The transfer window is closed for a few months but the fun never stops when it comes to money in football.

To take a step back and recalibrate, we put the call out to discover what you want explained about the financial aspects of the game. Profit and sustainability rules (PSR), inevitably, were a frequent topic, but there were plenty of others, too, ranging from the intricacies of football accounting to the broader question of why NFL teams are routinely deemed more valuable than clubs from what is the world’s most popular sport.

In all, more than 50 questions were posed by The Athletic subscribers, which might have taken me until retirement to answer with the deserved depth. There were some club-specific ones we’ve carved out and will answer in a separate piece. And if you asked one and it didn’t make it into the article, I can only apologise. But hopefully you’ll find something of interest in those which did.

How is it possible that NFL franchises are commonly cited as the most valuable in sport when Real Madrid, Liverpool, Barcelona and Manchester United surely have far bigger brands/ global reach and play far more games? Are U.S. teams simply better at fleecing their fans? And is this what is heading our way with the American ownership in the Premier League? — Dan I.

There are quite a few answers to this, and I won’t pretend to suggest I’ve covered them all here. But let’s give some of the big ones airtime.

The most obvious point is the relative lack of downside risk in the NFL. There are 32 teams in professional American football’s top flight, and the competition’s format means none of them can be relegated at the end of a season, no matter how badly they perform. That, from a financial perspective, provides an earnings floor that simply doesn’t exist in football/soccer.

We don’t get much insight into the finances of the NFL other than from the annual accounts of the league’s only publicly owned franchise, the Green Bay Packers, but even those help make clear why its franchises have such value placed on them. In the year to March 31, 2025, covering the 2024 season, the Packers received $432.6million (£328.8m) in national revenues — an equal share that all 32 teams receive. That is just the equally distributed amount; teams make more on top from local revenues, some of them substantially so.

The Green Bay Packers are the NFL’s only publicly owned team (Logan Bowles/Getty Images)

NFL teams also share part of ticketing revenue equally, and merchandise and licensing deals are also organised centrally. It all adds up to one thing that investors love: stability. The NFL’s broadcast deals are huge in their own right but a big attraction to would-be team owners is the fact that they’re also long-term. The NFL’s current agreement runs to 2033, meaning its franchises can model revenues way down the line. Such long-term deals don’t exist (yet?) in football.

Alongside that earnings floor is a cost ceiling: the NFL’s (hard) salary cap. That is rising steadily but is pegged to the league’s revenue growth. In the 2024 season, the salary cap was $255.4million (£194.1m), or just 59 per cent of each team’s share of national revenues. There are many other costs besides player salaries, but the league’s financial model is clearly pointed toward limiting expenditure and making teams profitable.

Scarcity value plays its part. The NFL has 32 teams — English football’s top two divisions alone have 12 more than that. And the NFL only plays from September to February; as few as 17 games per team each season if they aren’t among the 14 to make the Super Bowl play-offs. Football, it could be argued, is diminishing its worth by almost never taking a break and playing virtually year-round.

The value of such a small cohort of teams also increases when some of the NFL’s most important rules seek to prevent one or two sides from dominating the league for years on end. Think of how its annual college draft gives the previous season’s worst-performing team the chance to pick the best player among that year’s intake from the university level. In the past eight years, five teams have won the Super Bowl. In the same period, only two clubs have been Premier League champions. In the eight NFL seasons from 2008 to 2015, eight different sides won the big prize.

Then there’s where the NFL is based. The United States has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, and most of the NFL’s fans are concentrated there. That gives plenty of scope to charge top dollar for tickets, merchandise, whatever. Football, and the Premier League in particular, is watched by more people globally but, on average, those fans will have less money in their pockets than their NFL peers.

The Philadelphia Eagles are the reigning NFL champions (Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

Has there been a new TV rights cycle starting this year in the Premier League that explains the spike in transfer spending by the clubs? — Papageorgeo90.

