La Liga are to make several changes to their salary limit rules, which will affect how clubs can spend on their squads.
This comes after changes last season which allowed clubs to spend more of the money they saved and made through transfers if they were over their salary limit, changing from 25% to 40% and then 50%.
MD now say La Liga are to implement several further changes. In terms of issuing shares, essentially injecting money into the club by buying more shares, clubs will now be able to use more of that money.
Previously, any capital increases had to be divided over four years, meaning clubs could only use 25% of the operation for spending on players. Were an owner to buy more shares in a club for €10m, then only €2.5m per year would have been available for the club to increase their salary limit. Now that division will be five years, meaning they could use €5m.
The other major alteration is a change in Covid-19 policy. Clubs began paying back their losses from Covid-19 (not included for salary limit calculations) last season, starting at 15% of the losses, ascending to 22.5% in the 2026-27 season. All clubs were supposed to pay off their entire pandemic losses during those five years.
Now clubs will be able to extend that period. Each side will have a maximum repayment amount, set based on their salary limit, after which point they do not have to repay more for that season, thus freeing up more money for their salary limit.
Finally, some infrastructure costs will no longer be counted in the spending that the salary limit is calculated on, although it is not yet clear what those costs are.
This comes after La Liga lagged far behind not only the Premier League, but also Serie A, the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 in terms of spending. All three were closer to or over double La Liga’s €453m spend last summer, which had the league make a net profit of around 30% over their spending. It is not yet clear how much of an impact these rule changes will have on club spending power.
