After a lengthy disciplinary process, the Premier League has reached a settlement agreement with Chelsea in respect of historical breaches against its rules under the Roman Abramovich regime.

Decision

Specifically, the Premier League said, “it was established that between 2011 and 2018, undisclosed payments by third parties associated with the club were made to players, unregistered agents and other third parties. These payments were not disclosed to the football regulatory authorities at the time.”

The League added, “The payments were made for the benefit of Chelsea FC and should have been treated as having been made by the club. The club has also accepted, among other things, that the making of these payments, as well as failure to disclose them to the league, constituted a breach of the requirement to act in good faith towards the league.”

In addition, the League concluded that a “former senior employee” at Chelsea had breached Youth Development Rules, relating to the club’s registration of Academy players between 2019 and 2022.

This meant that Chelsea had basically “tapped up” Academy players at other clubs by making approaches without the prior written consent of the clubs with which the players were registered at the time.

The dry, legal language in the two Sanction Agreements could not obscure the simple truth that Chelsea had been found guilty of cheating, so this is clearly a very serious matter that brings to mind Arsène Wenger’s old accusations that Chelsea were involved in “financial doping”.

Arguably, it is one of the biggest scandals in the history of the Premier League, as a club that has won the title on five occasions now has an asterisk against some of those successes.

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I was recently invited to contribute to a panel at the annual Financial Times Business of Football Summit, looking at whether the multi-club ownership (MCO) model is viable.

Hosted by the FT’s Sam Agini, the panel also included Alejandro Irarragori, the owner of two clubs in Mexico’s Liga MX and Sporting de Gijon in Spain; Kara Nortman, the managing partner of Monarch Collective, which has stakes in a number of NWSL clubs, including Angel City; and Lauren Holiday, former star of the US Women’s national team and director of Mercury/13.

The conference headlines were understandably made by Richard Masters, the Premier League chief executive, who spoke about the introduction of Premier League Plus, a new direct-to-consumer streaming service; Richard Kogan, the chair of the Independent Football Regulator; and our old friend Javier Tebas, who once again put the boot into the Premier League.

You would therefore be forgiven for missing our panel’s contribution, but as Jade Thirlwall says, “That’s showbiz, baby!”

As always on such occasions, there is not enough time to discuss all the issues, especially with a massive subject like multi-club ownership, so today’s article will look at this in more depth.

The review will be structured as follows:

• Growth in multi-club ownership

• Types of multi-club investment

• Investment rationale

• Objectives/benefits

• Benefits to junior clubs

• Drawbacks

• Regulations

• Trends

• Conclusion

Growth in multi-club ownership

There is little doubt that multi-club ownership is one of the most important trends in the world of football. According to UEFA’s latest club investment report, at the end of 2025 there were more than 345 clubs worldwide that were part of a multi-club investment structure, compared with fewer than 60 ten years ago.

UEFA said that multi-club ownership is now “firmly established in the Big Five leagues, while more than a third of the top division clubs are part of an MCO network in Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, Scotland and Switzerland.

In fact, no fewer than 122 top division clubs in Europe (16% of the total) have at least one cross-investment relationship with another club.

That said, the number of multi-club investment transactions has fallen in the last two years, though there were still 33 deals that took place in both 2024 and 2025.

The nature of the deals has also changed, as the proportion of minority stake transactions has increased from 22% in 2022 to 36% in 2025.

Three-quarters of the Premier League is now linked to an MCO, though the English club is generally to be found at the top of the food chain, which makes sense, given the financial dominance of the division.

The growth has been driven by a combination of macroeconomic factors and global investment trends.

The numerous financial weaknesses in the game, exacerbated by the impact of the COVID pandemic, have resulted in numerous buying opportunities, especially for investors looking for a cheap entry point into football.

As a recent example, the collapse in TV rights in Ligue 1 has left French clubs in a vulnerable position, open to new money coming in from abroad.

Furthermore, the perceived under-valuation of the assets, i.e. football clubs, has attracted the attention of US-based investors, with 50 multi-club investment groups originating in America.

Nevertheless, there are obvious concerns about conflicts of interest, especially when two clubs under the same ownership compete in the same domestic league or European competition.

Indeed, UEFA said, “The rise of multi-club investment has the potential to pose a material threat to the integrity of European club competitions with a growing risk of seeing two clubs with the same owner or investor facing each other on the pitch.”

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Deloitte have published the 29th edition of their annual Football Money League, which ranks the world’s leading football clubs by revenue, this time covering the 2024/25 season.

The Money League remains a benchmark report of the financial strength of football clubs, though Deloitte themselves have noted that there are many other metrics that can be used to compare clubs, which are not covered by their analysis, such as profitability, player sales and debt.

That may be the case, but it is still an essential resource, not least because it reveals revenue figures (and implied wages) earlier than many of the clubs, who have not yet published their accounts for last season.

Overview

The headline is that the Top 20 clubs once again reported record revenue, as this increased by €1.2 bln (11%) from €11.2 bln to €12.4 bln, thus generating more than €12 bln for the first time.

This was driven by new highs in all three revenue streams. This time it was match day that led the charge, rising by €338m (16%) from €2.1 bln to €2.4 bln, while there was also good growth in broadcasting, up €448m (11%) from €4.3 bln to €4.7 bln, and commercial, up €428m (9%) from €4.9 bln to €5.3 bln.

Although the percentage growth was smallest in commercial, this revenue stream had the honour of being the first to break through the €5 bln barrier.

As a result, commercial remained the most important revenue stream with 43%, followed by broadcasting 38% and match day 19%.

In Sterling terms, the growth was lower, as the exchange rate against the Euro strengthened from 1.16 to 1.19, with total revenue rising 8% (£793m) from £9.6 bln to £10.4 bln.

Nevertheless, this was still the first time that revenue had exceeded £10 bln.

