The Political Economy of Football V2

Football success requires good accountants Chelsea appear to have complied with PSR rules by selling their women's team to themselves, turning a loss of £90m into a profit of £128m:  https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/mar/31/premier-league-psr-chelsea-sell-women-team-loophole

Everton had reported losses for the seventh season in succession at £53m, albeit an improvement on the previous year's £89 million.   The club should meet PSR rules and looks forward to the revenue boost that should follow the move to Bramley Dock:  https://www.straitstimes.com/sport/football/everton-report-seventh-straight-year-of-financial-losses

Relegation threatened Carlisle United have turned losses into profit with a big increase in revenue:  https://www.carlisleunited.co.uk/news/audited-annual-accounts-202324

Nottingham Forest’s   owner put in £98m in 23/24 after £87m in 22/23. Loans now mainly converted into shares which do not have to be repaid, reports football finance guru Kieran Maguire. Revenue was £190m up 22%.   Wages £166m up 15 per cent.   Underlying loss £73m up 20%.   Player sale profits £101m up 3,746%.    Pre-tax profit £12m (loss £69m 2023).     Player purchases £140m up 18%. Player sales £128m.   Transfer fee receivables £114m.   Transfer fee payables £184m.

Sheffield Wednesday players have not been paid for March due to a 'temporary cashflow' issue faced by the club's controversial owner:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c24q31yl0lvo

Football finance guru Kieran Maguire reports that Spurs have  published their 23/24 accounts.    Revenue £528m was down 4%.   Wages £222m down 12%.   Wages £42 for every £100 income down £4. Underlying loss (pre player sales) was £59m up 7%.  Player sale profits £82m up 431%.   Pre-tax loss £29m was down 70%.  Player purchases £272m.   Gross squad cost £697m. Player sale receivables £58m.  Player purchase payables £441m.  Borrowings £872m (new stadium). Daniel Levy says that spending has to be 'smart and sustainable':  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cz6dwwzn7vdo "We cannot spend what we do not have, and we will not compromise the financial stability of this club," Levy said. Official club statement here:  https://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/2025/march/financial-results-year-ended-30-june-2024/

Football finance guru Kieran Maguire reports  that  Stockport County lost over £7 million in 23/24. Losses were underwritten by owner Mark Stott putting in £11m in the form of new shares. County spent over £640k on player signings. Total losses over the years now exceed £21 million. Port Vale lost £3.8m in 2023/24. Club does have cash in bank, mainly due to owners lending almost £6.5 million in year to take total loans to just under £15 million. Player purchases were £131k.

This season is the fourth in a row for West Brom in the Championship, which is the their longest unbroken period out of England’s top flight for more than 20 years, but there is still an air of quiet positivity around The Hawthorns. This could be attributed to the change in ownership, as Bilkul Football WBA, a company ultimately owned by Florida-based entrepreneur Shilen Patel and his father Dr Kiran C. Patel, acquired an 87.8% shareholding in West Bromwich Albion Group Limited, the parent company of West Bromwich Albion Football Club, in February 2024.   The remaining 12.2% is owned by minority shareholders, many of whom are represented by Shareholders 4 Albion (S4A). West Brom had effectively been in decline ever since the club was sold in August 2016 to a Chinese consortium, which bought out former owner Jeremy Peace’s stake. Controlling shareholder Guochuan Lai’s ownership turned out to be fairly disastrous for the club, culminating in numerous financial issues following ye...

A murky winter's day at Reading's old Elm Park ground.   The club's future is darker now. The EFL’s disqualification of Reading’s deeply unpopular owner, Dai Yongge, has triggered a deadline: he must sell the club by April 5 or risk leaving their fate in the hands of the league. If he fails to show sufficient progress toward a sale, the EFL could declare Reading unable to fulfil their fixtures — expelling them from the league and plunging League One into chaos. A deal is believed to be on the table, with the American investor Robert Platek in an exclusivity period. Platek is also the present owner of the Portuguese side Casa Pia. But Reading fans have been here before — Platek is the fifth prospective buyer to enter exclusivity since Yongge put the club up for sale more than 500 days ago. Speaking before Saturday’s match, the football finance guru Kieran Maguire outlined the stark reality. Yongge was disqualified after failing to pay debts in China, making him an “unr...

