Salaries in the top-tier Hungarian Football League already belong to the top 20 in Europe, and they continued to gain weight last year. Not only football players earn well.
The Hungarian league has continued its development in terms of salaries even after the coronavirus pandemic: it already ranks 18th among European leagues in terms of wages with €93 million (HUF 35.6 billion), according to The Guardian. oh well the UEFA financial report Based on.
OTP Bank Liga has already reached the top 20 last year, moreover, the salaries distributed in the Hungarian league increased year on year even during the coronavirus pandemic (82 million euros were included in the report at the time).
With this, they spend more on salaries in the Hungarian league than in the first division of the Ukrainian or Norwegian leagues.
Considering the average number of players, according to the Mfor report, the average salary of a Hungarian footballer is 3.8 million HUF. Of course, this is an average, which the top teams probably collect a lot. In the case of the FTC, Mol Fehérvár or the Puskás Academy, salaries of 8-10 million are actually not unprecedented.
Amounts spent on salaries increased by 14 percent in the Hungarian First Division, and the growth rate is down from last year (but still above the average of 5.1 percent in 2021). economic inflation). If we look at the general picture in Europe, we find that salaries have grown strongly. UEFA points out that some of the amounts not paid in 2020 due to uncertainty due to the pandemic were paid in 2021, hence the significant increase. Based on the past 10 years, it can be said that it is increasingly difficult to keep up with exit salaries in Europe.
Hungarian data is very strange
What’s particularly interesting is that while in Hungary 54 percent of all revenue goes to salaries, if we look at just players’ salaries, it’s 32 percent. Hungary ranks penultimate in the top twenty (in terms of its percentages, it is lower than Sweden, but the value is nominally higher). This means that
A very serious amount, in terms of proportions and value, 37.9 million euros went to salaries that football players did not receive.
Non-players’ salaries include the coaching staff, doctors, clerks and all club employees from cleaners to fan shop workers. In the report, the supremacy of the English Premier League (PL) is brutal, and here the wages of non-players are also high because relatively large-capacity stadiums are full, which by definition require more people. However, there are hardly any full houses in Hungarian stadiums.
The reason behind the dissolution could be a special salary (see our boxed text) and the fact that, quite simply, the top Hungarian teams work with a great, well-paid staff. (Not to mention that in Hungary, even a member of the medical staff of a high-profile club can buy a football club with a patina).
In Hungarian football, it’s not worth being just a footballer.
Excellent salary
The report is about the season in which Hungarian champion Fradi had a resounding success, reaching the group stage of the UEFA Champions League (BL). In the 2020/2021 season, Fradie did not see a trophy spring, but it is believed that part of the income has flown in in the 2021 working year.
Ukrainian Newspaper reports According to the FTC coach at the time, Serhij Rebrov, he signed a contract with serious bonus terms: he could get 20 percent of the amount he earned from international appearances. The FTC received €17.2m from UEFA that season for the successful CL campaign, meaning Rebrov could receive a €3.4m bonus, while his starting salary was €1.7m. These figures have never been confirmed by the club.
If the sources close to the Ukrainian coach have correct information, Rebrov could earn 5.1 million euros during the season. FTC Labdarúgó Zrt spent HUF 7.8 billion on wages in 2020, HUF 7 billion a year later, and only HUF 4.6 billion in 2019. Of course, in the meantime, Fradi was able to sign more expensive players, presumably They have higher demands for wages.
Rebrov left Fradi in the summer of 2021, and moved to the United Arab Emirates, to the Kneading team. According to the news, he could be the captain of the Ukrainian national team.
The Hungarian League is below average in terms of salary expenditure relative to income, and based on this, we can also say that the cost structure of top-flight clubs is healthy (especially compared to Western European leagues). Another question is whether the country itself is the largest financier of the Hungarian football elite, starting with state TV broadcast fees via the TAO system. This is by no means healthy, and at that time we did not yet have the department of care that was fattening up on state tenders.
methodological difficulties
Clubs do not have to separate in their financial statements what part of the wage bill goes to the players, but UEFA does ask them for the data (in fact, in future they will also request coaching salaries separately). In this way, based on reliable figures provided by clubs, we can see how salaries have evolved among players and many club employees. However, it is difficult to compare the data of more than 700 top-flight clubs. UEFA lists the 2021 financial year across all of its data series. However, there are clubs that close their working year in the summer (that is, we get data covering the spring and autumn season on how finances develop in one season). And there are clubs that close their financial year on December 31 (such as the companies behind the Hungarian clubs), where we cannot get a complete financial picture for each season (only the spring season of the previous year and the new autumn season. League season).
