•  
  •  
 

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The acronym FFP may not mean much to the casual football supporter, but to front-office officials and owners of football’s richest clubs, these three letters could mean doomsday. Financial Fair Play, FFP, was created by the European Football governing body UEFA to regulate, monitor, and improve the economic and financial capacity of football clubs. John W. Henry, principal owner of Liverpool Football Club and the Boston Red Sox, has been a vocal supporter of FFP since its inception and said the following in an interview with the Tomkin Times, "The mandate of financial fair play in Europe is for clubs to live within their means.” Since FFA was implemented in 2011 by UEFA, major clubs across Europe have been subjected to internal investigations and point deductions including the likes of Juventus, Manchester City, Everton, Paris Saint-Germain, and other high-profile clubs. The issue of Financial Fair Play is much deeper than just a way to keep football clubs from going bankrupt. It is also a system put in place to try and keep the playing field somewhat level between European giants and smaller clubs. In the past few years, point deductions and penalties have been handed out to clubs that violated the FFP guidelines, but what purpose do these penalties serve? Is a point deduction the most ethical and effective way to punish a club for playing outside of the rules? In this essay, I will examine multiple cases of Financial Fair Play violations and break down the ethical dilemmas that the situation produces by using sources of philosophy.

Primo Type

Article

Download

Share

COinS