Newcastle owner Amanda Staveley reacts to ‘very limiting’ FFP rules as rivals get way with vote

Amanda Staveley has called for ‘fresh thinking’ to the Premier League’s ‘very limiting’ profit and sustainability rules.

Premier League clubs can currently make losses of up to £105m over a rolling three-year period, but the top-flight confirmed a ‘good working session’ took place on the ‘design and implementation of a new financial system’ last month. This would see the Premier League move towards UEFA’s squad cost model, which limits spending on wages, transfers and agents’ fees to 70% of revenues.

Newcastle United, regardless, have been working to both sets of rules, after competing in the Champions League earlier this season, and Staveley wants to see a balance struck between sustainability and growth moving forward.

“We all have to do more to make sure we grow our revenues,” the club’s part-owner said at the Bloomberg Power Players’ summit. “There has been much more of a focus from the Premier League owners to make sure we grow our commercial revenues and our media, as a product, should be much more aggressive.

“There is a regulator coming in and there’s much more of a focus on sustainability. Sometimes, when you over-regulate, you can slow growth and we have to make sure that we get the right balance between the right regulatory environment, the right rules and the right Financial Fair Play rules that promote growth. That’s the only way you’re going to get great football.

“One thing about the last few seasons in the Premier League is any club can win any game, and that’s good. That means you get some incredibly exciting football…it’s a difficult time because there has been so much focus on sustainability that people have actually forgotten that we’re providing entertainment and we have got to grow this business.

“Football is difficult. You have very limiting Financial Fair Play rules. You have so many rules and restrictions about player purchases so it really does probably need some fresh thinking.”

On the subject of regulations, the Premier League revealed that clubs had agreed to ‘further enhance the efficiency and accuracy’ of the existing associated party transactions rules and fair market value assessment protocols following a meeting of executives last month. The consequences of that vote have now become clear in the top-flight’s handbook, which was updated this week.

Clubs now have to prove deals with associated parties are of fair market value – the director of the relevant associated party must provide a ‘declaration’ that they consider the deal to be so – rather than the Premier League having to do so like before. Top-flight sides can also face punishments, which will be decided by an independent commission, if they are found to have over-inflated such deals.

The Premier League state that the new rules aim to ‘ensure the long-term financial sustainability of clubs by extinguishing reliance on enhanced commercial revenues received from entities linked to the club’s ownership’. Newcastle were against their introduction and Staveley previously admitted that she was ‘p—– off’ when 18 of the club’s Premier League rivals voted in new regulations on party-related transactions shortly after the club’s takeover amid the possibility the Magpies could land a series of lucrative commercial deals.

Newcastle’s commercial revenues grew by 66% last season, but the £43.9m the black-and-whites generated was a mere fraction of what the established order made in the same period. Manchester United, for instance, took home £302.9m in 2022-23 while even beleaguered Chelsea announced on Thursday that they had raised £210.1m in commercial revenues last season.