for 73% of the total revenue of the 54 national competitions, while the 25 most important clubs (only Inter, Juventus and Milan for Italia) generate 45% of the total turnover. However, the gilded world of football, which has now become a driver of growth also for the allied industries, also risks remaining a circuit where opacity has allowed and still allows the infiltration of oligarchs, criminals and clans to clean up dirty money but also to divert the resources produced between stadiums and training grounds elsewhere.

And it is not certain that even a significant regulatory wand stroke will be enough to make us all come out well.

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