Down the table: European football has made billions in losses
European football clubs continue to operate in the red. According to the latest UEFA report, the total losses of professional European football before taxes have again exceeded one billion euros, just a little less than a year ago. This is happening despite the large—scale efforts of club managers trying to find new ways to generate income, as expenses are still growing at least at the same pace. Izvestia has studied how the European football industry plans to overcome the impending crisis.
Record revenue, huge losses
By the end of 2025, the revenue of clubs in Europe amounted to a record €30 billion — 1.4 billion more than a year earlier. Half of the amount went to the 25 largest clubs, reflecting the enormous inequality within the continental football "family". An increase in revenue from sponsorship, player transfers and prize payments to teams participating in European competitions offset a drop in revenue from the sale of media channels in domestic markets.
However, the increase in expenses was no less impressive. As a result, the loss of all the teams combined before taxes amounted to 1.1 billion euros, just 100 million less than a year earlier. Most European leagues recorded net losses before taxes. It is characteristic that in the richest championship, the English Premier League (Premier League), the losses were the largest, amounting to €641 billion, and 15 of the 20 Premier League clubs turned out to be unprofitable in 2025. Teams from Italy, Germany and France turned out to be in the red, but the German Bundesliga, known for its strict financial rules, was able to demonstrate a profit of €219 million.
Other costs have also increased as clubs try to increase alternative sources of income, such as VIP services at stadiums and non-football events. Arsenal's operating expenses increased by 35%, Chelsea's by 51% and Barcelona's by 19%. The growth in salaries of football players, traditionally the largest expense item of the club, accelerated to 4.8% last year, compared with 1.8% in 2024.
So far, many cases of participation of representatives of large financial capital in European football clubs have ended in failure. UEFA data showed that Chelsea in London, which is majority owned by the American investment company Clearlake Capital, reported the largest loss in Europe last year in the amount of €407 million. French Lyon, also owned by the Americans, lost €196 million, while Tottenham lost 148 million. In fact, these three organizations accounted for two thirds of all losses incurred by Europeans.
Professional investors, including many American funds, have spent billions of euros in recent years buying European soccer clubs in the hope of profiting from owning the largest teams in the world's most popular sport. For example, Apollo Global Management recently agreed to acquire a controlling stake in Atletico Madrid in a deal that values the Spanish club at more than €2 billion. Inter Milan is controlled by Oaktree Capital, a hedge fund specializing in debt obligations, while RedBird investment company owns Milan.
It is worth noting that the new UEFA financial rules have been in effect for the second year, which limit clubs' spending on players as a percentage of their revenue. They don't apply to all championships yet. So, the submarine should introduce a similar system only next year.
In general, the reasons for the weak performance are obvious. In the key domestic markets of Europe, the value of television contracts (a key source of club income) is stagnating in real terms, and in some leagues (for example, in France and Italy) there is a drop even in nominal figures. Broadcasters have reached the limit of monetization of the traditional viewer. In recent decades, he's been getting more and more football, but he's also had to pay more and more for it.
How to squeeze even more out of a client
Professional investors, mainly American private equity funds and hedge funds that have poured billions into the market, are obviously unhappy with the situation and want football to transform from a "patron's sport" into a more pragmatic entertainment industry, following the example of North America. But here they face many obstacles. The first and most important of them is competition with super—rich owners who spare no money and are able to circumvent the rules of "financial fair play" in one way or another (PSG, Manchester City and others). To even out the odds, you have to be creative, and there are certain unrealized prospects here.
One of them is the Stadium 365 model. A football arena hosting 25-30 matches per year is economically inefficient. New or reconstructed stadiums (like Tottenham or Real Madrid with its renovated Santiago Bernabeu) are designed as multifunctional hubs. They should bring in revenue every day: concerts by world stars, NFL matches, esports tournaments, conferences, and gastronomy. However, there is a catch here: attempts to increase revenue through non-football events and VIP services have already led to a sharp jump in other operating costs.