Kind of. The new domestic TV rights cycle began this season and runs to the end of 2028-29. Across four years, it is worth £6.7billion to the Premier League, an increase on the previous 2022-25 cycle, which generated £5bn. A key caveat is that the old deal covered three years, whereas this one is over four. On a per annum basis, domestic rights growth has been pretty flat.

Broadcasters are also getting more bang for their buck. Up to 270 Premier League games will be broadcast live in the UK this season, a big increase on the previous campaign’s 200. The domestic deal is generating around £6.2million per game over the next four years, a massive drop on the £10.2m per match the 2016-19 deal produced. Yet it still adds up to a similar amount of money in Premier League pockets: around £1.7bn annually.

The greater drivers behind continued transfer spending are the Premier League’s more lucrative overseas deals. These don’t run along the same timeframes as the domestic contracts — for example, NBC’s £2billion deal to screen games in the U.S. spans six seasons from 2022-23 to 2027-28 — but combined domestic and international rights over the next three seasons results in a total figure of £12.25bn, 17 per cent up on the £10.5bn of 2022-25. Plenty more money in club pockets.

What is the one thing (the collapse of a broadcaster, a rule change, et cetera) that could burst the Premier League balloon? — Noel B.

Broadcast rights have long underpinned the league’s growth and, as mentioned above, continue to fuel club spending. If the bottom were to fall out of those, if a broadcast partner reneged on payments, say, and nobody else could pick up the slack, it would be a seismic shock.

Premier League clubs are overwhelmingly loss-making even with those huge broadcast revenues. The more they earn, the more they spend. Across the competition’s first 32 seasons to the end of 2023-24, its member teams lost a collective £4.4billion before tax. Only nine of those 32 years were profitable on a division-wide basis, the two most recent being in 2016-17 and 2017-18 and coming as a result of that huge 2016-19 TV rights deal, as massive revenue increases sped past cost growth. The latter soon caught up.

Clubs are massively reliant on TV money. Most have already committed that money due in future years, and more, on wages and transfer fees. In 2023-24, all bar the traditional ‘Big Six’ sides relied on broadcasting income for over half of their total annual revenue.

Revenues from Sky Sports and other broadcasters are vital to Premier League clubs (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)

How much does pure profit offset the books in PSR/financial fair play positively? — Allen J.

The monetary figure obviously differs with each deal, but the idea behind ‘pure profit’ (a phrase that has entered the footballing lexicon recently, but one I can’t really stand, sorry) is that the player you’re selling has no book value (eg, an academy graduate who cost his club nothing to buy). The asset value assigned to them is zero, so when you sell them, the proceeds are equal to the profit. Hence, pure profit.

That isn’t strictly true, though.

If, for example, you’ve got a really high-profile former academy player on your books, chances are they will have a book value. Harry Kane didn’t cost Tottenham Hotspur anything when he joined them as a kid, for example, but you can be sure there were some chunky agent fees involved each time he renewed his contract with them after turning professional, and those payments are ‘capitalised’ and form part of a player’s book value. OK, it will still be a lot less than the book value of a £60million signing or whatever, but the idea that the entire sales proceeds will be booked as profit might not be wholly accurate.

One of the big criticisms of PSR is that it encourages (some would even say forces) clubs to sell their current or former academy players. There’s some truth to that as it makes it easier to generate profits when the guy leaving has little to no book value, but if a club are in desperate need of profit to comply with the rules, then it’s a result of their own previous decision-making.

It’s also not like selling an academy player for ‘pure’ profit will automatically generate more money than another sale.

Take the hypothetical situation where Club A has received a £15million bid for Academy Graduate X, who they don’t really want to sell. They’ve also got Player Y, signed for £50million three years ago and with two years left on his contract, for whom they’ve received a £35m bid. Player Y’s book value is £20m, so accepting the bid would recognise £15m profit — the same as if they sold Academy Graduate X.

