Financial Fair Play for Elite Performance Soccer
“Elite Performance Soccer” (EPS) is a relatively new women’s soccer league developed in North
America. It has built on the success of US women’s soccer internationally and the interest of the large
number of youth soccer players to create a relatively stable fan base. As the success of the league has
grown, so have players’ salaries.
As a member of the Futball International Federation of Organizations (FIFO), the EPS is
required to institute a new rule called “financial fair play”. It requires that all member organizations
create rules that will assure teams in their league “self fund” their operations from their ongoing
revenues. The objective is to stop owners with outside resources from subsidizing their teams in an
attempt to dominate the league performance.
Based on an initial assessment of teams across the league, the owners are concerned that many
teams will fail the FFP requirements and that all are very close to the limit. The owners point out that
player salaries are the largest cost for every franchise in the organization. Thus, they are suggesting
salary is the best tool to assure teams stay within FFP. The players argue that FFP allows the owners
wide discretion in defining their economic expenses in a given year. They feel that the owners are using
FFP as an excuse to implement salary limits that will let the owners retain more of the profits for
themselves.