Santiago Bernabeu Stadium
The growth of direct sales is equally important. Leagues and major clubs are increasingly thinking about creating their own streaming platforms (the "football Netflix" model). This will allow you to sell subscriptions directly to fans around the world, bypassing traditional TV channels and collecting huge amounts of Big Data for further monetization (targeted advertising, merchandising). There is no alternative to continuing the line of global expansion. Since the European markets are demographically and economically exhausted, the next logical step, which is actively lobbied, for example, by the Spanish La Liga, is to hold official championship matches abroad (USA, Middle East, Asia). The average fan's paycheck in Miami or Riyadh is a multiple of that of a fan in Seville or Naples. The latter option causes an extremely negative reaction from traditional fans, so clubs have to walk on tiptoe to satisfy all representatives of their fanbase.
But rising costs are an even more pressing problem than the lack of income. Player salaries and transfer depreciation continue to inflate year after year. Any additional million euros earned by the club traditionally goes to agents and players. Last year, wage growth accelerated to 4.8% (versus 1.8% a year earlier). It is this factor that drags ambitious investment projects to the bottom.
To break this vicious circle, the industry implements strict control mechanisms. The new UEFA financial rules mean that clubs will not be able to spend more than 70% of their revenue on salaries, transfers and agent commissions. The English Premier League is discussing the introduction of an "anchoring" system, where the spending ceiling of the richest clubs will be rigidly linked to the income of the league's weakest team.
Another attempt to save money is the multiclub model. Owning a network of clubs (like the City Football Group or Red Bull (RB Leipzig, Red Bull Salzburg) has ceased to be exotic. This is a way to optimize costs: unified scouting, a common administrative base and the ability to "test" players in farm clubs, avoiding overpayments in the transfer market. Finally, attempts to use artificial intelligence and advanced mathematical analytics in the search for players are intensifying. The models that have proven effective at Brighton or Brentford are scaled up to top clubs to minimize the risk of buying expensive but unsuitable stars.
Interestingly, professional investors are adapting their tactics. The number of direct acquisitions of clubs has been decreasing for the third year in a row. Instead, Wall Street (such as the Apollo, Oaktree, and RedBird funds) enters through minority stakes, private lending, and structured capital. Investors want to receive fixed returns, distancing themselves from the toxic and unpredictable sports management.
At the crossroads
By and large, there are three scenarios for the development of the European football industry — the accumulated imbalances will inevitably lead to significant changes. The first option is to widen the gap. A caste of 20-30 global super-rich brand clubs is being formed, concentrating 80% of all industry revenues. The remaining hundreds of professional teams will finally turn into "donor clubs." Their only viable business model will be to find, nurture, and resell talent for the elite. The middle class in football will disappear completely. This is a development of current trends and is likely to have a very negative impact on entertainment and fan interest.
The second scenario can be roughly called "Americanization." Institutional investors from the United States organically do not accept the risk of relegation to the lower division, which can reset the value of an asset overnight. Capital pressure will steadily push European football towards the North American franchise model (NBA, MLS, NFL). The Super League is dead (already in the new year we saw how the last of its participants, Real Madrid and Barca, left the stillborn project), but its business lives on. We can see the actual (if not legal) separation of the elite, where guaranteed incomes and salary ceilings will make the business model predictable and high-margin. The rest will be grouped into regional leagues, similar to how it works in North America, where professionals also perform and have their own commercial model.
There is a more painful option. If wage growth continues to overtake revenue, and external financial "lifelines" (such as the massive purchase of age-related stars by clubs from Saudi Arabia at inflated prices) disappear, the industry will face a severe correction. Many clubs burdened with debts to hedge funds will face defaults. For the first time in several decades, we will see a real, rather than nominal, decrease in salaries of football players and the collapse of the transfer market according to a scenario that previously experienced an overheated real estate market.
By and large, football has either reached the ceiling of extensive growth, or is somewhere nearby. The huge losses of individual grandees are still masked by the fact that some small clubs have learned to live within their means. But for the industry as a whole, the "doomsday" is approaching, where it will be necessary to find non-standard ways out of the prolonged stagnation.
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