PTCan judicial reorganization save a football club?
Brazilian football clubs piled up debt for decades. Since 2021, the law lets them file for judicial reorganization (a court-supervised restructuring, similar to Chapter 11) and become companies, the SAF (football corporation). The dissertation followed eight clubs from 2020 to 2024 to see what actually improved their financial health. Explained in 12 screens.
One block per club; the height is each year's Financial Health Indicator (FHI). Left, the four clubs under judicial reorganization; right, the four comparison clubs. Blue: SAF · red: non-profit association.
A club can go broke in three ways
The dissertation starts from a distinction common in finance and law: the crisis can lie in results, in cash or in the balance sheet. Each calls for a different remedy.
In Brazilian football, according to the author, management driven by political interests, expensive signings and debts for taxes, wages and short-term loans tend to feed all three at once.
Illustrative bars, not real values. The link between each crisis and an indicator of the thermometer (screen 05) is our reading.
In 2021, the law opened two doors for clubs
Until then, most clubs were non-profit associations. For the courts, the reorganization and bankruptcy law (Law 11,101/2005) applied only to companies. An indebted club faced creditors' lawsuits one by one.
The SAF Law (Law 14,193/2021) changed that. Compare before and after and tap each door.
Eight clubs, two splits
The author chose four clubs under judicial reorganization (JR) and four similar ones that did not file. In each group, two became SAFs and two remain associations. This makes it possible to separate the effect of JR from the effect of the club's legal form.
All are more than 50 years old, played in Brazil's first or second division (Série A or B) and publish financial statements. In the JR cases, the process had been running for over two years. Tap a club.
Sources: financial statements published by the clubs and monthly reports by the court-appointed administrators, plus court documents. Data were collected by hand and computed in a spreadsheet, double-checked and charted with the help of AI, according to the author.
A 0-to-1 thermometer for a club's health
The author created the Financial Health Indicator (FHI): the average of five indicators, each with the same weight (20%).
Each indicator runs from 0 (the club's own worst year in the period) to 1 (its best); negative values count as zero. Move the sliders or pick a real year.
Formula 1 and Tables 1 and 2 of the dissertation. Bands: up to 0.33, insolvency; 0.34 to 0.66, warning; 0.67 to 1, solvency. The real years use values read from Charts 1 to 5 (approximate).
Under judicial reorganization, the thermometer went up and down
In 2021, all four clubs under JR were in the insolvency band. Three reached the top of the scale in 2023, and all fell back in 2024.
Outside JR, the paths were more varied. Switch the group and tap a club to read its case.
Not in JR: Chart 11 of the dissertation. For the JR clubs, the dissertation has no FHI chart; the average of the five indicators was recomputed by us from values read from Charts 1 to 5. All values are approximate. Solid line: in JR; dashed: not in JR.
Cash reacted first; profit and equity swung
Under JR, debt collection is put on hold and debts are renegotiated. That is why, according to the dissertation, liquidity and interest coverage respond faster. Equity and return on assets depend on deeper changes.
Each block is one indicator in one year; height runs from 0 (the club's worst year) to 1 (its best). Pick a club and tap a block.
See the values as a table
Normalized values read from Charts 1 to 5 of the dissertation (approximate).
Judicial reorganization bought breathing room, but it did not last
For the author, JR on its own was not effective at producing a lasting improvement in the clubs' financial health. It eases the short term, but the profit, interest and equity indicators remain under pressure.
Compare the best moment (2023) with the following year. Tap a pair of blocks.
FHI recomputed by us from Charts 1 to 5 (approximate); the counts above are ours. The dissertation's text also reports that three of the four clubs reached the solvency stage in 2023 and that there was a decline in 2024.
The club's legal form mattered more than the court process
For the author, the organizational model influenced performance: clubs that became SAFs, even under JR, showed more favorable and less unstable paths; associations under JR were stuck in cycles of incomplete recovery.
See how each club ended and how much it swung. Start with the clubs in JR, which share the same process and differ only in legal form.
"How much it swung" = the club's highest FHI minus its lowest between 2020 and 2024. Averages and differences are our calculations with the approximate values of the previous screens. Striped bars: clubs not in JR (FHI from Chart 11); solid: in JR (FHI recomputed by us).
Capital, separate management and transparency: what the SAF brings
Why would a club's legal form make a difference? The author points to the mechanisms below. Pick an aspect.
Sections 3.2, 5.7.2 and 6 of the dissertation. The SAF, in the author's words, does not eliminate financial risk, but it raises the chance of a sustainable recovery.
Neither staying out of JR nor becoming an SAF made life easy
Place your bet and flip the card.
The law buys time; management decides what to do with it
Club directors
JR puts debt collection on hold and reorganizes debts. Without changing how the club makes money, the relief tends to be short-lived, as at Avaí in 2024.
Investors
New capital and governance helped stabilize the club-companies studied, but did not guarantee operating profit: Botafogo kept posting operating losses.
Lawmakers and regulators
For the author, recovery depends less on legal instruments alone and more on governance, structure and financial discipline. He notes that Brazil lacks enforced rules such as European financial fair play.
Fans (our reading)
One good year on the balance sheet is not a cure. It is worth checking whether the club now profits from operations, covers its interest and rebuilds its equity.
What this research does not say
- Eight mid-sized clubs over five years: they may not represent all of Brazilian football, and the period is short to see a full recovery. · according to the author
- Only financial indicators: management, governance and the presence of investors were not measured directly. · according to the author
- Equal weights in the FHI: the author suggests revalidating the formula and the weights in new studies. · according to the author
- A comparison of cases, without statistical testing. The FHI compares each club with itself, so it shows rises and falls better than which club is healthier. The values here were read from the dissertation's charts. · our note
Credits
SALMAZO, Rodolfo Garcia. Recuperação judicial de clubes de futebol no Brasil: estudo de caso comparado entre os modelos associativo e de Sociedade Anônima do Futebol – SAF. Dissertação (Mestrado em Administração de Empresas) — Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, São Paulo, 2026. Advisor: Prof. Dr. Wilson Toshiro Nakamura.
Strategic Finance research line. This version simplifies the work for a general audience; the formulas, charts and the analysis of each club are in the original text (in Portuguese).