UEFA research showed European football's top-division clubs made a profit "for the first time on record" in '17 as their collective revenue surpassed €20B, according to Brian Homewood of REUTERS. UEFA attributed the success to its Financial Fair Play break-even rule and said that when it was introduced in '11, clubs had made a collective loss of €1.7B. A UEFA reprot showed revenue for the '17 financial year was a record €20.1B, an increase of €1.6B over the previous year. The overall profit after transfers and financial costs was €600M. Europe has 711 top-division clubs divided among its 54 national leagues. UEFA said that 27 of those leagues were profitable. UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin said, "Thanks to financial fair play, European football is healthier than ever before." He added that the figures showed that the rule "clearly works." Ceferin: "Financial fair play has provided the platform for clubs to control their costs and pay their debts." Premier League clubs had the "biggest joint revenue" of €5.34B, an increase of €452M from the year before. They also had the highest operating profits on record of €1.19B, UEFA’s research showed. Serie A clubs made a net profit of 3.7%, "mainly due to a swing from transfer losses to profits, ending a run of seven years of losses" (REUTERS, 9/9).
