Real Madrid file interim financials each year, and while they were again profitable in the opening half of this season, their surplus drooped notably. In the six months to the end of December 2024, Madrid made a pre-tax profit of €38.3m. A year on, the figure was just €6.1m, an 84 per cent fall.
The heightened wage bill was a key driver in that, with most of the increase attributable to football staff and, within them, to first-team players. Personnel costs there rose by €26.5m, as the impact of several new signings — Dean Huijsen, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Alvaro Carreras and Franco Mastantuono — was felt. Captain Dani Carvajal’s new contract, signed in October 2024, also had a bearing; six months of any extra cost incurred by that new deal will have been recorded in the latest figures, as opposed to just three months in those from a year ago.
Wages in the club’s basketball team jumped too, up €7.8m to €25.1m, but that still meant Madrid’s football-related wage bill for the six-month period was €252.5m. That sum is higher than the annual wage bill of every La Liga club other than Barcelona and Atletico Madrid.
Salary costs weren’t the only thing squeezing Madrid’s profitability. Revenue dropped €18.5m compared to a year earlier, though at €571.3m they still earned more in six months than most clubs can dream of. Across the full 2024-25 season, only nine clubs in world football exceeded what Madrid turn over in half a season.
A €26.5m fall in marketing revenue drove the top-line decline, and the drop-off would have been even worse if not for the Club World Cup Madrid reached the semi-finals of in July, which earned them €29.2m in prize money.
Elsewhere, income at the improved Bernabeu largely held up, even as concerts remain on hold due to an ongoing spat with locals over noise levels. Increased earnings from stadium tours and the Real Madrid Experience ensured facilities income at the club’s home stadium totalled €43m, a small (€1m) drop on a year prior.
Rising wages and declining revenues mean tighter margins, and Madrid’s wages as a proportion of revenue were up to 49 per cent, an eight per cent rise on a year ago and higher than their full-year figure in each of the past two seasons.
That remains a healthy number at a football club but costs are on the rise elsewhere at Madrid too. The signings of Carreras and Mastantuono, alongside other costs related to player registrations (presumed to be ongoing agent fees) saw Madrid spend €142.8m on transfer and related fees in the second half of 2025, a figure which doesn’t include the sums spent on Huijsen and Alexander-Arnold, who arrived in June.
By the standards of many in football, Madrid and Perez have little to worry about, though there are signs from these interim financials of yet more careful cash management. Madrid’s cash balance at the end of December was just €3.5m, a remarkably low amount given the size of the club’s income.
The low balance is driven in part by significant payments made in December. Highest-paid staff (i.e. first-team players) are only paid twice per year, once in July, once in December. Yet Madrid’s cash burn was also significant elsewhere: in the second half of 2025, a net €89m went toward transfer fees and a further €72.5m was paid out on infrastructure works, covering ongoing works at the Bernabeu and investments at Sports City.
To help pay for it all, the club took out further lending, adding to a debt pile already well above €1billion at the end of last June. Madrid borrowed a further €55.5m in net cash in the first six months of this season. Their financial debt at the end of 2025 sat at €1.336bn. Cash interest payments in the six months totalled €43.8m, up €4m from 2024-25.
Underlining the need to manage their cash position with care, Madrid have previously acknowledged their working capital position — current assets less current liabilities — is “structurally negative”. That only became more true in the opening half of 2025-26: working capital fell from minus €357m as of June 2025 to minus €406m at the end of December.
Madrid continue to cite the completion of works at the Bernabeu as key to club finances, and the attendant extra revenue that will bring. In the meantime, the debt can and may grow further. The club has in place credit lines totalling €475m, of which only €99m had been drawn down at the end of last year. That leaves €376m to call upon, should they need it.
Comments
Post a Comment