FFP fine - our biggest battle ever!

[QPROslo]

On 24 October, many newspapers reported that The English Football League ordered us to pay a world-record £40m fine after being found guilty of breaching Financial Fair Play rules during our promotion-winning campaign in 2013/2014. I have seen reference to an even higher fine, closer to £60m.

I understand that QPR decided to appeal the verdict.

Does anyone know when there will be an announcement of the outcome of the appeal?

I understand EFL has warned that failure to pay could see QPR thrown out of the professional game. To make things more complicated, I understand owners cannot pay the fee; the club has to pay it. If I get it right, owners cannot give sponsorship (or gifts) to the club unless done on market-based conditions, nor can they provide a loan to the club and thereafter write off the debt.

This threat to our existence is a serious one. Why is this getting so little attention on this message board?

I suppose Fernandes, Hoos and the other people running our club are fully occupied with the case, given the importance of it and the fact it is the biggest battle we have ever faced. I guess their focus is on finding a way that EFL will allow the owners to pay the fine instead of the club. However, I suppose it is a real possibility we will not convince EFL to agree on a soft solution. I believe the league would like to set an example, and protect clubs that play by the book.
If we have to pay the fee (rather than the owners), do you think we can raise this much money by selling Loftus Road, the Harlington training ground and/or all saleable players?

[acricketer]

Keep spending to get promoted. Keep spending to delay the consequences. Job done!

[klonk]

On 24 October, many newspapers reported that The English Football League ordered us to pay a world-record £40m fine after being found guilty of breaching Financial Fair Play rules during our promotion-winning campaign in 2013/2014. I have seen reference to an even higher fine, closer to £60m.

I understand that QPR decided to appeal the verdict.

Does anyone know when there will be an announcement of the outcome of the appeal?

I understand EFL has warned that failure to pay could see QPR thrown out of the professional game. To make things more complicated, I understand owners cannot pay the fee; the club has to pay it. If I get it right, owners cannot give sponsorship (or gifts) to the club unless done on market-based conditions, nor can they provide a loan to the club and thereafter write off the debt.

This threat to our existence is a serious one. Why is this getting so little attention on this message board?

I suppose Fernandes, Hoos and the other people running our club are fully occupied with the case, given the importance of it and the fact it is the biggest battle we have ever faced. I guess their focus is on finding a way that EFL will allow the owners to pay the fine instead of the club. However, I suppose it is a real possibility we will not convince EFL to agree on a soft solution. I believe the league would like to set an example, and protect clubs that play by the book.
If we have to pay the fee (rather than the owners), do you think we can raise this much money by selling Loftus Road, the Harlington training ground and/or all saleable players?

why not higher on the priorities of the message board... a number of reasons - mostly that we've lived under the threat of the fine for a long, long time...

the real issue here is that both parties have painted themselves into corners... the league's rules were badly thought through (which is why they have changed since and become less strict) and, potentially, could lead to a perverse outcome (essentially that a rule that is supposed to make a club financially stable ends up making a club bankrupt). at the same time, the club continued to spend itself silly after relegation under red chap (yes... some of the financial burden was virtually impossible to shift, but it looks like we continued to pay big wages when we knew we couldn't meet ffp rules).

no one... apart from anyone at the club/football league actually knows the size of the real fine. on the one hand the league are under pressure from some clubs to fully enforce, but on the other are frightened of sending us into administration - the likely outcome is some form of suspended sentence (say, we pay a third of the fine and have to behave for 3 years to avoid paying the other third).

in my opinion, it's extremely unlikely that the league will make a member team bankrupt to set an example.

the club must pay, but the fine is treated as an 'exceptional item', so won't affect the profit/loss position that informs future ffp assessments. there is nothing that stops the owners giving the club money to pay the fine as an injection of capital (assuming that the owners have this money available) so long as it's correctly accounted for. the owners do give the club plenty of loans (the club continues to rack up debts... as do most football clubs in the football league). what the owners cannot do is to artificially inflate a sponsorship contract in a way that makes the club appear more profitable than it actually is (so... the club can't suddenly claim that having the words "air asia" on the reserve teams socks is generating £60m commercial income per year in sponsorship, but the club can receive the same money from the owners either as a loan or in return for an issue of new shares in the club).

[Northolt_Rs]

why not higher on the priorities of the message board... a number of reasons - mostly that we've lived under the threat of the fine for a long, long time...

the real issue here is that both parties have painted themselves into corners... the league's rules were badly thought through (which is why they have changed since and become less strict) and, potentially, could lead to a perverse outcome (essentially that a rule that is supposed to make a club financially stable ends up making a club bankrupt). at the same time, the club continued to spend itself silly after relegation under red chap (yes... some of the financial burden was virtually impossible to shift, but it looks like we continued to pay big wages when we knew we couldn't meet ffp rules).

no one... apart from anyone at the club/football league actually knows the size of the real fine. on the one hand the league are under pressure from some clubs to fully enforce, but on the other are frightened of sending us into administration - the likely outcome is some form of suspended sentence (say, we pay a third of the fine and have to behave for 3 years to avoid paying the other third).

in my opinion, it's extremely unlikely that the league will make a member team bankrupt to set an example.

the club must pay, but the fine is treated as an 'exceptional item', so won't affect the profit/loss position that informs future ffp assessments. there is nothing that stops the owners giving the club money to pay the fine as an injection of capital (assuming that the owners have this money available) so long as it's correctly accounted for. the owners do give the club plenty of loans (the club continues to rack up debts... as do most football clubs in the football league). what the owners cannot do is to artificially inflate a sponsorship contract in a way that makes the club appear more profitable than it actually is (so... the club can't suddenly claim that having the words "air asia" on the reserve teams socks is generating £60m commercial income per year in sponsorship, but the club can receive the same money from the owners either as a loan or in return for an issue of new shares in the club).

If our defence legal team have any degree of competency they should be citing Manchester City and PSG as clear examples of bigger clubs flouting the rules - neither can possibly legitimately generate the income to cover their insane spending. Why should it be one rule for us and another for them?

[klonk]

If our defence legal team have any degree of competency they should be citing Manchester City and PSG as clear examples of bigger clubs flouting the rules - neither can possibly legitimately generate the income to cover their insane spending. Why should it be one rule for us and another for them?

Agreed that they should... i believe that psg had an absurd contract with the kuwait tourist council where they received something like £100m per year for pitchside advertising.

The problem is that neither psg nor man city spent any time in the football league while ffp has been in place. Of course they would have broken the rules.... but they weren’t expected to have followed them. We were. That’s the problem. We can argue that they were stupid rules, but we can’t argue we weren’t covered by them because we were in the premier league or ligue 1.