Match day revenue increased by 16% (€338m) from €2.1 bln to €2.4 bln, so this was the fastest growing revenue stream for the fourth season in a row. This was comfortably a new record, having grown by a hefty 61% (€906m) more than the pre-pandemic peak of €1.5 bln in 2018/19.

The growth has been driven by a combination of stadium development, increase in capacity, more premium match day offerings and, of course, ticket price increases.

In addition, a couple of clubs have benefited from Personal Seat Licences (PSL), whereby super VIP customers pay for the right to purchase a season ticket for a specific seat annually for many years.

These factors have led to match day accounting for 19% of total revenue, its highest share for ten years.

As a reminder, the vast majority of games were played behind closed doors in 2020/21, while the season before that was also impacted by the pandemic in the last couple of months.

Clubs are trying to generate much more money from their stadia, so many of them are actively looking at stadium development, which is a costly exercise, but can deliver a significant return on investment.

The traditional driver of growth at football clubs, namely broadcast revenue, also saw a significant increase, rising 11% (€448m) from €4.3 bln to €4.7 bln, thus accounting for 38% of total revenue.

This was a new high, overtaking the previous €4.5 bln peak in 2020/21, even though that was inflated by revenue deferred from 2019/20 for games played after the accounting close.

However, it is worth noting that broadcasting has only increased by 16% in the last six years, i.e. before the pandemic struck.

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There has been a lot of talk recently about how profitability and sustainability regulations have improved the finances of football clubs, so I thought it was worth exploring whether this was actually the case in England.

Approach

Given that potential investors will be looking at clubs at all levels of the English pyramid, today’s analysis will look at the average results for clubs in the top four divisions, ranging from the mighty Premier League down to EFL League Two.

As there are significant differences within the top two divisions, I have further split these into two more groups: the Big Six and the other clubs in the Premier League; and the parachute payment clubs and the rest in the EFL Championship.

The review will see how finances have developed in the five years since 2018/19, i.e. the last full season before COVID, taking us up to 2023/24, which is the most recent season when the accounts have been published by all clubs.

Not all of the clubs in League One and League Two produce detailed accounts, so the information in those divisions comes with a health warning, though the trends should still be reasonably clear.

Presentation

For each financial metric, we will show the following:

• Graph comparing 2018/19 and 2023/24 for the four divisions (plus the further split in the top two leagues).

• Table listing the values for each of the six seasons between 2018/19 and 2023/24, highlighting the growth across this period, both in absolute and percentage terms.

• Graph showing this trend, split between each division, giving a more visible scale, as the values are significantly lower outside the Premier League.

We will start with the profitability measures, followed by metrics for revenue, expenses and finally the balance sheet, before ending with an overview for each of the four divisions.

Profit/(Loss) before Tax

In the five years since 2018/19 the loss before tax in the Premier League has hardly changed, averaging £8m per club. However, this disguises a steep decline in the Big Six, which swung from a £5m profit to a £13m loss, while the loss at the other 14 clubs in the top flight narrowed from £13m to £10m.

The pre-tax loss is even higher in the Championship – and it’s getting worse, as this widened from £10m to £13m. The average is pretty much the same for clubs receiving parachute payments and the other clubs, but this has significantly worsened for those without parachutes.

Although losses are much smaller in the lower leagues, it is striking how much they have increased in the last five years. In fact, they have more than doubled in both League One, up from £2.0m to £4.3m, and League Two, up from £0.5m to £1.2m.

Exceptional Items

It’s worth noting the significant impact of exceptional items on the top two leagues.

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So the Premier League clubs have voted to introduce a new set of financial rules, the snazzily named Squad Cost Ratio (SCR) and Sustainability and Systematic Resilience (SSR), which will come into effect from the 2026/27 season.

This is a major change from the Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR) that have been in place for the best part of a decade, but have increasingly come under criticism.

The Premier League said that it sought to devise a framework that works effectively in parallel with UEFA’s rules and is consistent with the objectives of the Independent Football Regulator.

The vote to introduce SCR was extremely tight with 14 of the 20 Premier League clubs in favour of the change, so only just reaching the required two-thirds majority, while SSR was passed unanimously.

New Framework

At its simplest, SCR will limit a club’s squad spending to 85% of football-related revenue and net player trading profit, while SSR will introduce tests for short-term, medium-term and long-term financial health in a fairly blatant nod to the new Regulator.

Anchoring Rejected

However, the Premier League said that there was insufficient support for Top to Bottom Anchoring (TBA). This was a diplomatic way of saying that this proposal was soundly defeated with no fewer than 12 clubs voting against plus one abstention.

TBA would have capped top clubs’ spending to five times the amount the bottom club receives in Premier League TV money, but there were concerns that this would restrict the spending capacity of English clubs, putting them at a competitive disadvantage to their European rivals. It also faced the threat of legal action by the PFA, the players’ union.

The rejection of TBA was a blow to the Premier League, who clearly wanted to combine this with SCR in the new framework, having trialed both controls since 2024/25 (on a non-binding basis).

Replacement of PSR

SCR will replace the much maligned Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR), though these will remain in place for the remainder of the 2025/26 season.

PSR states that clubs are not allowed to lose more than £105m limit over the 3-year monitoring period (after excluding deductions for “healthy” expenditure), though the threshold is lower for clubs that had competed in the Championship.

It led to points deductions for two Premier League clubs breaching this target, namely Everton and Nottingham Forest, while Leicester City only avoided a similar fate thanks to the skill of their legal team.

Clubs also managed to get around the regulations via the use of creative accounting, including inter alia asset sales to group companies, lengthy player contracts and impairment charges.

However, it’s worth noting that PSR is not completely dead, as it is still in operation in the EFL Championship, so any club relegated from the Premier League will have to renew acquaintances with an old friend.