Of course, to the outside world, it looks like they’ve taken a £15million hit on Player Y, but in this instance, there’d be no financial rules-based incentive to sell Academy Graduate X instead. All of which is to say: clubs aren’t without choice in these matters.

It’s for this reason that some of the complaints about ‘having’ to sell academy players are a bit disingenuous. Clubs don’t have to. They choose to, because they’ve got themselves into a position where they need to generate profit (and reduce losses) quickly. Selling a player is the fastest way to do that; selling an academy player with little to no book value is the most efficient.

What new PSR/FFP rules would The BookKeeper bring in or change (and change to what)? — Kier

Do you have an opinion or gut feeling that PSR in the Premier League, in its current framework, must change? — Max M.

With the increasing noise, can you see these rules changing anytime soon? I think that at least the £105million loss figure (across three seasons) needs to be adjusted for inflation. — Jamie S.

Would you — and if so, how would you — change PSR around homegrown players to encourage clubs to nurture and retain their young talent? — Dan S.

Quite a few similar questions here, so we’ve grouped them.

Something needs to change, and a redistribution of wealth within the game (not just the Premier League) would be a huge one. That’s not really specific to PSR, it’s a much broader shift. More prize money going to the better teams is antithetical to fair sporting competition. Unfortunately, reversing that would be a pretty radical suggestion, and it won’t happen any time soon, not least because club owners shelling out billions to buy and then invest in their team won’t happily give up the advantages of being among the rich sides.

If we ignore that egalitarian dream and just look at improving the system, and are cognisant of the potential legal issues that would arise (and I don’t claim the expertise to argue them one way or the other), one immediate improvement would be to implement a hard salary cap. Unmooring spending limits from revenues would make for greater competitive balance and better reward good management. There’s a fair argument that it would also cause some ‘big’ clubs to rethink things and not just throw good money after bad.

If we stick with loss limits, they should be reduced rather than increased. If the idea is sustainability, it makes little sense to say clubs can lose more money. People point to the rising costs of wages and transfer fees as a reason to increase loss limits, but those continue to rise because teams continue to choose to spend their money in that way. It’s not something they have no control over, and that’s proven by the fact that wages stagnated in the Premier League in 2023-24 for the first time in a long time. That it came after a season in which PSR bared their teeth can’t have been a coincidence.

European football governing body UEFA’s allowable loss limit is less than the Premier League’s, so lowering wages has already happened at continental level, and its squad-cost rule is directly targeted at what teams spend on players. The Premier League has had its own squad-cost rule in place last season and this season, but each time it has been ‘in shadow’; in other words, clubs track against it but there are no repercussions if they exceed the limit.

People often say imposing spending limits in the Premier League will see its players flock abroad, but the reality is hardly any clubs outside England could afford the wages that would still be offered here, even under a salary cap. Some would leave, but Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain can only sign so many players. With the Saudi Pro League in recent years, we’ve also already seen that the number who are happy to move elsewhere solely for the money on offer is limited.

Ivan Toney joined Al Ahli in the Saudi Pro League last year (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)

A big problem for the Premier League is that the clubs effectively govern themselves; new rules must be agreed by them. The hope is that the new independent football regulator will shift the balance and implement rules unhampered by self-interest. I worry it won’t happen, though.

Moving away from a loss-based rules framework to one focused on cost control would help clubs retain young talent. There’s much less incentive to sell an academy player, or anyone really, if profitability matters less. That’s a little more the case with UEFA’s squad-cost rule, where player profits over the past 36 months are prorated to a single year, meaning it’s less easy to find an immediate fix. But there’s still some incentive to do it.

Alternatively, you could provide direct incentives to retain club-trained players. If our hypothetical hard salary cap comes in, teams could be given a higher budget if a percentage is assigned to homegrown talents. Even under the current system, there could be tweaks made to make it more attractive to keep and play your own academy stars. The rules already allow youth-programme-related expenditure to be deducted, so they could be extended to wage allowances.

