European top-flight football clubs lost more than €1bn last year despite record revenues of more than €30bn, according to new data that highlights the challenges facing the growing list of professional investors pouring billions of euros into the game.
Figures from governing body Uefa, which was released on Thursday at the FT Business of Football Summit, showed that combined revenue of clubs playing in top leagues across Europe was set to surpass €30bn, up from €28.6bn a year earlier. The projection is based on initial filings from more than 700 teams across the continent, although the biggest 25 clubs accounted for almost half the total.
Uefa cited increased income from sponsorship, player transfers and prize money for teams playing in pan-European competitions as the key drivers of growth, offsetting weakness in domestic media rights in some countries. However, as clubs look to boost alternative revenue sources, such as stadium hospitality and hosting non-football events, other costs have risen.
Operating expenses rose 35 per cent at Arsenal, 51 per cent at Chelsea and 19 per cent at FC Barcelona. Player wage inflation, typically a football club’s biggest expense, rose to 4.8 per cent last year, up from 1.8 per cent in 2024.
As a result of rising costs, Uefa expects aggregated pre-tax losses in 2025 to be around €1.1bn, matching the result from 2024. However, significant losses at a small number of clubs obscured the fact that almost two-thirds of early-reporting clubs made a profit in 2025. The Uefa figures showed that Chelsea FC, majority owned by US private equity firm Clearlake Capital, reported the biggest loss in Europe last year of €407mn. Olympique Lyonnais, also US owned, lost €196mn while Tottenham Hotspur lost €148mn.
Professional investors, including many US funds, have spent billions of euros buying European football clubs in recent years, in the hope of generating a return from owning the biggest teams in the world’s most popular sport. Apollo Global Management recently agreed to buy a controlling stake in Atlético Madrid, in a deal valuing the Spanish club at more than €2bn, Inter Milan is controlled by debt specialist hedge fund Oaktree Capital, while private equity firm RedBird owns AC Milan.
The report covers the second year under Uefa’s new financial rules, which limit club spending on players as a percentage of their revenue. The English Premier League is due to introduce a similar system next year. Andrea Traverso, Uefa’s director of financial sustainability and research, said that clubs were “gradually moving back to operating profitability”, but cautioned that “the lack of consistent domestic-level financial regulations” would limit scope for profits to match those enjoyed before the pandemic.
The report also showed that the number of takeovers in European football dropped for a third consecutive year, with 29 clubs changing hands compared with 28 in 2022. Instead, Uefa said, “private capital is more and more accessing football through minority stakes, structured equity and private credit, reflecting a separation between capital deployment and control”.
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