Furthermore, if a club qualifies for Europe, then it has to follow UEFA’s Football Earnings rule, which is very similar to PSR. Under these regulations, a club’s loss over a 3-year monitoring period is restricted to an “acceptable deviation” of €60m, so long as any excess over €5m is covered by an equity contribution from the owner.

Objectives

The Premier League could not resist a touch of hyperbole when it explained why it was introducing SCR, saying the objective is “to promote the opportunity for all of its clubs to aspire to greater success, while protecting the competitive balance and compelling nature of the League”.

It added, “SCR focuses solely on spending that directly affects what happens on the pitch, allowing clubs greater commercial freedom to invest without restriction in off-pitch areas like stadium upgrades and fan experience.”

However, this seemed to ignore the fact that clubs could also deduct the cost of stadium upgrades and similar investment under PSR, so that’s nothing new.

The League also said that “the system brings the Premier League’s financial rules closer to UEFA’s, ensuring consistency for clubs competing in both domestic and European competitions”, which is largely true for SCR, though it does beg the question of why they didn’t simply adopt UEFA’s rules lock, stock and barrel.

In fairness, they have tried to address the issue of a club’s budget changing, depending on whether it qualifies for Europe or not. As the League said, “This alignment aims to simplify dual reporting as well as ensure clubs will have as smooth a transition as possible following unexpected qualification (or failure to qualify) for UEFA competitions.”

Another key feature is “a reduction in complexity by focusing on football costs” which is a positive, as it reduces the possibility of a club only complying by the use of some fancy financial footwork.

Squad Cost Ratio (SCR)

A club’s squad cost ratio is calculated as the sum of squad costs divided by adjusted revenue.

Squad costs include:

• Wages of players and head coaches

• Player amortisation and impairment

• Agents’ fees

This means that they exclude the following costs:

• Non-playing staff, such as administrative or commercial personnel

• Assistant coaches and other members of the coaching staff

• Academy players

• Women’s teams

Adjusted Revenue includes:

• Operating revenue (match day, broadcast and commercial)

• Profit from player sales

Profits from non-football events hosted at the club’s stadium, e.g. Beyonce gigs and NFL games, are included, but the sale of assets, e.g. stadium, training ground and women’s team, are excluded.

SCR Limits

SCR will limit clubs’ squad costs to 85% of their adjusted revenue, though they can also make use of an additional 30% allowance up to 115%.

In a mini traffic light system, the 85% limit is known as the Green Threshold, while the maximum 115% limit is known as the Red Threshold.

However, there is no such thing as a free lunch, so any club that makes use of the additional 30% allowance above the 85% limit will incur a levy. In the unlikely case that a club goes over the 115% Red Threshold, it will face a sporting sanction.

The reason that clubs are permitted to go above the 85% limit is that this allows for clubs to invest ahead of anticipated revenue growth, while also acting as a “buffer” against reasonable variance to forecast or genuine sporting underperformance throughout the season.

Any clubs that participate in a UEFA competition will be subject lower limits, as they benefit from higher revenue, especially the Champions League participants, so their Green Threshold is only 70%, while the Red Threshold is 100%.

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If you have ever met an accountant, the chances are that at some stage, he will lean over and let you in on a little secret, “Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash is king”. Sometimes he might say that cash is reality, but you get the point.

This pearl of wisdom is usually accompanied by an insufferably smug expression, as if the bean counter was sharing the secret of alchemy, as opposed to something that Sybil Fawlty might have included within her Mastermind specialist subject of “the bleeding obvious”.

However, here’s the thing: the numbers guy is not wrong, so today’s blog is a deep dive into the cash flow statement.

Specifically, we are going to take a look at how each Premier League club funds its expenditure, which is very much a case of “horses for courses”, as there is a wide divergence in how they source their money and indeed what they spend it on.

Rules of the Road

This analysis will start with the profit and loss account, then show the adjustments made to produce the cash flow statement.

We will then look at the cash flow for the last ten years of published accounts (2014/15 to 2023/24), using the 20 clubs that were playing in the Premier League in the most recent season.

We shall first analyse the Premier League as a whole, then each of the 20 individual clubs, which will be grouped into one of five categories, based on their principal source of funds:

• Businessmen – where the majority of the funding comes from the club’s operations.

• Traders – where a substantial element is drive by player trading.

• Loan Rangers – where the money comes from external debt.

• Sugar Babies – where the owner has provided most of the cash.

• Mixed Bag – where there is no dominant source of funding.

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Lack of competitive balance is one of the biggest issues in football with many pointing to the unseemly financial might of the Premier League, both compared to the EFL Championship and other major leagues on the continent.

However, this is also a concern within the Premier League itself, due to the gap between the so-called Big Six and the other 14 clubs in England’s top flight.

For anyone who has been living in a cave in the last few years, a reminder that the Big Six (in alphabetical order) are Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur. These clubs are generally regarded as enjoying significant financial advantages over the rest of the league.

There are a number of aspirational challengers, including Newcastle United, Aston Villa and Everton, who have been boosted by the ever-growing Premier League TV rights and the expansion of UEFA competitions. However, their challenge has been restricted to some extent by the Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR), despite the willingness of ambitious new (overseas) owners to invest.

So today’s article will look at the long-standing financial dominance of the Big Six and how the gap to the other 14 clubs in the Premier League has developed over the last ten years.

Success on the Pitch

Clearly, members of the Big Six do not always have it their own way on the pitch, as vividly illustrated last season, when Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur finished in lowly 15th and 17th places respectively in the Premier League.

However, they invariably have the financial muscle to ensure that such results are the exception, rather than the rule, while other less fortunate clubs cannot afford a bad season or two, as shown by Leicester City’s decline since surprisingly winning the league.

