EUROPEAN football faces a cash ‘crisis’ which will last for two years.
Clubs face being hit by a triple whammy of no gate income, reduced TV money and sponsors demanding lower value deals.
And Europe’s biggest sides including Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City will also be hit by a £530million cut in Uefa prize money for the Champions League and Europa League.
The gloomy forecast was given by Juventus president Andrea Agnelli.
Agnell told an audience of Europe’s biggest clubs that the real price of the Covid-19 pandemic has still to be paid.
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Speaking at the opening of the virtual general assembly of the European Club Association, Agnelli said: “None of us could have imagined what we have had to live with over recent months.
“Now we are looking at a top revenue decrease of approximately £3.6billion in the next two years.
“According to Fifa, 90 per cent of those top line losses will be borne by clubs.
“I don’t believe we will have a full scope of what this means to us until we have the first set of accounts published this autumn.
“But we do have a set of facts which we have to face.
“Playing in empty stadiums has meant the complete wipeout of a very important source of revenue for everyone.
“Irrespective of whether we are a top club, medium club, or small club, we all have stadiums and we have receipts which have been pretty much wiped out.
“You have seen very important rebates for the broadcasters both at domestic level at international level.
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“We have seen the £330m rebate in the Premier League and a drop of about £180m in the Bundesliga’s domestic rights.
“Now we are in the process of finalising the accounts with Uefa with a reduction of around £519m for international club competitions.
“That is all money which is not going to be distributed.”
Uefa had planned to distribute £2.31billion across its club competitions last term, with the rebate potentially costing Liverpool, City, United, Chelsea and Spurs up to £20m each over two seasons.
And Agnelli warned that was just the start of a financial nightmare across Europe, with the biggest clubs most at risk.
He added: “No gate receipts plus rebates for broadcasters will mean that sponsors will ask for rebates themselves because we are not in a position to deliver some of the rights we have promised in the first place.
“And no matter which industry they are operating in, all our sponsors are living in the same pandemic.
“It is going to be difficult to imagine we are going to see the same values of the sponsors coming in when we renew our current deals with them, whether it be shirt sponsors or secondary sponsors.
“I am quite sure we are going to see a rebate on this and this will fall into the transfer market.
“There are estimates which say we are going to see the shrinking of evaluations and therefore of the value of the transfer market of 20 to 30 per cent.
“That is evidently less money circulating.
“This is going to be dramatic for all of us which will turn out to be potentially a cash crisis for most of the clubs.
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“We will have to be very careful in how we manage this season and next.
“This is where we really stand. We have seen a dramatic drop in revenues and a dramatic drop in club revenues.
“I have the fear that some of the big clubs will probably suffer losses that are bigger than entire federations or confederations across the world.”
