Last year, Chelsea entered into a hefty deal with two days of their 2023-24 accounting period remaining.
For £200million ($274m), Chelsea FC Holdings, the company which houses the club’s operations, sold Chelsea Football Club Women Limited (CFCW) to Blueco 22 Midco Limited, a fellow subsidiary of Blueco 22 Limited, the club’s parent company.
In doing so, Chelsea recorded £198.7m in profit in their 2023-24 accounts; the net assets of CFWC were just £1.3m, so anything above that value comprised profit for the club. As a result, Chelsea’s pre-tax result last year swung significantly into the black. The club recorded a £128.4m profit in 2024, a £218.5m improvement on the season before.
Fast forward a year, and where Chelsea led, Aston Villa followed.
With the clock ticking on their 2024-25 accounting period, Villa agreed to the sale of Aston Villa Women’s Football Club Limited (AVWFC) to V Sports, the club’s parent company, domiciled in Luxembourg. In doing so, they booked a profit on the transaction into their men’s team’s accounts.
The exact proceeds from Villa’s sale are unknown. Reports have put the figure at around £55m. AVWFC’s liabilities outweighed its assets at last check in June 2024. Based on the reported proceeds and AVWFC’s balance sheet a year ago, Villa would book £56.7m in profit on the sale, though the actual figure is likely to differ slightly.
A crucial difference between Villa and Chelsea lies in the presence of third parties: Villa have sold the women’s team to V Sports but, separately, a minority stake in the women’s team’s operations has been acquired by new investors from the U.S.
Chelsea’s deal a year ago was entirely internal, though the valuation was recently given support by Alexis Ohanian buying a stake in CFWC that valued the business even higher than the internal sales price, at around £245m.
So, how and why are teams doing this? Which team could be next? And what effect could this have on women’s football?
How are teams doing it?
Chelsea and Villa have been able to undertake these transactions by virtue of how their women’s teams fit into the wider legal structures surrounding each club.
CFCW sat beneath the Chelsea men’s team; selling CFCW to a related entity that sat above the men’s team business meant the latter could record the profit on the sale.
At Villa, the women’s team actually sat alongside Aston Villa FC Limited, which houses the men’s team. Villa’s group structure, as is increasingly the case in football these days, has multiple layers. Above both the men’s and women’s team entities sits Aston Villa Limited, incorporated way back in 1896 but now a holding company, and two levels above that sits NSWE UK Limited, the entity which reports the UK-based group numbers and, we believe, from which Villa’s PSR calculations are derived.
In another example of Villa boosting their bottom line through internal sales, Villa Park was sold to NSWE Stadium Limited in 2019 for £56.7m, a business which sits adjacent to Aston Villa Limited but below NSWE UK.
The precise destination of AVWFC isn’t yet known, only that a majority stake has been sold to V Sports. V Sports S.C.S. is a Luxembourg-based business that sits atop NSWE UK. As a result, NSWE UK, which is effectively just the whole of Villa’s operations under a different name, is able to record the profit on selling AVWFC to a company that sits above it.
And if all that hasn’t caused your eyes to glaze over completely, well done, pour yourself a drink.
What’s the benefit?
It depends on who you talk to. Or perhaps your level of cynicism.
Per Chelsea’s announcement last year, the “respositioning” of CFCW arose from “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to support the acceleration” in the growth of women’s football in England ahead of the formation of a new company to run the Women’s Super League (WSL) from 2024-25.
Missing from Chelsea’s statement then was any suggestion the move would have the additional benefit of boosting the bottom line — which of course it did.
The intra-group sale helped Chelsea out of a purported profit and sustainability (PSR) hole. Without the £198.7m profit on the deal, Chelsea would have lost £70.3m in 2023-24, and would have breached the Premier League’s financial rules.
Chelsea have won the past six WSL titles (Morgan Harlow – The FA/The FA via Getty Images)
The benefit from the sale isn’t restricted to a single year. Chelsea’s £128.4m pre-tax profit last year stays within their three-year PSR calculation up to the end of the 2025-26 season.
The same points broadly apply to Villa. Through selling the women’s team on June 30, the proceeds and profit can be booked into their 2024-25 figures.
Villa, as The Athletic detailed recently, were the Premier League club most at risk of a PSR breach this year; the sale of the women’s team ensured no such breach occurred. They’ll enjoy the positive impact of the transaction in each of the coming two seasons.
Upon news of the women’s team sale, Villa stated they had “no issues” with PSR compliance, though how true that was without this transaction is unclear.
The club can point to the introduction of new investors as a sign of growing interest in women’s football, as well as the operational points highlighted by Chelsea a year ago. But, just like the London club before them, it’s impossible to deny that the sale has enhanced profitability and improved Villa’s ability to remain within Premier League rules.
And that’s legal, right?
It’s both entirely legal and allowed under Premier League PSR.
By the time a club nears its financial period end date, the ability to quickly book income is limited. Sales of assets, be they players, infrastructure or women’s teams, offer one such recourse.
At a recent Premier League meeting, a motion was tabled to restrict clubs from recording intra-group asset sales within their PSR calculations. Had the motion passed, the only profit Villa could have booked on their deal would have been the element arising from the minority holding sold to new investors.
Support for the motion was so thin that the matter didn’t even make it to a formal vote. Premier League rules require related party transactions to be subject to a fair market value assessment but, given the presence of external investors in AVWFC, that should not be a problem. Their arrival provides a steer on where the market values the asset.