If we define success as qualifying for Europe, an achievement that has the added benefit of enhancing revenue streams, there is no debate around the success of the Big Six.

In the last 15 years, there have been only two occasions when less than five members of the Big Six failed to qualify for European competitions. Indeed, in more than half of those seasons, all six clubs successfully negotiated this hurdle.

Moreover, they almost always qualified for the lucrative Champions League. Out of the 63 slots available since 2010/11, all but four of them have gone to the Big Six, the only exceptions being Leicester City (2015/16), Newcastle United (2022/23 & 2024/25) and Aston Villa (2023/24).

Methodology

For the purposes of our review, we have looked at the ten seasons from 2014/15 to 2023/24, the last season when we have accounts available for all clubs.

Given the disparity between the number of clubs featured in the Big Six and the other 14, the analysis has been based on averages per club in each group This can sometimes be heavily influenced by one or two members of the cohort, but the message is still pretty clear.

The review has been split into the following sections:

• Revenue

• Expenses

• Profit/(Loss)

• Transfers

• Debt

• Owner Funding

OK, that’s enough of an intro, let’s get cracking.

Revenue

In the last ten years the average growth in revenue of the Big Six and the other 14 clubs is almost identical in percentage terms, as both groups have almost doubled (91% vs. 88%).

However, the absolute growth is a whole different ball game, as the Big Six has increased by €286m from €314m to £600m, while the other 14 clubs have only averaged £92m growth from £104m to £196m.

As a result, the revenue gap has never been higher, almost doubling from £210m to £404m. The only seasons where the gap narrowed were 2019/20 and 2020/21, where the impact of the COVID pandemic was more keenly felt by the Big Six, as playing behind closed doors had a significant adverse impact on their match day income.

This is not only important for the obvious reasons, but the ability to generate much more revenue is also critical to help clubs comply with financial regulations, whether these are linked to financial earnings or squad cost control.

On average, the Big Six generates three times as much revenue as the other 14 clubs.

Revenue Streams

Given the relatively equitable distribution of the Premier League TV money, the Big Six broadcasting income is only 1.6x as much as the other 14 clubs.

Instead, the most important driver of the gap between the two groups is commercial income, where the Big Six generate a staggering 8.2x as much as the other 14 clubs, as well as match day revenue, where the multiple is a hefty 5.3x.

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Last week’s review of Sporting CP’s finances very clearly highlighted the importance of player sales to their business model, which made me wonder whether this is also the case at other European clubs.

Financial Regulations

In fact, it could be argued that profit from player sales has effectively become a new revenue stream, which has been underlined by some recent developments in financial regulations.

For example, UEFA have introduced a squad cost control ratio, whereby clubs competing in their competitions have to limit the cost of player wages, transfers and agent fees to 70% of revenue and profit on player sales.

The most important element of the denominator in the cost control ratio is obviously the revenue reported in the accounts, but this calculation also includes profit on player sales (averaged over the last three years).

In other words, clubs that are good at player trading will clearly have an advantage in complying with the target.

Furthermore, next month the Premier League will vote on whether to adopt a similar model, as well as a “top-to-bottom anchoring” framework, for its financial regulations, which will potentially replace the current Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) that allow losses of £105m over a three-year reporting cycle.

Scope of Review

It’s therefore interesting to look at how profit on player sales has changed over the last few years, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of total revenue, i.e. operating revenue plus profit on player sales.

This review will look at each of the major European leagues, as well as the leading clubs, which will highlight that the picture is a little different depending on the individual league’s circumstances.

The leagues covered are the Premier League, the EFL Championship, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, Primeira Liga and Eredivisie. In an ideal world, we would also include the Bundesliga, but the accounts of German clubs are not great at providing a split of revenue and profit from player sales.

The period under review is the six seasons from 2018/19 to 2023/24, as that should be enough to identify any trends, while it neatly takes us from the last full season before the COVID impacted 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons to the latest published accounts.

Finally, we shall look at the individual clubs in these leagues, so we can reveal which ones are most reliant on player trading.

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Despite yesterday’s win against Fulham, it’s not been the best of starts to the season for Aston Villa, who failed to win any of their first five league games, while scoring just one goal in that time.

In addition, they crashed out of the EFL Cup at the first time of asking, having been defeated by Brentford on penalties.

Monchi Departure

The mood around Villa Park was not improved when it was announced that Monchi, the president of football operations, and more importantly a close confidant of head coach Unai Emery, would be leaving the club.

The reasons for the departure of this key figure are not known, with some saying that there were personal factors behind Monchi’s decision to return to Spain, but it is another sign of Villa’s issues off the pitch.

Monchi himself had hinted at some frustration with the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR), when he had previously listed compliance with these rules as the most important of his four objectives, “First, to find a solution for the PSR. Second, to have a younger squad. Three, to have a deeper squad. And the fourth is to be aligned with what Unai wants.”

Summer Signings

Either way, Villa were the one Premier League club whose transfer window this summer was very clearly impacted by PSR, as noted by manager Unai Emery, “We cannot avoid that the summer has been challenging, because the financial rules were conditioning our investment and our squad.”

This meant that their only significant signing was Evann Guessand from Nice, as the club had to make do with the cheap acquisitions of Yasin Ozcan from Kasimpasa and Marco Bizot from Brest, the loan signings of Jadon Sancho and Harvey Elliott and the free transfer of Victor Lindelöf from Manchester United.

As a result, Villa actually had the lowest gross spend in the top flight this summer with just £42m, which was miles below the likes of Liverpool £459m, Chelsea £331m and Arsenal £291m.

For even more perspective, this was also a lot less than the three promoted clubs: Sunderland £193m, Burnley £135m and Leeds United £116m.

