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 Premier League with then front-of-shirt sponsor
SBOTOP, alongside an extension of the club’s kit deal with Adidas.
Leeds’ matchday income last season of £31.6million was 150
per cent higher than before the pandemic, and topped matchday earnings at half
of the 20 Premier League clubs. No other Championship side’s figure came close
to theirs.
Yet even with top-line improvements, regaining Premier
League status came at a high cost. Leeds
lost a further £49.2million pre-tax last season, on the back of a £60.8m
deficit in their first year back down in the Championship. The club’s
pre-player-sales operating loss of £68.4m was an £8m improvement on 2023-24 but
is still the worst day-to-day deficit of any of the 20 Championship teams to
have released last season’s financials so far. It is the 10th-highest operating
loss in second-tier history.
The near-£50million pre-tax deficit took Leeds’ rolling
three-year loss figure — the starting point for profitability and
sustainability rule (PSR) calculations — to £143.7m, some way above the £61m
loss limit which applied to the club for the period spanning 2022-25.
Leeds’ wage bill last season, inclusive of those bonuses,
was £102.7million — only the third time a Championship club has spent nine
figures on salaries. Strip out £22m in non-cash provisions from Newcastle’s
2016-17 promotion season, and Leeds’ wage bill in 2024-25 was the
second-highest in the division’s history, only trailing Leicester City’s a year
prior (£107.2m) when they went up as champions.
Alongside the enormous wage bill, they retained a squad
which had cost far more to build than any other in the Championship. At the end
of June 2025, Leeds’ group of players had cost them £219.6million in fees, not
far shy of the figure at some Premier League clubs.
The benefits of ownership
The completion of a full takeover by 49ers Enterprises, the
investment arm of the San Francisco 49ers NFL team, in September 2023 has seen
its funding of the club ramp up dramatically. Last season, even with all that
income, ownership still provided £108million in capital funding. The cash
commitment during those two seasons back in the Championship totalled £255.1m,
a massive sum.
£12.6million went on infrastructure last season, including
upgrades and works at both Elland Road and the Thorp Arch training ground,
around the same sum as the previous three years combined. Championship clubs
generally don’t spend much on capital projects, as everything they have gets
directed toward the playing squad.
Another relegation would set back plans to turn them into a
club worth more than £1billion.
Survival would bring its own costs — the latest accounts
detail how retention of Premier League status this season could crystallise a
further £39.5million in bonuses for players and staff — but the rewards will be
deemed much greater. Leeds have gone from being the biggest fish in the
Championship pond to the lower end of the division above, a by-product of
spending only four of the past 22 seasons in English football’s top tier.
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