Fulham lost almost £1.4m a week in 23/24 reports football finance guru Kieran Maguire. Losses mitigated by player sale profits and a £4m Research and Development tax credit.  These reduced losses to a before tax figure of 'just' £32m Revenue £182m was up 0.4%. Wages £155m up 11%.   Underlying loss £69m up 98%.   Player sale profits £33m 275%.   Pre-tax loss £32m 24%.   Player signings £88m up 3%.   Player sales £44m. Borrowings in year were £123m. Total invested by Shahid Khan £863m Almost 3/4 of Fulham's revenue comes from TV. Club is mid table in terms of PL revenue but still nine clubs to report for 23/24.

Football finance guru Kieran Maguire reports that the successful FA Cup run by Maidstone United to the fifth round in 23/24 meant that club made revenues of £2.7 million and a profit of£400k, allowing the club to invest in a 3G pitch Briefly a Premier League club, Oldham Athletic lost almost £3.2 million in 23/24. Losses were effectively covered by borrowing, with liabilities increasing to £10 million and owner Frank Rothwell lending over £7.1 million. Oldham bought players for £110k in the season.

Globalisation may be disappearing in other spheres of economic activity as protectionist barries are raised, but the spread of the multi-club model suggests that it is alive and well in football (soccer).  Liverpool are the latest club to jump on board. Ever since the appointment of Michael Edwards as chief executive of football at Fenway Sports Group (FSG) in March 2024, it has been clear the multi-club ownership model is coming to Anfield.   Edwards, Liverpool’s former sporting director, returned to the FSG fold with the belief that the club has little choice but to expand if it is to “remain competitive” in the Premier League and beyond. The key to that is an ambitious plan to invest in a partner club. FSG’s multi-club plans mean falling in line with the Premier League crowd, effectively. Well over half of the 20 teams in the English top flight now have relationships with at least one other European club and the pattern has been extended in the past two years. Liver...

Fifa has finally answered one of the key questions around the upcoming relaunch of the Club World Cup — how much it pays. On Wednesday the competition organiser revealed its prize money schedule, with payments based both on turning up and actually winning matches.  Considering the rates were negotiated with the European Club Association, it’s perhaps little surprise that the bulk of the purse is heading to the top European clubs. Some are promised $38.5mn before a ball has even been kicked, with potential earnings for winning the tournament of $125mn when ends on July 13. Fifa has made a lot of noise about the Club World Cup being a chance to spread some of football’s wealth beyond Uefa’s sphere of influence. The month-long competition will feature 32 teams from around the globe who qualified largely based on performance in regional tournaments. Yet the financial impact will be felt differently depending on where a team hails from.   Assuming — perhaps unfairly — that Au...

US vice-president J D Vance is visiting Greenland today, but he will not be watching a dog sled race or meeting any inhabitants.   They have made it clear that they don't want their ice bound island annexed by the United States. Greenland have been trying since well before Trump’s proposed land grab to take part in internationals, making noises about becoming a recognised team since the 1990s. As a territory of Denmark (also true of the Faroe Islands), logic would suggest the confederation they would look towards is UEFA, but as even the most amateur cartographers will tell you, there is a geography issue there. Playing UEFA countries would involve a lot of long — and very expensive — journeys, probably all to get battered in every game they played. In any case, the door to Europe was probably closed. These things can be flexible, but under UEFA’s statutes as they are currently written, they almost certainly would not be admitted as they are not enough of an independent stat...

American owner Kevin Nagle has invested £40m in Huddersfiekl Town since he took the club over, but faces losses of £15m-£20m this year.   Ticket price increases have not gone down well with fans and the club has made some concessions:  https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/sport/football/news/huddersfield-town-dealt-20m-financial-31292075

Where is the £2bn Manchester United needs to raise in order to replace its historic but decrepit 74,000-seater Old Trafford ground, to the west of Manchester city centre 9(n Salford) going to come from?. In Cannes, at the international property trade show, United’s chief operating officer Collette Roche insisted there had been significant interest in investing in the new stadium. “We’re having lots of conversations around where we can get different revenue streams from, really positive conversations . . . we believe it does stack up,” she told the Financial Times .  Andy Green, finance spokesman at Manchester United Supporters Trust and head of investment at private equity firm Rockpool Investments, welcomed the proposal, but said financing is where it “gets really complicated”. “They’ve got £731mn of debt, plus £291mn owed to other clubs,” he said of United. “That’s secured on absolutely everything, so they can only borrow more by refinancing what they’ve got.”    ...