Summer Sales

Instead, the clear focus this summer was on selling players – or at the very least getting them off the payroll. The club’s director of football operations, Damian Vidagany had already warned that it would be a “difficult” summer,

Villa’s financial challenges directly led to the sale of Jacob Ramsey to Newcastle United for £39m, which was a “pure profit” deal, as he is an Academy product.

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Following this summer’s record breaking spend, many people ponder the question of which club actually “won” the transfer window?

There are many ways of looking this. Some might think that it is simply a question of which club has splashed out the most cash (a media favourite), while others will attempt to grade the quality of the signings.

However, in the era of Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR), another way of assessing this is to look at the impact on a club’s profit and loss account.

As a football fan first and foremost, this would not necessarily be my preferred metric, but it has clearly become an important element in any club’s transfer strategy.

Player sales are often viewed as an easy solution for those clubs striving to comply with PSR, and there’s some truth in that, but people should really look at player trading as a whole to fully understand the overall impact on a club’s finances.

Supporters have become increasingly familiar with concepts such as amortisation, swap deals and “pure profit”, but player trading is a fairly complex subject (at least from an accounting perspective).

Therefore, today’s article will look at the accounting impact for each premier League club, split between:

• Player amortisation

• Profit from player sales

• Net player trading impact

Transfer Spend

Looking at pure transfer fees, Liverpool had the highest gross spend of £393m, followed by Chelsea £284m and Arsenal £254m, though a total of six clubs in the Premier League spent more than £200m, which is a staggering statistic.

In addition, the three promoted clubs all spent a fair amount, led by Sunderland’s £163m, though Burnley £117m and Leeds United £98m did not exactly hold back either.

On the other hand, three clubs spent less than £50m: Crystal Palace £48m, Fulham £39m and Aston Villa £35m. The Midlands club faced PSR challenges after a few years of high spending, though in general the financial regulations were not a major factor in the transfer activity this summer.

Total Cost

The total cost of transfers ultimately booked in the accounts is even higher, as this will include various other payments on top of the transfer fees:

• Agent fees – which we have assumed to be 10% of the transfer fee.

• Solidarity payment – 5% of the transfer fee, distributed to all clubs that trained the player between his 12th and 23rd birthdays, applied on international transfers.

• Premier League levy – 4% of the transfer fee, applied on all transfers (both domestic and international).

These additional fees can make a big difference to the total cost of a transfer, e.g. we estimate these to add up to over half a billion Pounds on this summer’s transactions, which works out at around 17% of the £3.1 bln transfer fees, taking the total cost to £3.6 bln.

As an example, we reckon that these additional fees would take Liverpool’s accounting cost of transfers up to £459m, made up of transfer fees £393m, agent fees £39m, solidarity payment £11m and Premier League levy £16m.

Rules of the Road

As always, we do need to be cautious about transfer fees, which are often reported as different numbers , depending on whether they are provided by the selling club, the buying club or indeed the agent.

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Although real football has actually started this season, many fans seem to follow the transfer market with even more attention. In fairness, there was a lot to get their juices running this summer, as all sorts of records were set in a blockbuster transfer window.

The headline figure was a massive outlay of more than £3 billion, while a new English transfer record was set when Liverpool finally signed Swedish striker Alexander Isak for £125m.

Given this level of interest, here’s a deep dive into this summer’s transfer window, looking at the expenditure in a number of ways. The focus is on the Premier League, but this piece also covers the other major leagues across Europe:

The review will look at the following areas:

• Transfers trend

• Summer 2025 window (gross spend, sales and net spend)

• Last 2 years and 5 years

• Comparison with other leagues

• Highest spend by club

• Highest deals by player

• Transfer spend profile by age, position and country

• Reasons behind this summer’s high transfer spend

• Analysis of each major league’s transfer spend

That’s a lot of data, so let’s get cracking.

Rules of the Road

Our analysis for this window will be largely based on figures from Transfermarkt, though judiciously updated for a couple of deals, where the numbers look questionable.

As always, we do need to be cautious about reported transfer fees, which are often given as different numbers , depending on whether they are provided by the selling club, the buying club or the agent. The impact of potential add-ons can also be significant, but, to be clear, we have excluded these, as the payments are far from certain, depending on things like number of appearances and team success.

Nevertheless, the overall messages from this window should still be reasonably clear.

For some of the trend analysis, we have used the total cost of a transfer, as that is what is ultimately booked in the accounts.

On top of the transfer fee, this includes:

• Agent fees – which we have assumed to be 10% of the transfer fee.

• Solidarity payment – 5% of the transfer fee, distributed to all clubs that trained the player between his 12th and 23rd birthdays, applied on international transfers.

• Premier Levy – 4% of the transfer fee, applied on all transfers (both domestic and international).

These additional fees can make a big difference to the total cost of a transfer, e.g. we estimate this to be over half a billion Pounds on this summer’s transactions, which works out at around 17% of the £3.1 bln transfer fees, taking the total cost to £3.6 bln.

Transfer Window

The Big Five leagues agreed to have a common deadline for this summer’s transfer window, namely Monday 1st September, which was one day later than usual, as the 31st August fell on a Sunday.

The window remained open for one more day until Tuesday 2nd September for the Eredivisie, while it is even later for some other leagues: Belgium 8th September, Turkey 12th September, Saudi Pro League 23rd September.

However, we have based this analysis on deals reported up to 2nd September, balancing the desire for using final figures with the wish for this analysis to be topical.

There is one other spin on this season’s timings, driven by the expanded FIFA Club World Cup, which began on 15th June. As a result, FIFA allowed member associations with representatives in the tournament to apply an additional “mini transfer window” running from 1st to 10th June.

Transfers Trend

Just taking the figures directly from Transfermarkt, we can see just how spectacular this transfer window really was, as the £3.1 bln outlay was the highest in Premier League history, around 50% more than the previous season’s £2.1 bln.

