The Political Economy of Football V2

Keen Super Hoops supporter Lord Young of Acton (he did briefly consider becoming Lord Young of Lofus Road) reflects on the travails of being a QPR supporter in his column in this week's Spectator. It occurred to me that the noble lord's remarks contained some universal truths that could be applied to supporters of any team outside the Premier League, or even the big six.  Being a football supporter is as much about disappointment as it is joy. Young confesses that at the beginning of the current season he thought that QPR would get promoted. 'We've been languishing in the second tier of English football for more than ten years and I thought that we might finally escape.'  [I don't think many pundits predicted that]. As it turns out 'this season is looking a lot like the previous three.  With seven more games to play, the summit of my ambitions is to finish in the top half of the table.' He tells his sons that 'watching the Hoops bounce up and down th...

Leeds United generated record Championship revenues for the second year running in their 100-point 2024-25 promotion season, even as the club continued to make significant losses. Per their accounts for that campaign, Leeds booked £137million in turnover, breaking the previous record for the second-tier Championship they had set a year earlier. A 34 per cent increase in commercial revenue offset a reduction in Leeds’ Premier League parachute payment and, at £58.1m, the club’s commercial income was the ninth-highest in England — a hugely impressive feat for a club not in the top division. Leeds’ latest financials reflect their commercial appeal, referencing the potential that comes with being ‘the only club in the United Kingdom’s third biggest metropolitan area’, something which confers a ‘structural competitive advantage’. Booming commercial income was driven by a multi-year partnership with Red Bull, which generated double what Leeds had earned in their previous spell in the Pr...

Southampton's latest accounts are not as good news as their victory over Arsenal.   The 2024/25 accounts cover a season when they finished 20th in the Premier League. Revenue was up 86 per cent at £115m.   Wages were up 43 per cent at £116m.   Wages constituted 73 per cent of revenue, an acceptable ratio just above the recommended level of 70 per cent. The underlying loss was 29 per cent down at £62m.  This reduction was due in part to player sale profits of £29m. The pre-tax loss was £54m, compared with a profit of £17m in the the preceding season.

The Swiss Ramble provides a forensic analysis of the accounts of Nottingham Forest. Much more detail and analysis is available on his Substack page. Despite the improvement on the pitch, Forest swung from a £12m pre-tax profit to a £79m loss in 2024/25, which represented a £91m decline, largely due to a significant decrease in profit from player sales, which dropped from £101m to just £7m.   Forest’s £79m loss was one of the worst in the Premier League in 2024/25, only surpassed by Chelsea £262m, Tottenham £121m and West Ham £104m. More positively, revenue rose £32m (17%) from £190m to £222m, which was a big new club record, though this was largely offset by a steep increase in operating expenses, which were up £24m (9%) from £263m to £287m, while net interest payable was up £6m (38%) from £15m to £21m. The club has been hit by the double whammy of having to spend more on facilities to meet more stringent standards in the Premier League and the impact of rising inflation on ser...

Fees paid to agents by men’s teams in England’s top four divisions raced past the half-billion-pound barrier for the first time this season, according to data disclosed by the Football Association (FA) on Wednesday afternoon. Chelsea spent £65.1million on agent fees, topping the club list for the third season running under the ownership of BlueCo, a consortium led by Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly. In BlueCo’s other season at the helm, Chelsea were the second-highest spenders on agents. In 2025-26, Chelsea accounted for 12 per cent of the agent spend of the 92 clubs in the football league. In all, Chelsea have spent £272million on agent fees in four seasons under their current owners, significantly more than anyone else in that period bar Manchester City (£236.7m). The jump to the next highest spender in that time, Manchester United, at £152.6m, is significant. Indeed, only three other clubs have spent more than £100m on agents over the past four years: Liverpool, Arsenal and As...

At Aston Villa and Newcastle United, the internal restructuring of assets by club owners generated combined paper profits of £247million. At Everton, who still posted a loss, similar moves generated £49m. Strip those out and Premier League losses topped a billion pounds. In essence, the moving around of companies or assets within the wider group controlled by each club’s owners created accounting profits. Those profits improved the bottom lines of teams who would otherwise have each posted pre-tax deficits beyond £50million. On Tuesday, it was revealed Newcastle turned an otherwise record loss into a £34.7million profit by ‘selling’ their home stadium St James’ Park and adjacent land to a new company three days before the club’s accounting year-end date last June. The company was set up by Newcastle’s ownership group, headed by Saudi Arabia’s state Public Investment Fund (PIF). The latter point was seemingly enough to obscure, for some, what the actions of last June now mean: New...