In partnership with
Welcome to issue #079 of Contemporary Football, your inside look at how the game really works behind the scenes.
Monday to Friday, you’ll uncover a new perspective on football business, and sometimes a deeper story that sharpens your thinking and gives you an edge in the beautiful game.
If you need support on your football journey, just write me.
A close friend is right now at a conference in the US, where there are family offices and investment groups interested in investing in football clubs in Europe.
One family office in particular has a €50m budget and is interested in Italy, so my friend sent me a WhatsApp last night asking for my view on which clubs to target.
I won’t tell you what I told him (three clubs), but I’ll show you some of the numbers I shared.
The €323.5m league
Serie B updated its salary data after the January window.
Total wages:
€323.5m
€282.3m fixed
€41.2m variable
That’s the cost of players, coaches, staff, and sporting directors.
Across the league.
Wages in Serie B
At the top end:
Monza: €33.5m
Palermo: €30.4m
Venezia: €30.3m
Sampdoria: ~€25.5m
Empoli: €19.8m
This is your promotion-level cost base.
Mid-range clubs:
Bari: €13m
Cesena: €12.8m
Frosinone: €11m
Call it:
€20m–€30m to be competitive
At the bottom:
Entella: €7.86m
Pescara: €7.1m
This is survival territory.
The first mistake buyers make
They look at the purchase price.
In Serie B, that’s often misleading.
Because:
The operating cost is the real entry ticket.
If you buy a club at €10m but need:
€20m per year to compete
€15m per year to survive
Your real exposure over 5 years is not €10m.
It’s:
€85m–€110m total capital at risk
Out of €323.5m total wages:
€41.2m are bonuses
On paper, variable.
In practice, many are tied to:
survival
promotion
Which means they tend to activate when pressure is highest.
You should underwrite them as real cost.
I never understood why some clubs give bonuses for reaching the playoffs.
This should be the minimum objective for 50% of the league’s players.
What changes in January
The league added €18.5m in wages in half a season.
€4.2m on coaches
€2m on sporting directors
This matters for buyers.
Because it shows how quickly cost structures move.
Example:
Sampdoria: +€4m → now ~€30m
Spezia: +€2.9m → now €26.5m
That increase is not planned capex.
It’s reactive spend.
And you inherit it in the next season.
What you are really buying
When you acquire a Serie B club, you are not buying:
a squad
a league position
a brand
You are buying a cost structure with momentum.
Some clubs:
have controlled wage hierarchies
aligned contracts
predictable cost evolution
Others:
have layered contracts
broken internal logic
recent increases driven by pressure
Same league.
Very different risk.
The reality
At the top of the table:
Monza, Palermo, Venezia
High spend. High performance.
But:
Sampdoria ~€29.4m
Still not safe. Fighting not to be relegated.
Spending gets you into the game.
It does not stabilise the model.
What a €50m buyer needs to understand
€50m is enough to:
acquire a club
fund 2–3 seasons of operations
It is not enough to:
guarantee promotion
absorb structural inefficiencies
survive repeated mistakes
The real due diligence question
Not:
“How much does this club cost?”
But:
“What does this club need to survive if nothing goes right?”
Because in Serie B:
Revenue is unstable.
Promotion is binary.
Costs move fast.
Owning a club here is not about affording €25m wages.
It’s about surviving the years when those wages don’t work.
Thank you for being part of Contemporary Football,
Federico
Every headline satisfies an opinion. Except ours.
Remember when the news was about what happened, not how to feel about it? 1440's Daily Digest is bringing that back. Every morning, they sift through 100+ sources to deliver a concise, unbiased briefing — no pundits, no paywalls, no politics. Just the facts, all in five minutes. For free.