This level of expenditure absolutely obliterated the previous record for the summer window of £2.4 bln that was set in 2023/24. In fact, it was higher than the record for a full season (i.e. including the January window) of £2.7 bln in 2022/23.

To further place this into perspective, up until 2021/22 the record transfer spend for a single window was “only” £1.4 bln.

Transfer spend has really taken off in the last four years, so the Premier League has spent more than £9.6 bln in that period, which is nearly twice as much as the £5.1 bln outlay in the preceding 4-year period.

With a couple of exceptions, we can see that the vast majority of a season’s transfer activity takes place in the summer window, so we can justifiably compare this summer with previous seasons in total.

On that basis, the £3.6 bln gross spend in summer 2024 (including agent fees, solidarity payment and Premier League levy) was £226m higher than the 2022/23 record of £3.4 bln.

However, the £1.8 bln sales this summer were significantly more than the £1.0 bln three years ago, which means that the Premier League £1.8 bln net spend was actually less than the £2.3 bln peak inn 2022/23, although it was the second highest ever.

The high sales were largely thanks to Premier League clubs selling to other Premier League clubs.

The record-breaking activity is further highlighted by six of the gross spends now featuring in England’s top 20 ever (with the January window still to come).

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Although the Premier League has never generated so much money, the fact remains that profitability continues to be a struggle for most clubs. One of the consequences is ever increasing levels of debt.

Of course, there are many reasons why a football club would take on debt, including investment in infrastructure, spending to improve the squad, covering operating losses and even as a pre-cursor to investors taking a stake in the club.

Covering losses was a particularly important factor during the COVID pandemic, as clubs had to tap into the capital markets or rely on the benevolence of their owners to compensate for huge revenue losses arising from playing games behind closed doors.

There is also a degree of tax efficiency behind a decision to opt for debt financing, as opposed to equity injections, because interest on loans is tax deductible (unlike dividends).

However, there are clearly some disadvantages associated with the explosion of debt, as highlighted by the government’s white paper, “A Sustainable Future – Reforming Club Football Governance”.

Debt Definitions

Before we start exploring the growth in debt in detail, we should clarify exactly what we are talking about, as there are so many different definitions.

At the narrowest extreme, we have just bank debt, but the broadest extreme covers total liabilities, which includes all financial obligations, including transfer debt, staff payables, tax liabilities, trade creditors, provisions, accrued expenses and even deferred income.

The net debt reported in an English club’s financial statement is in line with IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) and essentially covers purely financial obligations, such as overdrafts, bank loans, bonds, shareholder loans and finance leases less cash.

For the purpose of this review I will take the 2023/24 audited accounts of those clubs playing in the Premier League that season.

Financial Debt – Gross

After many years when Premier League debt levels were relatively flat, this has really taken off in the last few years, rising from £3.2 bln in 2017 to a high of £5.2 bln in 2020.

This then dropped to “only” £4.0 bln in 2021/22, but the decrease was a bit misleading, as it was only due to Chelsea writing-off £1.5 bln of debt following Roman Abramovich’s forced sale of the club.

Since that large once-off transaction, gross debt has increased by around £700m (17%) to £4.7 bln.

If we exclude Chelsea from the calculation, thus removing the substantial distorting factor of their £1.5 bln write-off, the steady growth in Premier League debt becomes more evident.

On this underlying basis, debt in England’s top flight has more than doubled in the last seven years and has never been higher.

Over half of the debt is at just three clubs, namely Everton £1.0 bln (new stadium and squad investment), Tottenham £851m (new stadium) and Manchester United £547m (the lingering effects of the Glazers’ leveraged buyout).

In addition, four other clubs owe more than £300m (Arsenal £342m, Liverpool £314m, Chelsea £303m and Brighton £300m).

On the other hand, Luton Town and West Ham were essentially debt-free.

Cash Balance

Gross debt is offset by large cash balances in some cases, but the total cash held in the Premier League fell £207m (29%) from £724m to £517m in 2024, which was less than half of the £1.1 bln peak in 2020, when many clubs took out large loans to cope with COVID shortfalls.

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So the best football club on the planet is…. Chelsea.

Many will argue otherwise, but we can make that assertion after the Blues defeated Paris-Saint German 3-0 to win the inaugural edition of the shiny new FIFA Cub World Cup.

Given that PSG had won the Champions League, while Chelsea were victorious in the far less regarded Conference League, this has to be considered as something of a surprise, though the result was thoroughly deserved on the day.

So how did FIFA’s extravaganza work out?

Format

The greatly expanded format featured 32 clubs, compared to just seven in the previous version in 2023.

Europe was awarded 12 slots, which was twice as much as the next highest continent, namely South America with six. The confederations for Africa, Asia and CONCACAF (North America, South America and Caribbean) were all allocated four slots, while Oceania was given one slot. The final place went to the host association, so CONCACAF ended up with five teams this time round.

Good or Bad?

It’s fair to say that the greatly expanded format of the Club World Cup has split opinions.

Former Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp, now head of global soccer at Red Bull, was typically forthright in his criticism, “'The Club World Cup is the worst idea ever implemented in football”, adding, “This World Cup happens at the wrong moment for the wrong reasons.”

In contrast, former Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger, now FIFA’s chief of global soccer development, perhaps understandably supported his employer’s initiative, “I feel a Club World Cup is needed. If you make enquiries to all the clubs who were here, then 100 percent of answers would be that they would want to do it again.”

As would be expected, FIFA President Gianni Infantino believes that the tournament has been a great success, “Maybe some criticise it a little bit, but it’s something new. It’s something special. It’s a real World Cup with the best teams and the best players.”

Fans of clubs like Liverpool, Arsenal and Barcelona might not agree with El Presidente’s assessment, but European countries were restricted to two representatives, so they were excluded this time round.