Wrexham's latest accounts show that revenue has surged to just under £27 million, an increase of 155 per cent.  The club still lost £2.7m, but that represented a halving of the previous year's figure.  Loans of £15m by the original owners have been repaid with new minority owners:  https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/wrexham-ryan-reynolds-rob-mcelhenney-31286635

I get a bit irritated by clubs being described as 'big' or even 'massive' because there are no agreed criteria to measure club size.  Most fans tend to think that their clubs are bigger than they actually are, so 'big' clubs seem to be in profusion in League One or at least are classified as 'sleeping giants'. Credit to BBC Sport, they have asked 250 of their staff to look at a range of criteria:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c337xrmr5keo No prizes for guessing which club come ou top.

Atlético’s 2023/24 accounts covered a season when they finished fourth in La Liga, their worst position for 12 years, though they did reach the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey, where they were beaten by Athletic Bilbao, and the quarter-finals of the Champions League, where they were eliminated by eventual finalists Borussia Dortmund. It’s fair to say that the club has performed well in the 12 years since Diego Simeone became head coach in December 2011. Atléti have won the league twice during the Argentinian’s tenure, most recently in 2020/21, while finishing runner-up on two other occasions. In fact, Atlético are the only club that has managed to break up the duopoly of Real Madrid and Barcelona in this period, which is pretty impressive, given the enormous financial advantages enjoyed by Spain’s Big two.    Atlético are stuck in a slightly awkward “inbetweener” position in Spain, as their €395m revenue is miles below the two Spanish giants, Real Madrid €1.1 bln and Barce...

There has been a lot of debate in recent weeks about stadiums with Manchester United unveiling their ambitious and as yet unfunded plans, Chelsea’s board divided about Stamford Bridge, and Everton starting to move into Bramley Dock. Stadiums are an expensive capital asset that cost money to maintain and are used for football at best an average of every 10 days.   The new Tottenham Hotspur stadium is designed to maximise use for purposes other than football.    Some continental clubs have built their stadiums so that there are shops and other commercial premises around the ground floor. I don’t want to start choosing the most iconic stadium I have visited, but Anfield is up there. Anfield has been transformed since Fenway Sports Group (FSG) bought Liverpool in 2010. Where houses were once tucked tightly up to all sections of the ground, now there are wide walkways on either side of the newly-built Anfield Road Stand (which opened in 2023) and Main Stand (expanded i...

Football finance guru Kieran Maguire reports the highlights on Bournemouth’s 2023/24 accounts. Revenue was £170m up 19%. Wages £136m up 36%.   Underlying loss was £55m up 155%. Player sale profits just £0.3m.   Pre tax loss £66m. Player purchases £141m. Player sales £2m. Total cost of squad £382m. Original cost of players sold £37m. Borrowings £123m.

Todd Boehly has suggested that divisions among Chelsea’s owners on the future of Stamford Bridge could lead to them splitting. Boehly has an uneasy relationship with Clearlake Capital, the club’s majority shareholder, with it emerging last September that both sides have explored the possibility of buying each other out. The Times understands that Clearlake, jointly owned by Behdad Eghbali and José Feliciano, has no intention of selling its 61.5 per cent stake in the club. Reports earlier this season suggested Boehly and Clearlake did not agree over the best way forward for a new stadium — whether to redevelop Stamford Bridge or move to new site at nearby Earls Court. The US billionaire, who holds a 12.8 per cent stake in Chelsea — the same as allies Mark Walter and Hansjorg Wyss — has now confirmed as much in an interview with Bloomberg. Boehly hinted that the plan is to build a multisport stadium, similar to Tottenham Hotspur’s, which hosts NFL, rugby, boxing and m...

