Football’s finances. Who made the profit and who made the loss in 2024/25?

“Uefa paid off an alleged lover of Gianni Infantino while he was its general secretary, The Telegraph can disclose…”

We don’t really need the details do we – some money paid by us fans into the clubs we support was given to Uefa and some of that was given to Fifa and some of that was then used to pay off a lover of the president of Fifa, for reasons which are not revealed.  (Everyone denies everything and you can read about it here  I have no evidence).

I mean, what else is there to say?   It’s a bit like season ticket money at a club being used to pay for drugs that were consumed by a director of the club who claimed it was the only way he could cope with the bizarre way that referees were treating his team during the season.  It is something that might be understood but under no circumstances could be excused.  (And to be clear that is not an allegation – I just made it up OK?  No one is being libelled.  It’s not true. Got that?   Good.)

But Infantino is a different kettle of bent farthings.  The very top man in Fifa, is accused of misusing football funds after he mucked around in his private life – according to the highly respectable if rather right wing English newspaper, The Telegraph.   And just before Fifa lift the phone to their solicitors, let me repeat that I have no evidence or insight into the affair but am simply repeating something that was written in a right wing newspaper and published on their website.

So what now?   Fifa is also accused of misusing funds given to it by associations explicitly for football purposes.   That’s a pretty serious complaint.  But it is not just a complaint about Infantino, it is a complaint that goes right the way through world-wide football administration.   If the Telegraph knew, then certainly so did Uefa and every other body that makes up bits of Fifa.   Which in turn suggests that Fifa might be rotten to the core, although I have no evidence on this.  

For if Uefa allegedly gave Fifa money for such purposes and knew about it, Uefa should have blown the whistle (to coin a phrase) when they first realised.   Or if they did not realise, then what on earth were they doing, not keeping an eye on what Fifa were up to, especially knowing the sort of President they allegedly had.

Which brings me back to another issue I’ve been mulling over of late – that of where the money goes to.

In my younger days it was always said that clubs were all short of money.  These days we are not given that yarn, but we are told that they lose money – and given that their accounts are audited I guess they are right.

Now I really ought to do a full article on club finances, and I will try to find the time, unless you can point me to a chart that someone has already done, but consider this…

Tottenham Hotspur had a record income £565,300,000 for the year ending 30 June 2025.   That sounds great until we realise that they had a pre-tax loss of  £120.6 million. leaving them with a debt of £831.2 million.   That is a debt of getting on for a billion quid – just in case you were interested in the description in the vernacular.

Now we might compare that with Arsenal.  Compared to Tottenham’s £120 pretax loss Arsenal had a 2024/25 pre tax loss of £1.4 million.   The Arsenal debt was £358m (about a third of Tottenham’s).

So we have Tottenham loss of £120m, and Arsenal loss of £1.4 million.  So what of Chelsea?   Chelsea had a Premier League-record pre-tax loss of £262.4m.  Which at a quarter of a billion pounds was the biggest loss in the entire history of the Premier League.  One wonders where all the money is coming from.

But now let’s try and get this right: I’m not an accountant and am just using numbers published in the highly unreliable English press.    Chelsea, in the last season for which accounts are available made a loss 187 times the size of Arsenal’s loss.  And since then have been continuing their policy of buying everyone that moves.

Meanwhile ManC’s official report tells us they made a “marginal net loss” of £9.9m for that year.    And we might wonder how marginal, that “marginal” is, given that it was seven times the loss Arsenal made.   So if 9.9 is marginal, that would make Arsenal’s £1.4m loss piddly-widdly-tiny and hiding in the corner so it can’t be seen.

In fact four out of the 20 clubs made a profit in the season, Newcastle, Villa, Bournemouth and Liverpool, according to Sportspro.  Of the remaining 16 clubs Arsenal had the smallest loss and Chelsea by far the biggest loss.   In fact Chelsea also revealed that they had spent significantly more on agents’ fees than any other English club in that season breaking Manchester City;s record in the 2010-11 season.