Buyout Clause

On 11.1.1.

A player (Mascherano) has a clause in which I (Barcelona) pay his former club 80K/match for next 40+ matches. The board negotiates a buyout of this clause for 3M. My wage/transfer budget is at 0, but I am still able to buyout this clause.

Have others seen this? Potential bug? Seems exploitable...

Nah not a bug. The money has already been taken from your transfer budget in anticipation of the payments, this way you pay it all upfront and its cheaper if I'm right?

The board can act outside your wage and transfer budget. It's classed as "Other Footballing Costs". The wage/transfer budget deals only with wages and transfers (oddly enough ^^)

As Carthy1 said, the board have decided to "lump sum" it instead of having to pay the 80k per week installments. Like paying off an overdraft in one go so you don't have to deal with the interest.

Hmm. But it doesn't work the other way around. When I activate a clause that another team owes me, I get the lump sum added to my transfer budget like any other transfer. So it seems that when I activate a clause to pay another team, it should go out of my transfer budget too.

Hmm. But it doesn't work the other way around. When I activate a clause that another team owes me, I get the lump sum added to my transfer budget like any other transfer. So it seems that when I activate a clause to pay another team, it should go out of my transfer budget too.

but thats completely different. You are recieving the money and your board is allowing you to keep it as transfer money, you dont know where the team that has paid it out took the money from. As the board choosing to pay it out they choose where it comes from, its like when you ask the board to negotiate a transfer for you, you only do it when you cant afford the player, if you budget was 0 and you wanted a player worth 2.4 million they can still buy him, your tansfer fund wont go to -2.4m.

not a bug, just needed explaining

So let me try to understand:

Suppose my board negotiates a clause whereby I can buyout per-game payments with a $3M lump sum.

Scenario 1: I have $3M left in the transfer budget. I activate this clause, does my transfer budget goes to 0? I would have thought it does.

Scenario 2: I have 0 left in the transfer budget. I can still activate this clause and my transfer budget is unaffected.

If this is right, then the thing for me to do, whenever such clauses are available, would be to buy players and use up the transfer budget as much as possible, and THEN activate these clauses. The weirdness I am alleging is thus that the extent to which a pre-negotiated clause affects my budget depends on what my budget is, when antecedently I would have thought it should be independent.

they clauses do not come out of your transfer budget, they will come out of your clubs balance. Paying out a contactual clause is not a transfer, so it doesnt come out of your transfer fund. You ask your board to pay it out, they use the money from the clubs coffers. Prenegotiated clauses do NOT effect your transfer budget, they may effect the wage budget if it is a pay increase etc. The clubs balance is seperate to the transfer budget, the budget is for transfers, not additional costs for buying out clauses etc.