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Liverpool operate in the long term

 Liverpool’s return to the summit of the Premier League last season dovetailed with a return to profitability, and the club’s 2024-25 financials, publicly released last Thursday, unveiled the platform from which they launched last summer’s £400million transfer splurge.

The champions booked a £15.2million profit, their best financial result since the 2018-19 season and a first profitable year in three. Revenue shot up £89m and 15 per cent to £702.7m, easily a club record, making Liverpool only the second English side, after Manchester City, to top £700m in annual turnover.

At the top line, Liverpool’s revenue grew across all three income streams — matchday, broadcast and commercial — something only Arsenal could mirror last season among the Premier League’s ‘Big Six’. On a club-accounts basis, they were England’s highest-earning team last year, though Manchester City’s situation as part of the multi-club City Football Group (CFG) blurs matters. According to figures provided to and then disclosed by UEFA, European football’s governing body, City’s revenue in 2024-25 was £13m ahead of Liverpool’s.

The most pronounced leap came in Liverpool’s TV earnings, unsurprising given the way these are generally tethered to on-field performance. Winning the Premier League generated an extra £3.9million in prize money, but of far greater consequence was returning to the Champions League.

Liverpool’s UEFA prize money earnings jumped from £23million when in the 2023-24 Europa League to £82.5m and, per The Athletic’s estimations, they’ve already earned a smidgen more than that this season. Overturning a 1-0 last-16 first-leg deficit against Galatasaray of Turkey next week at Anfield would take Champions League takings to around £95m in 2025-26, close to their record UEFA haul of £101.7m, when they were finalists in the competition’s 2021-22 edition.

One area limiting profitability at Anfield was something now seen almost across the board: an increase in operating costs.Liverpool’s operating expenditure jumped £19million (11 per cent) last season, and at £185.6m sits near the top of the Premier League, having risen £53m in just three years.

Matters on the pitch may not be going as planned but off it, as we wrote a year ago, Liverpool have been run remarkably by FSG, particularly when up against some rivals for whom sustainability seems a foreign concept. Note how neither the Premier League’s nor UEFA’s financial rules make an appearance in any analysis. Liverpool been well clear of the troubles others have flirted with.

Missing out on the Champions League this spring would put a dent in that sustainability, but Liverpool, perhaps more than any of football’s ‘big’ clubs nowadays, don’t really operate in the short term.

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