How are Premier League top clubs able to spend over £200million every season yet they pay high wages? Even if you consider amortisation, wouldn’t you have values carried forward from previous seasons’ transfers? — Alex K.

You’ve touched on a really important point that often gets brushed over in our PSR-focused world.

It’s often said player sales provide an immediate boost to the bottom line, which they do (provided the move is profitable), whereas transfer fees don’t need to be worried about half as quickly. That’s sort of true, but it isn’t like those costs never fall due. Just as clubs have to pay off fees even if they use future instalments (and that’s why we’re seeing transfer debt in the Premier League surge), so they must prepare for the hit to their bottom line in future years. Under PSR, player sales stay in a club’s calculation for three years, but players are regularly signed on four- or five-year deals.

If you don’t restrain spending, which hardly anyone does, you need to keep offsetting it. It’s for that reason that Premier League clubs are more actively embracing player trading on a grand scale. The Athletic covered the matter in this piece soon after the window closed.

How do player amortisation rules work? Does the book value of players depreciate more as/when they get injured, or is it more formulaic based on age? — Noah C.

It’s much simpler, and thankfully less open to interpretation, than that: the costs of acquiring a player are amortised over their contract term. If Footballer A signs for Club X on a five-year deal for total registration costs of £50million, Club X recognises £10m in amortisation for each of the five years of the player’s contract.

If Footballer A then signs a new contract midway through the initial five-year deal, the amortisation rate effectively resets, and their existing book value is amortised over the length of the new agreement.

Say Footballer A signs a new four-year deal two seasons into their previous one, when their book value is £30million. In our hypothetical example, Club X incur £2m in agent fees on that contract renewal. Those are added to the existing book value, meaning £32m is amortised over the four years of the new deal at a rate of £8m per year — £2m less than previously.

The matter has become a tad more complicated in recent years, as UEFA and then the Premier League introduced rules saying clubs could only amortise a player’s fee to a maximum of five years. That’s true for renewals too, so a player’s value might still be amortised over longer than five years if they sign a contract extension, but the maximum the amortisation period can be extended by is five years, regardless of the length of the deal itself.

How do clubs account for add-ons when purchasing players? Is it considered an earn-out under accounting rules? — Shyam G.

Annoyingly, for both succinctness here and for when it comes to analysing the figures, there’s no agreed practice on this. Transfer fee add-ons, or ‘contingent consideration’, to use accountancy lingo, can be accounted for in different ways, with three main practices used in the industry.

One (to my mind, the easiest one) is to simply recognise the add-on clause when that clause is triggered. If Club A owe Club B £5million once Player X has played 30 games for them post-transfer, Club A don’t recognise the £5m until that 30th match is played. It’s then added to Player X’s book value and amortised over the remainder of the contract.

Another method — used by, for example, Manchester United — is to estimate the value of the add-on clause by assessing the likelihood of it being triggered, then add that estimated value to the initial registration cost. Clubs such as United reassess the probability of the clause’s triggering at each reporting date, and adjust the registration cost accordingly.

The third method is similar to that last one, with the difference being that any changes stemming from reassessments are immediately recognised in the club’s profit or loss account. That means the value isn’t added to Player X’s book value and subsequently amortised, but instead recognised in full as an immediate cost.

How will clubs deal with betting companies being banned from shirt-front advertising in the coming years? Do you also expect to see them to have the betting (or any other) sponsors on the backs of shirts to open new revenue streams? Or would/could players challenge this, so they don’t see themselves and their brands linked to the companies? I could see players having moral and religious objections for sure. — Matt G.

History tells us clubs (and most businesses, really) will seek workarounds wherever they can. Many clubs with lower revenues have turned to betting companies as they regularly offer more than any other sponsor that would be interested. When they are barred from shirt-fronts in the 2026-27 season, it’s difficult to know who will have the resources or desire to replace them. Unintentionally, it’s a rule change that might further distance those at the top — who are naturally seen as a more attractive commercial proposition — from the rest.

