Chelsea's loss risked breaching Uefa rules Chelsea risked falling foul of Uefa's new break-even regime by reporting a £49.4m loss last season but it claimed it would still comply with the European football governing body's financial fair play regulations. Roman Abramovich's Premier League outfit, winners of Uefa's Europa Cup competition last season, is the first major European club to publicly declare it had complied with the new regulations as it announced its 2012-13 financial results. IN UK Companies Uefa's rules, brought in to tackle football's overspending and designed to ensure clubs live within their means, stipulate that clubs are only allowed to make losses of up to €45m over the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons, the first assessment period under the new regime. Failure to comply puts clubs at risk of a number of sanctions, including disqualification from its competitions. Since buying the club in 2003, the Russian oligarch incurred losses of hundreds of millions in search of global talent to turn Chelsea into a formidable force in European football. Uefa wants to make such spending a thing of the past. Chelsea issued a press release saying it had moved from a £1.4m profit in 2011-12, a season that ended in it winning Uefa's lucrative Champions League, to a £49.4m loss in the year ended June 30. But under Uefa's rules, it will exempt costs such as infrastructure, youth development and charitable donations. In Chelsea's case these are thought to total around £15m. Taking into account the small profit from 2011-12, Chelsea ends up with a loss that for the purposes of Uefa's fair play rules comes to around €39.5m, which puts the club some €5.5m within the acceptable threshold. Bruce Buck, chairman, said under Mr Abramovich's ownership Chelsea's long-term objective had been financial sustainability. "We are pleased therefore that we will meet the stipulations set down by Uefa in their first assessment period," Mr Buck said. Uefa will spend the next few months assessing each club's finances over the last two seasons before announcing in the Spring which clubs have failed to comply with its regulations. Earlier this season, Uefa said at least five clubs were at risk of breaching its rules. Clubs expected to come under particular scrutiny are Qatari-owned Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City, owned by the Abu Dhabi ruling family. Both clubs must prove that their big-money sponsorship deals that do much to inflate their income are genuine, rather than so-called "related party transactions" which were agreed with entities with close links to the clubs" owners. The fair play rules get tougher, with the maximum permitted losses declining to €30m over future monitoring periods. But Chelsea is confident its projected commercial incomes should allay concerns of failure to comply with Uefa's rules in future seasons. The club said its commercial deal with Adidas, renewed in June and believed to be worth around £30m a year over 10 years, will begin to appear in the 2013-14 accounts. Other deals include new agreements with Audi, Delta and Azimut Hotels. The deals pushed Chelsea's commercial income up 19 per cent to £79.6m, contributing to a record turnover of £255.8m. But the club said income from 2012-13 compared less favourably to the previous season during which, in addition to the income from winning the Champions League, it made a healthy player trading profit and enjoyed a one-off benefit from the cancellation of BSkyB shares in its digital media business. Ron Gourlay, chief executive, said despite the club being knocked out in the group stages of the Champions League last season, the size of Chelsea's turnover showed it was primed for long-term stability. "Our philosophy is we build upon success on the pitch and although in these financial results we haven't repeated the sizeable profits made the previous year from player transfers, we believe the age profile of the existing squad means we will benefit from that investment for many years to come," Mr Gourlay said.