Size of the Prize

Thanks to the generosity of streaming platform DAZN, who paid a thumping great $1 bln for a TV rights deal, even though other broadcasters had shown little interest, FIFA were able to create a massive prize pot for the event of the same amount.

Some cynical observers have noted that shortly after the agreement was signed, the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) bought a 10% minority stake in DAZN for, you guessed it, $1 bln.

A week later, FIFA confirmed that Saudi Arabia would be the hosts of the 2034 men’s World Cup, though to be fair they were the only bidders.

The $1 bln revenue is split between a participation pillar of $475m and a sporting performance pillar (i.e. prize money) of $525m.

To place this into perspective, the FIFA Club World Cup’s €857m ($1 bln) revenue is around 40% of the UEFA Champion League’s €2.5 bln, but is more than the Europa League €565m and Europa Conference €285m combined.

The prize money would have been even higher in terms of Euros if the Dollar had not tanked in the last few months. For example, using the January high, the $1 bln prize pot would have been worth around €975m.

Revenue by Club

At the tournament’s conclusion, the two finalists have earned more than $100m, which is a pretty good return for a month’s work, as winners Chelsea got a chunky $115m, which will no doubt go towards their transfer war chest, while runners-up Paris Saint-Germain received $107m.

Six of the top eight earnings went to European clubs, including Real Madrid €83m, Bayern Munich €58m, Borussia Dortmund €52m and Manchester City €52m.

Brazilian clubs also did very well with their four representatives all finishing in the top 13 clubs by income: Fluminense €61m, Palmeiras €40m, Flamengo €28m and Botafogo €27m.

Six clubs got less than €10m for their efforts with the lowest of all being Auckland City’s €4.6m.

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Last week I looked at the position of the 20 Premier League clubs in terms of the domestic Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR), but noted that the leading clubs also have to face the additional challenge of complying with UEFA’s rules.

Indeed, UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) will shortly be issuing their annual update on which clubs have breached the financial targets for the 2023/24 season, which is likely to feature a couple of English clubs.

UEFA’s regulations are a fair bit stricter than the Premier League, as the allowable losses are much smaller, even though these have been increased over the years, while clubs also have to contend with the new squad cost control ratio.

So today we will look at UEFA’s regulations in detail to see whether the nine English clubs that have qualified for European competitions in 2025/26 are likely to be compliant:

• Champions League (6) – Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea, Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur

• Europa League (2) – Aston Villa and Crystal Palace

• Conference League (1) – Nottingham Forest

For the sake of completeness, we will also include Manchester United in our review, even though they have not qualified for any UEFA competition next season, as they had to contend with these regulations in 2024/25.

UEFA Regulations

In 2022 UEFA introduced amended regulations to focus on the financial sustainability of clubs with three key pillars being monitored:

• Solvency

• Stability

• Cost Control

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The official closing date for this summer’s transfer window is Monday 1st September, but there is another unofficial deadline day fast approaching, namely 30th June, which is the year-end for the 2024/25 accounts (at least for the vast majority of clubs).

As we saw last year, this date provoked a flurry of transfers, including a number of creative player swap deals, that helped a few clubs comply with the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR).

Apart from a few accounting nerds, nobody had been overly concerned about PSR in the past, but the regulations have started to show their teeth, as the Premier League imposed points deductions on both Everton and Nottingham Forest for financial breaches, while it tried to do the same to Leicester City.

Now that all clubs have published their accounts for the 2023/24 season, we have a pretty good idea of what clubs will need to do in 2024/25 – or, put another way, how much money they can afford to lose.

Rules of the Road

For each of the 20 clubs that will compete in next season’s Premier League, we will provide the following analysis:

• Financial results for the 3 seasons from 2021/22 to 2023/24

• PSR position for the 3-year PSR monitoring period up to 2023/24

• How much each club can lose in 2024/25 and still comply with PSR

• Major movements in 2024/25: player sales, other once-off transactions, Premier League, UEFA competitions, FIFA Club World Cup

• Player sales 2024/25

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Crystal Palace’s victory in the FA Cup final against Manchester City was undoubtedly one of the most magical moments of the season. Fans everywhere celebrated the “cupset” after the brilliant Eberechi Eze scored the only goal of the game, securing the first major trophy in the history of the South London club.

This also gained them a place in the Europa League, which was the first time that Palace had ever qualified for a UEFA competition.

Chairman Steve Parish was understandably jubilant, “Europa League group games, travelling all over Europe, Palace on tour. This is stuff the fans have been dreaming about for too long,”

Multi-Club Ownership Issues

However, there is a potential fly in the ointment in the shape of UEFA’s multi-club ownership (MCO) regulations, which state that no individual is permitted to control two clubs that are competing in the same UEFA competition.

This is a problem, as John Textor is Palace’s largest shareholder with a 43% stake, while the American businessman also owns 88% of French club, Olympique Lyonnais, who qualified for next season’s Europa League after PSG completed the French double.

Textor owns his Palace stake via his multi-club ownership group, Eagle Football Holdings, which has a portfolio of football clubs, partly funded by Ares Management Corporation, Iconic Sports and Elmwood Partners.

None of the clubs are fully owned, but Eagle Football are also majority shareholders in Brazilian club Botafogo 90% and Belgian club RWD Molenbeek 80%, as well as Palace and Lyon.

The decision on whether Palace will be allowed to play in the Europa League will be taken by UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB), which will assess the relationship between Palace and Olympique Lyonnais.

Parish and Textor have already attended an initial meeting with the CFCB in Nyon (Switzerland) to state their case, though it will be a while before a decision is reached.

That has understandably taken the gloss of Palace’s stunning FA Cup triumph, so let’s look at the MCO challenges that they face.

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Now that all the clubs in the EFL Championship have published their accounts for the 2023/24 season, we can take our customary look at the trends over the last 10 years, covering the finances in England’s second tier since 2014/15.

