To balance budgets, the Premier League clubs are based on the sale of their players, which is already worth a billion pounds. The growing costs and slowdown on the media rights market exposed permanent financial problems of the richest league in the world.
Financial reports 18 out of 20 clubs show a clear increase in total profits from competitors' transfers compared to the previous season. According to estimates, the total value of competitors' sales for the 2023/24 season may exceed £ 1 billion, compared to around 700 million pounds a year earlier. Despite this, the same clubs will incur another year in a row losses, mainly due to the growing operating costs and still high wages of players, as the data from reports show.
These data emphasize how difficult it is to club clubs in the richest league in the world, despite the fact that their revenues reach billions of pounds. Revenues – not counting those from the sale of players – increased to over 6.2 billion pounds for 19 clubs that published data. However, after taxing, the clubs recorded a total loss of 130 million pounds – according to Football Benchmark data. It is less than 713 million pounds loss a year earlier, mainly due to the increase in profits from transfers.
The Premier League clubs are reporting losses at a crucial moment for the entire discipline – in recent years huge investments from around the world have come to the league. The UK government plans to establish an independent regulator to ensure financial stability, and the league itself is preparing a new set of regulations for the same purpose. Leading activists of several clubs warn that the habit of excessive spending in football must end.
Nottingham Forest: From a powerful loss to unexpected profit
Tottenham Hotspur informed about the loss of 26 million pounds after he did not qualify for the Champions League, which affected lower revenues from prizes and transmission. PRezes Daniel Levy in a statement accompanying the club's financial results said: “I often read that we should spend more since we are the ninth richest club in the world. However, more accurate analysis shows that expenses must be balanced and adapted to our operational revenues. We cannot spend money we do not have.”
Nottingham Forest, which is owned by the Greek sailing magnate Evangelos Marinakis, recorded an operating loss of 73 million pounds, but thanks to the sale of players for over 100 million pounds he achieved a net profit of 12.1 million pounds. Aston Villa had a loss of 85.4 million pounds, compared to 119.6 million a year earlier.
Sale of pupils with a recipe for financial limits
Some clubs have only published the main financial indicators. Among them was Chelsea, a co -owner of which is the American company Private Equity Clearlake Capital – the club showed a profit of 128 million pounds. However, this result was supported by the sale of assets worth almost 200 million (including the Chelsea women's team) to the-Matt's company, and profits from footballers of 152 million pounds, suggesting that the actual operational losses were much greater.
Chelsea is one of the clubs that decided to sell young players to meet the Premier League rules on profit and sustainable development (Profit and Sustainability Rules), which penalize losses exceeding £ 105 million over three years. Income from the transfers of academy pupils can be posted as pure profit. Since the takeover of the club in 2022 for 2.5 billion pounds, American owners of Chelsea have spent over 1.6 billion euros on transfers – according to UEFA data.
City profits, United loss – two faces of Manchester
Several clubs have already presented their financial data, including the current England Champion Manchester City, who recorded 73 million pounds of profit thanks to 139 million pounds of income from transfers. His rival from behind, Manchester United, recorded on the US Stock Exchange, began restructuring after he showed a record loss of 113 million pounds last year.
The Premier League has attracted a wave of investment in recent years – more than half of the clubs today belong to American funds or wealthy private investors. However, the growing salaries of competitors, transfers and financing costs make it harder to make profits. The upcoming increase in social security contributions to employers is to further increase costs by tens of millions of pounds.
The league tries to curb excessive expenses. Last season, two clubs – Everton and Nottingham Forest – were punished by deducting points for exceeding the permitted losses, while Leicester City avoided sanctions by postponing the end of the financial year.
Premier League is preparing a financial revolution
The Premier League is currently considering switching to a new financial principle system, which instead of loss limits, would focus on the proportion of expenses in relation to revenues. So -called The Squad Cost Ratio, which reduces expenses for competitors to a specific percentage of income, would be modeled on the UEFA regulations from last year.
A separate proposal, the so -called Anchoring, would assume the connection of the expenses of the richest club with income from the weakest television rights. Both models were tested this year, but the clubs delayed their formal implementation at least for another year.
Broadcasts are not enough. Clubs are looking for new sources of income
The main source of club income is the sale of live matches. However, the media market for European football has recently been weakening – some leagues are extending contracts in worse conditions. The Premier League managed to get an increase of 4% in the next four -year cycle – but only by increasing the number of broadcast matches by 40%.
Therefore, the owners of several clubs turned to the revenues from the match day – the sale of premium tickets and services – as a growth motor. According to the “Financial Times” analysis, the Premier League clubs plan to increase the capacity of stadiums by over 100,000. places in the coming years.
Meanwhile, the importance of profits from transfers is growing – four English Ekstraklasa clubs (Chelsea, Manchester City, Brighton & Hove Albion and Nottingham Forest) have obtained over 100 million pounds each.
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