Pereira da Costa: “We’re fighting an uphill battle against other countries” | OneFootball

José Pedro Pereira da Costa, financial director of FC Porto, criticized, in one of the panels this Friday at the 'Portugal Football Summit', that Portugal is competing "unequally" with other countries in football, due to factors such as taxation.

"We believe it is possible to do more and better in terms of monetizing the name of FC Porto outside of Portugal, and the Club World Cup gave us a first glimpse, with incredible growth on social media. The core areas remain the most relevant in the management of a football club: UEFA revenues, TV rights, commercial (including ticketing) and player sales. We are very dependent on UEFA revenues, TV rights, and player sales. In the first two, we have two threats. The first is not being able to reach the 6th place in the ranking. By my calculations, it's a 50 million euro difference. Of the 600 million in Portuguese football revenues, 32 percent come from UEFA. It is crucial to have the ambition to return to sixth place and place three teams in the Champions League. It is not an easy challenge. If we don't score more than Belgium, we will remain in 7th place. To achieve the 6th position in the ranking, it is essential that the second tier of clubs participating in European competitions have more success. In 5 editions of the Conference League, we have only qualified teams once," he initially stated.

He added: "Regarding TV rights, the market is different from what it was in 2015/16. In other leagues, it is declining, in Portugal we are in this centralization process and the prospects are positive. FC Porto is participating constructively, seeking to maximize revenue. The redistribution of these values must take into account maintaining the competitive capacity of the teams participating in European competitions and contributing with revenues to Portuguese football. TV rights represent 20-something percent of the clubs' total revenues. If these components start to decrease, it's a problem. We reduced our costs by 30 million euros from 23/24 to 24/25. Portuguese clubs have contextual costs that make them compete unequally, such as taxation. In player salaries, more than 50 percent is taxes and Social Security. I don't want different IRS systems for football players, but it would be good to align ourselves with the European average. We are the country in Europe with the highest IRS rate and with the highest VAT on tickets and work accident insurance in Europe."

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.