It’s a different story overseas, where UEFA’s stricter financial rules expressly seek to deter clubs from intra-group asset sales. As a result, Chelsea’s sale of the women’s team was excluded from their 2023-24 figures submitted to UEFA. The same will be the case for Villa in 2024-25.
(Molly Darlington/Copa/Getty Images)
Can everyone do it?
Of the 18 Premier League clubs who have not sold their women’s teams to themselves, 14 could feasibly do so within their current legal structures.
At those clubs, the legal entity of the affiliated women’s team sits either beneath the entity that has long housed the wider football club, or alongside the latter but beneath the entity the club files its group accounts — and its PSR calculations — through.
Two of those clubs have been active on Companies House recently.
On June 19, Bournemouth’s parent company, Black Knight Football Club UK Limited, set up ‘AFC Bournemouth Women Limited’, registered to the club’s Vitality Stadium address. Bournemouth’s women’s team currently operates under the broader club structure, so this setting up of a new legal entity gives Bournemouth scope to change how the women’s team is managed.
The new entity has been set up alongside AFC Bournemouth Limited, rather than beneath it. On the face of it, that limits the scope for booking any profit on a women’s team sale, and The Athletic understands there are no current plans to explore such a sale anyway.
On May 29, an ‘EFCW Holding Company Limited’ was registered at Goodison Park, Everton men’s former home and, from next season, their women’s team’s venue. EFCW is wholly owned by Roundhouse Capital Holdings Limited, the UK-based holding company through which The Friedkin Group completed its purchase of Everton last December.
Everton’s women’s team is operated out of an entity that sits below the men’s team; feasibly, the women’s team could be sold to EFCW with relative ease. Other than activity on Companies House, there’s no suggestion that such an internal sale is being readied.
The Athletic understands that the potential for investment in Everton’s women’s team, like at other clubs, has been explored. Moving the women’s team into a standalone entity registered at Goodison Park would, in theory, make it easier to keep their operations separate from the men’s.
Everton beat Liverpool at Goodison in November (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
One caveat among the 14 is Burnley: Burnley FC Women Limited sits below the wider football club entity but is dormant, so the women’s team operations are currently housed within the wider club. There is, of course, little to stop them from carving it out in the future.
At three other Premier League clubs — Brentford, Fulham and Wolves — no separate legal entity exists for their respective women’s teams. Again, these could be created, but for those clubs to sell off the women’s team would require an extra layer of activity compared to the rest.
The only place, other than perhaps Bournemouth, where there looks to be a clear barrier to replicating Chelsea and Villa’s tactic is at Manchester City. Their women’s team sits apart from the men’s legal entity. So while they’re both within the same wider group, the club wouldn’t be able to record any proceeds from a sale of the women’s team within the men’s team’s accounts.
Separate from the clubs’ various group structures is the point that not all women’s teams are at the same level, either on or off the pitch. Of those 18 clubs yet to sell their teams internally, only 10 will have an affiliated women’s side in the WSL this coming season. Those clubs with teams outside of the WSL would find it more difficult to justify punch valuations if they opted to go down that route.
What are people saying about it?
The immediate reaction has tended to be cynical, not helped by the timing. Yet that’s not a universal view.
Maggie Murphy, former chief executive officer of Lewes FC, the first club to pay male and female players the same, told The Athletic it’s the substance that follows the sales which will determine whether or not this is a mere PSR swerve or something likely to help the women’s game.
“The are some key ingredients you need, regardless of the (legal) structure,” Murphy said. “Authority, autonomy, and accountability. There are still far too many women’s teams that have very limited levels of authority within a club structure.
“Even if they do have commercial leads for the women’s side, they don’t always have autonomy to strike a deal, because they are just housed within a larger department. And there’s also accountability, and that depends on how much the senior execs in the club actually care about the women’s team.”
If those three ingredients arise from these sales, Murphy contends, the impact on women’s football will be positive. “If an internal sale creates those conditions, then I actually think it’s a positive for the women’s side.”
Christina Philippou, an Associate Professor in Accounting and Sport Finance at the University of Portsmouth, concurred on the nuances.
“There are cynical aspects to these moves, and then there are more standard business aspects,” Philippou told The Athletic.
“There’s the move being done for PSR and general regulations. On the business-related side, they’re restructuring their women’s teams to be under the holding company rather than the men’s team, which makes sense with the increased commercialism of women’s football, and how quickly it’s growing.”
What will the impact be on women’s football?
It’s easy to see these moves as profit grabs, and there’s the risk these deals come with none of the “key ingredients” Murphy mentioned. But even if PSR considerations are primary in clubs’ thoughts, it doesn’t mean there won’t be wider positives.
One key improvement which could stem from these deals would have a sizeable impact on the ability of women’s teams to become viable businesses in their own right: owning infrastructure. “If a women’s team owns (its own ground), it means you’ve completely ramped up their ability to generate revenue,” says Murphy.
The point is an important one. With Everton Women set to move into Goodison Park, there’s scope for the women’s team to utilise a significant asset. It’s easy, in that respect, to see why a club might be keen to separate women’s team operations, regardless of whether there’s an ancillary boost to PSR calculations.
As Philippou says: “There’s a whole different demographic out there. We are seeing it with things like Sunderland’s deal with Nuby (a baby brand), for example. Manchester City recently partnered with a ‘period pants’ brand (snuggs). These are businesses that would not be interested in men’s football.”
Will these changes prove transformative to how women’s teams are run? Or just serve as a quick fix to a wider problem? Time will tell.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