Victoria Park Guernsey FC are facing a relegation battle from the Isthmian League, but they have been able to move into their own purpose built stadium.  The Footes Lane ground was shared with rugby and athletics which affected the condition of the pitch. They will also be able to play and train on the same pitch at Victoria Park and generate their own revenue. The Green Lions have been playing for 12 years. Many of their original players have now aged and they are more reliant on younger players.  They have to subsidise the travel costs of visiting teams. Their model of playing in the non-league pyramid has been adopted by the Jersey Bulls and an Isle of Man team.  Newport (Isle of Wight) are a long established side but are now ground sharing at East Cowes as their ground is redeveloped. Much interest in the Channel Islands focuses on the Murrati Shield and Jersey beat Alderney 2-0 last week at the Arsenal Stadium.   Only two of the Alderney players came from t...

Inverness Caledonian Thistle are in administration and their prospects don't look good:  https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/sport/football/inverness-caledonian-thistle/6719346/paul-third-actions-will-speak-louder-than-words-at-caley-thistle/ Their fate is of some personal interest, as I am directly descended on the male line from local people. Unfortunately, I don't have the funds to bail them out, although I would certainly respond to an appeal. One view is that they should move away from their splendid stadium which is too expensive to run:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgr2p4nnl12o Another view is that many fans never accepted the controversial merger in 1994 of two former clubs, Caledonian and Thistle.  Mergers are rare in football and have sometimes been blocked, e.g., Robert Maxwell's plan to merge Oxford United and Reading as Thames Valley Royals.

Watford launched a digital equity share scheme hoping to raise as much as £17.5 nillion.  3,125 fans committed to the scheme which was intended to recruit top players and coaching staff.   Given an average home attendance of 19,353 this season, this amounts to a participation rate of 16 per cent which is actually probably reasonably good. Club owner Gino Pizzo was hoping for high end investors, but they didn't turn up.  The one with the money want to own their own football clubs, not somebody else's - and there are limits to how much funding the average fan can provide.

Sunderland’s 2023/24 accounts cover their second season back in the Championship, when the club said that it “did not see an improvement in league position from the previous season”.   That’s an interesting way of putting it, given that they dropped to 16th place, compared to finishing 6th the year before, when they got to the play-offs, before losing to Luton Town in the semi-finals. One obvious reason for Sunderland’s slump last season was the numerous changes in manager, starting with the sacking of the popular Tony Mowbray in December 2023, when the club was sitting pretty in ninth place. The last time that Sunderland posted a profit was way back in 2005/06 – and they ended up being relegated from the Premier League that season. Since then, they have reported losses 18 years in a row, adding up to £281m.   More positively, the club has drastically reduced the size of its annual losses, averaging £7m in the last five years, compared to £20m in the preceding decade. Ky...

Today’s Subbuteo comes complete with accountants and, in the case of Manchester City, first rate lawyers.   Clubs need to be assessed off the pitch as well as on it which I have been doing since the mid-1990s – but now there are better informed minds at work in the form of the Swiss Ramble, Kieran Maguire and the new football business correspondent at The Athletic. Despite the sizeable flak FSG get for not doing a City and going on a trolley dash each transfer window, it is evident that they've been good custodians of the club.    The club has been run at a profit, nowhere near the PSR limit, they have expanded the historic stadium and undertaken investment into the playing squad at the right time. Winning the revamped Champions League would have banked Liverpool €52.5million (£44m; $57m) more than they will now receive, not to mention a further €5m had they gone on to win the European Super Cup. They still earned an estimated €100m, underlining just how lucrativ...

Reading fans fear for the future of their club.  Unpopular owner Dai Yongge was actually disqualified in February, but the disqualification was only disclosed in court today as the EFL did not wish to discourage slow moving sale proceedings.  The owner has until April 5th to divest himself of the club or it may be thrown out of the EFL:  https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/mar/21/reading-dai-yongge-thrown-out-efl-sell-club

It looks very likely that the three teams promoted from the Championship last season will be relegated from the Premier League. What is clear is that the number of points required to finish above the dotted line has been trending downwards for a decade, as have the cumulative points haul of the three relegated sides. It now requires mismanagement on a pretty epic scale for an established Premier League club to be relegated. Seventeenth-placed Wolves are averaging less than a point per game but could feasibly fail to win another point and stay up with 26 points, which is what 18th-place Luton finished on last season. When Charlton were in the top flight the survival target was 40 points. Usually, however, they are putting up a better fight than this. The nine-point gap between 18th-placed Ipswich and Wolves in 17th is also the biggest gap at this stage in the Premier League era, and by some distance: only once has the deficit been more than three points. Yet even huge investment...

