A club’s benefit from solidarity depends on its size – the smaller the club, the more important the payments. Two years ago, I used Sweden’s IF Bromma, then a second-tier side, to illustrate the point. Consistently, Bromma made about €40-45k in solidarity each season (two windows). In the 2021-2022 season (I am using fall-spring, even though Sweden does not), Bromma upped this to €543k. The former amount covered roughly two players’ salaries for an entire season or the entire payroll for two months. The latter amount covered almost the entire payroll for an entire season.
Clubs in top 5 leagues carry much more expensive budgets than a club like Bromma. In a given season, none will gross more than €5-6M in solidarity. (PS, the highest grossing club for the 2023-2024 season, with about €5M.) With expenditures that can reach nine figures, these clubs could be forgiven if they did not even notice a €6M trickle of revenue.
So with that clarified, we turn back to Bromma. Two years later, how is the club doing?
For one, they are no longer a second division team. In late 2022, they earned promotion to the Allsvenskan, Sweden’s top flight. They will be there again in 2024, due to a 7-0 aggregate victory in the 2023 relegation/promotion playoff.
They have increased their solidarity haul as well. For 2023-2024, Bromma netted €1.06M. This was the 19th highest net total of any club in Europe, and, by far, the most in Sweden.
Here is another reference point: The Allsvenskan’s domestic television deal pays an estimated €48.93M total per season. From this, the individual team payouts range from about €3.5-3.6M for the league champion down to about €1.8M for the last place finisher (known as the “Jumbo Team”). In 2023, Bromma finished 14th out of 16 teams. So it’s payout would not be much higher than €1.8M. Or put another way, solidarity earned Bromma roughly half as much as domestic television rights.
To put this in context, a mid-table Premier League club, like, say, Wolves, would need to make about €55M in solidarity to achieve the same relative benefit. This amount would be cartoonish for any club, let alone one in a league (the EPL) where no club made a profit off solidarity.
So again, solidarity helps the little guys much more than the big guys.
The Future…
Rather than gouging themselves on some flukish years, Bromma may have established a revenue stream – albeit, one that may not climb as high as it did these past two windows. While total solidarity can owe itself to one or two big money transfers, a club’s total claims tend to be a more stable number. For example, clubs like Ajax and Benfica – well known for developing talent – always find themselves at the top of this list. Bromma has been rising steadily from four claims in 2020-2021 to six in each of the past three seasons. This indicates they will have more solidarity in the coming years.
And 2024-2025 already looks like it will support this trend. For example, when 18-year-old Lucas Bergvall completes his €10M move from Malmo to Spurs, Bromma will get €150k. They would also receive 2% of any transfer fee for Sporting CP’s coveted striker Viktor Gyokeres. It would not be aggressive to predict Gyokeres will go for €60-70M. And this would generate over €1M for Bromma. So at least for now, the club’s generous revenue stream looks set to continue.
Terry Brennan Law 