The figures for 2019/20 and especially 2020/21, when virtually all games were played behind closed doors, were significantly impacted by the COVID pandemic, but it’s been pretty much business as usual for the last three seasons.

Before I get into the 10-year trends, it’s worth understanding the business model in the Championship, which was once again illustrated by the financial results in 2023/24.

Overview

The 24 clubs generated just under £1 bln of revenue (£956m to be precise) and £22m other operating income, but then paid out £1.7 bln in operating expenses, split between £892m wages, £260m player amortisation and £505m other expenses.

This led to a sizeable £678m operating loss, exacerbated by £73m net interest payable, which was only partially offset by £420m profit from player sales and £17m exceptional items.

As a result, the division as a whole lost £314m.

That net loss was almost exactly the same as the previous season’s deficit of £322m, but there were some significant ups and downs.

Revenue shot up £207m (28%) from £749m to £956m, while profit from player sales more than doubled from £183m to £420m. However, this was offset by a steep increase in operating expenses, which were a third higher, rising £417m; while net interest payable rose £40m.

There was significant growth in all three revenue streams, as commercial and match day both increased by around 50%, up £101m and £72m respectively. Broadcasting was £36m (9%) higher.

Staff costs also showed sizeable increases, as wages rose £184m (26%) and player amortisation was up £106m (68%). In addition, other expenses grew £106m (32%), while depreciation rose £17m (49%).

Impact of The Three Relegated Clubs

This is obviously substantial growth in a single season, but this was largely driven by the relegation of three sizeable clubs to the Championship (Leeds United, Leicester City and Southampton). They replaced three smaller clubs that were promoted to the Premier League (Burnley, Luton Town and Sheffield United).

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FIFA has finally confirmed the revenue distribution model for the expanded version of the Club World Cup, which will take place in the United States from 15 June to 13 July.

The big headline is that a cool One Billion Dollars will be shared between the 32 participating clubs, so the teams that reach the latter stages of the tournament can look forward to receiving a substantial windfall.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino greeted the announcement with his customary modesty, “The distribution model of the FIFA Club World Cup reflects the pinnacle of club football and represents the biggest-ever prize money for a football tournament comprising a seven-match group stage and playoff format with a potential payout of $125m foreseen for the winners.”

Format

This was previously an annual tournament contested by seven teams, but it has now morphed into an extravaganza featuring 32 teams, scheduled to take place every four years.

The 32 teams are divided into eight groups of four teams with the top two teams in each group qualifying for the last 16, followed by the classic knockout rounds, as seen in the country world cup.

Representatives

Europe has been awarded 12 slots, which is twice as much as the next highest continent, namely South America with six. The confederations for Africa, Asia and CONCACAF (North America, South America and Caribbean) were all given four slots, while Oceania was given one slot. The final place went to the host association, so CONCACAF have ended up with five teams this time round.

Only two clubs per country can qualify, so England’s representatives are Manchester City, who incidentally won the last tournament under the old format in 2023, and Chelsea.

Distribution Split

The total $1 bln pot will be split between a participation pillar of $525m and a sporting performance pillar (i.e. prize money) of $475m.

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Deloitte have published the 28th edition of their annual Football Money League, which ranks the world’s leading football clubs by revenue, this time covering the 2023/24 season.

The Money League remains a benchmark report of the financial strength of football clubs, though Deloitte themselves note that there are many other metrics that could be used to compare clubs, which are not covered by their analysis, such as profitability, player sales and debt.

Although they did not exactly “boldly go where no man has gone before”, the consultants did reveal that the 2023/24 season “unlocked a new frontier”, as Real Madrid became the first football club to record more than €1 bln in revenue.

Overview

The Top 20 revenue generating clubs once again reported record Money League revenue, as this increased by €649m (6%) from €10.6 bln to €11.2 bln.

This was driven by new highs in both match day, up €204m (11%) from €1.9 bln to €2.1 bln, and commercial, up €444m (10%) from €4.4 bln to €4.9 bln. However, broadcasting was flat at €4.3 bln.

As a result, commercial remained the most important revenue stream with 44%, followed by broadcasting 38% and match day 18%.

In Sterling terms, the growth was more or less the same, as the exchange rate against the Euro only very slightly strengthened from 1.15 to 1.16, with total revenue also rising 6% (£558m) from £9.1 bln to £9.6 bln.

Match day revenue increased by 11% (€204m) from €1.9 bln to €2.1 bln, so this was once again the fastest growing revenue stream. This was comfortably a new record, being 38% (€567m) higher than the pre-pandemic peak of €1.5 bln in 2018/19, and the first time that it had broken through the €2 bln barrier.

The growth has been driven by a combination of stadium development, increase in capacity, more premium match day offerings and, of course, ticket price increases. This has led to match day accounting for 18% of total revenue, its highest share since 2014/15.

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In yesterday’s blog on Profitability and Sustainability (PSR) I explained how the regulations work and looked at the position of the first ten clubs (alphabetically) in the Premier League.

The objective of this exercise is to see which clubs will be restricted in the January transfer window by PSR and which ones have headroom to spend.

Today’s article will complete the analysis for the remaining ten clubs, ranging from Leicester City to Wolverhampton Wanderers, followed by a neat overview at the end of the piece.

So grab yourself a large coffee and get stuck in!

Individual Clubs (continued)

Leicester City

Leicester’s issues with PSR have been widely documented. Indeed, the EFL said that its financial reporting unit had concluded that the Foxes are likely “to breach the profitability and sustainability loss limits for the three-year period ending with financial year 2023/24”.

It’s quite difficult to forecast Leicester financials, as they were relegated from the Premier League to the Championship at the end of 2022/23, exacerbated by the fact that the previous season covered 13 months, but we have had a go, mainly by looking at the accounts from other recently relegated clubs.

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