The cost of the move to the Emirates held Arsenal back on the pitch for several seasons, although it was essential for long term growth.   Now the financial picture is brighter and the focus can be on winning trophies rather than finishing a creditable second in the Premier League. In the past two seasons, Arsenal under Arteta have significantly over-performed their wage bill. In 2022-23, they finished as runners-up with only the Premier League’s sixth-highest staff costs. Last year, they were second again with the fifth-highest. That’s only a partial telling of the achievement too.   Consider that in each of those seasons, Arteta’s men provided the sole meaningful challenge to Manchester City’s domestic dominance and did so, particularly in that first year, with a wage bill that was hardly in the same ballpark as the champions’. In that treble-winning season for City, their wage bill was £188million ahead of Arsenal’s. That gap narrowed significantly last season, both ...

In contrast to the relatively poor form on the pitch last season, Bayern’s finances remain rock solid, as can be seen by looking at their 2023/24 accounts.  Bayern’s pre-tax profit increased from €54.5m to €62.7m, as recurring revenue rose €21m (3%) from €744m to €765m and profit from player sales slightly improved from €104m to €106m. Both of these established new club records. This was partially offset by growth in operating expenses, which climbed €21m (3%) from €795m to €816m. Profit after tax was also up, rising from €35.7m to €43.7m, which was the second best result in Bayern’s history. The club justifiably described this as “an extremely pleasing result”. All three revenue streams were up, led by match day, which rose €10m (9%) from €121m to €131m, though there was also decent growth in broadcasting, which increased €9m (4%) from €204m to €213m. Commercial was only slightly higher, rising €2m (1%) from €419m to €421m, though this remains the most important revenue stre...

Being in the Champions League is an increasing differentiator between clubs, but those clubs who have been leading ones for some time earn more.   The Uefa coefficient is less of a factor that when Arsene Wenger liked to parade it around Islington, but Arsenal still stand to do well. Arsenal’s prize money and bonuses from the Champions League this season will top £100million should they overcome Real Madrid in the quarter-finals as the club seek to benefit from Uefa’s new distribution model. As well as changing the format of its elite club competition, Uefa has changed its revenue distribution system so that there are more financial rewards for performance during the season, rather than for historical success. It also shows why, financially at least, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur should make winning the Europa League and qualifying for next season’s Champions League their priority. The pot of money for the Champions League has rise...

Sincere congratulations to Newcastle and their devoted fans on ending their trophy drought. There has been a shift in tone at Newcastle over the past month; more bullish, more determined, more aspirational. One trophy was never the plan; domestic and European domination was the original goal — and that target is back on the agenda. It is no coincidence that this followed a delegation from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Newcastle’s majority owners, visiting Tyneside last month. Departmental and infrastructure-project presentations were made to Yasir Al-Rumayyan, PIF’s governor and Newcastle’s chairman, who reaffirmed the wealth fund’s commitment to turning the club into serial trophy winners and Champions League participants by the end of the decade. Making Newcastle a “sustainable top-six club” was the soundbite from club executives throughout 2024. So far this calendar year, the noises have become bolder; more reminiscent of Al-Rumayyan’s declaration on Amazon Prim...

Manchester United fans have branded a 5 per cent increase in season-ticket prices as “offensive” and claimed that the Glazer family should be dipping into their own pockets to help ease the club’s financial problems instead. A week after Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the Ineos chairman and United co-owner, said that the club would have run out of money this year if he had not injected £230million, they announced a season-ticket hike of 5 per cent for the third consecutive season. For the 2025-26 campaign, an adult season ticket at Old Trafford will cost from £608 to £1,121. United said that season-ticket holders would pay on average £2.50 more per game. Prices for under-16s have been frozen but the club have slashed OAP discounts from 50 per cent to 25 per cent and for the first time, games for non-season-ticket holders will be categorised, with bigger matches against rivals and neighbours costing more. Before last year, United had frozen season-ticket prices for 11 consecutive season...