Revenues in European club football continue to climb but are accompanied by warnings about the sport’s long-term financial health in a new report from consultancy firm Deloitte, released on Wednesday.
The latest Annual Review of Football Finance, now in its 35th iteration, covers finances on the continent in the 2024-25 season, when European football revenues topped €40billion (£33.6bn; $43.5bn) for the first time.
That represented 13 per cent growth on 2023-24, a rise attributed to expanded UEFA and FIFA competitions, principally the Champions League and the Club World Cup, but the report’s authors have cautioned that simply adding more games to football’s calendar is not sustainable.
Tim Bridge, lead partner in Deloitte’s Sports Business Group (SBG), said: “An increasingly saturated market may not be good for players or fans, particularly if it weakens the on-pitch spectacle. This approach, without a collective mindset from all rightsholders, risks prioritising short-term gain over long-term prosperity.”
Moreover, the report emphasises the need for a “shared plan for the future” to help European football retain its dominance as well as staving off competition from “other entertainment businesses”. Diversified business models will be required, not least as simply adding more games to broadcast packages is an unsustainable long-term strategy.
Bridge, in the report’s foreword, also notes a “critical juncture” regarding club stadiums and how revenues are extracted from matchgoing fans. Premier League matchday revenues topped £1bn for the first time in 2024-25, and grew across all of Europe’s ‘big five’ leagues, but clubs have come increasingly under fire for ticket price rises. Further afield, the inflated prices of tickets for this summer’s World Cup overshadowed much of the build-up to the tournament.
The warnings arrive even as Deloitte projects more revenue growth looms. The report details expected revenues across European football of €44.bn in 2025-26, then a further rise to €45.7bn in the upcoming 2026-27 season.
That growth is spearheaded by the Premier League, where 2024-25 revenues hit €8.1bn (£6.8bn) and are expected to surpass €8.5bn (£7.4bn) in 2025-26. Improved European performances alongside an uplifted TV deal put La Liga’s 2026-27 projected revenues at €4.5bn, the second-highest in Europe, but that is still 90 per cent below where England’s top tier is expected to land this season.
Football’s growing competitiveness worries
The Premier League’s financial dominance is nothing new and, speaking to The Athletic, Jennifer Haskel, SBG Knowledge and Insights Lead, outlined the need for “broad collective action” to ensure European football retains its competitiveness. While the Premier League’s success is worthy of acclaim, the figures in this report highlight the continuing dominance of English clubs.
That supremacy is, of course, a problem prevalent throughout football.
While the Premier League has opened up a gap to the rest, so too do the top leagues of Spain, Germany, Italy and France run away from everyone else. Collective 2024-25 revenues in those divisions were €13.5bn, or only three per cent below the combined revenues of every other division in Europe (€13.9bn).
The collective wage bills of the ‘big five’ divisions emphasise English dominance. Premier League clubs spent €5.2bn on wages in 2024-25, more than double the €2.5bn of the second-highest (La Liga). Such high wages naturally help English clubs attract the world’s best talent.
Clubs in La Liga, Bundesliga and Serie A actually managed to reduce wage costs as a proportion of revenue, but increases among English and French teams meant there was no overall improvement in that metric.
Matchday revenue was the only one of the three main income streams (broadcast and commercial being the others) that grew in each of Europe’s ‘big five’ divisions, aided by an increased number of fixtures in UEFA competition.
Yet the report clearly highlights the significance of what clubs choose to do next about stadiums and ticketing if they are to ensure those revenues hold up. Deloitte details the need for clubs to balance the recurring loyalty of lifelong fans, who provide the atmosphere which makes football so appealing, with the burgeoning appetite for live entertainment, particularly sport.
It will be, says the report, “a difficult equilibrium to find”, one which will differ by club and will involve “developing differentiated products”. Haskel reiterated the need for “balance” in clubs’ matchday offerings; clubs will need to improve takings from high-end consumers while at the same time retaining those fans who have gone, week in, week out, for many a year.
The issue of regulation
The report’s primary focus on top-line revenue figures is now customary, and while it risks shining insufficient light on the overall financial picture in a sport where almost every club loses money, that focus is reflective of the current regulatory environment. As the text notes, European football is experiencing an “ongoing shift towards revenue-linked spending regulation”; for three seasons, UEFA has operated a squad cost rule (SCR) which tethers spending limits to revenues, and Premier League clubs voted their own version through last November.
Such regulation of football’s finances is a key topic in the report, and Deloitte counsels against viewing the Independent Football Regulator, recently introduced in England, as a “silver bullet which absolves English football leagues and clubs of their responsibility to enhance and protect what are first and foremost cultural and community assets”.
Instead, says Haskel, football requires “fit-for-purpose” rules and an “adaptability of regulation”. Bridge also talks of the need for football’s strictures to “not only promote integrity and sustainability but to also drive value”. The message is that the sport, and the Premier League in particular, needs to find a way to regulate itself in a manner that ticks several boxes: protect community assets, improve club values, ensure transparency and clarity and improve bottom-line profitability.
High revenue does not equate to good financial health, and increased losses across the sport and particularly in England — the report references larger deficits in each of the Premier League, the three EFL divisions and the two Women’s Super League tiers — are noted. The Athletic has previously highlighted the worrying expansion in club deficits even as top-line figures grow.
For all football, and particularly in the English game, may appear in rude health at a glance, Deloitte’s report is shot through with cautionary notes and its belief the game’s clubs must employ a collaborative mindset in order to ensure continued prosperity.
Of noteworthy concern are disputes “which pit clubs against each other and are creating heightened uncertainty and distrust”, factors the authors view as “a barrier to the collaboration required to catalyse the next phase of growth”.
In the past two months, in England’s top two divisions alone, high-profile disputes between Middlesbrough and Southampton and Burnley and Everton — each of which possessed, in some way, money as a driver of discontent — have gobbled up headlines.
The report also references the ‘New Deal’ between Premier League and EFL clubs in England. A revised distribution of TV monies across the country’s highest tiers has been mired in stasis for years, with no sign of a breakthrough on the horizon.
On that matter, Deloitte make the two options clear: a future of fragmentation or one which preserves “the unique depth of quality and engagement that sets English football apart”. Further delays, they warn, will cause only “more collective damage … to the perception, value and strength of English football.”