Wolves and West Ham showing betting companies on their shirt fronts in the 2009-10 season (AMA/Corbis via Getty Images)

I’m not too sure it’ll be an issue for players. There are a fair few brands associated with a multitude of clubs that might leave a sour taste, depending on your disposition, but footballers are fairly limited in their ability to do much about it.

What are your thoughts on clubs putting ticket prices up each season? It must be such a minute percentage of revenue. Seems like a quick win to reward the fans and not increase them as much? — Jack C.

Conflicting. The easy answer is to say clubs should have more than enough money not to need to raise prices. You’re broadly right about gate receipts as a proportion of income — it was 10 per cent or less of total revenue for half the Premier League’s clubs at last check.

Yet most clubs are loss-making (this was the case for 13 of the 20 Premier League sides in 2023-24), so it isn’t like they’re coining it in at the gate and keeping the dosh. Teams point to financial rules as a reason for price increases, claiming they need to boost income to maximise spending ability — but the reality is it’s those clubs’ own choosing to keep pushing player costs up. If they reined in wages and transfer fees, there would be less need to squeeze more money out of supporters.

That is easier said than done, though, as nobody wants to be the first to cut spending. A club could refuse to bump up prices and reduce their budget accordingly. But if no one else does it with them, it increases their risk of relegation. And then the fans involved wouldn’t be much happier anyway.

Ultimately, the ticket-price matter is a product of the lack of effective financial regulation in football. Fix the model whereby clubs almost gleefully rack up losses year after year, and you’ll be able to make concessions (literally) at the ticket office.

Do clubs insure players, and if so and they die, do they get compensation? — Edit T.

They do, or at least they can do. My colleague Nick Miller did a great job covering what is a bleak subject this summer.

In the 124-year history of Brighton & Hove Albion, how much of their spending has been covered by Chelsea buying players from them? — Joe J.

This was probably a joke question. It also happens to be quite fun, though, so I did the research.

First, it’s probably worth saying that determining Brighton’s total spend since they were formed in 1901 is a little tricky. We’ll do some rounding up/down and assuming — we’ll still be in the ballpark, I reckon.

Moises Caicedo, left, is one of many Brighton players and staff to move to Chelsea (Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)

According to Brighton’s accounts from the 1999-2000 season to 2023-24, they spent £522million (gross, not net) on new player registrations. Public data before then is spotty, but there was a further £3m dating back to 1979-80. Any spend over some missing years in between will have been minimal, at most a couple of million.

We don’t have figures for 2024-25 or the summer just gone yet, but Brighton had the most spendthrift year in their history a year ago. Around £235million was spent on reported fees last season, with a further £70m or so going this summer. Whack on some assumed agent fees and the transfer levy and you’re close to £350m. So in all, for this exercise, let’s say Brighton’s total spend on new players in their history sits at around £875m.

According to Transfermarkt, the first time Chelsea bought someone from Brighton was in 1949, shelling out £6,000 for left-back Stan Willemse. Seventy-three years later, they spent rather more on another one from the south-coast club, dispensing with an initial £56m (potentially rising to £63m) for Marc Cucurella. After him, big fees have flowed along the same route for Moises Caicedo (£100m guaranteed, up to £115m), Robert Sanchez (£20m, up to £25m) and Joao Pedro (over £50m, perhaps as much as £55m guaranteed). There was also £23m in compensation paid to take head coach Graham Potter and staff from the Amex Stadium dugout and Paul Winstanley from his role as Brighton’s head of recruitment.

Add all those deals together and you nudge over £250million making its way from west London to East Sussex in recent years. In other words, Chelsea’s payments for Brighton players and other personnel have covered around 29 per cent, almost a third, of the latter’s spend on new signings across the club’s entire history.

(Top photo of Manchester United’s Bruno Fernandes and the New York Giants’ Tyrone Tracy: Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images)