{"id":501396,"date":"2026-02-26T19:04:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T19:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/501396\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T19:04:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T19:04:07","slug":"european-soccer-clubs-post-loss-despite-record-revenues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/501396\/","title":{"rendered":"European soccer clubs post loss despite record revenues"},"content":{"rendered":"

European top-flight soccer clubs \u201clost more than\u201d $1.18B (all figures U.S.) last year \u201cdespite record revenues of more\u201d than $35.4B, according to Josh Noble of FINANCIAL TIMES. Figures from UEFA showed that \u201ccombined revenue of clubs playing in top leagues across Europe was set to surpass\u201d $35.4B, up from $33.8B a year earlier. The projection is based on initial filings from more than 700 teams across the continent, although the biggest 25 clubs \u201caccounted for almost half the total.\u201d UEFA cited \u201cincreased income from sponsorship, player transfers and prize money for teams playing in pan-European competitions as the key drivers of growth, offsetting weakness in domestic media rights in some countries.\u201d As a result of rising costs, UEFA \u201cexpects aggregated pre-tax losses in 2025 to be around\u201d $1.3B, matching the result from 2024. However, \u201csignificant losses at a small number of clubs obscured the fact that almost two-thirds of early-reporting clubs made a profit in 2025.\u201d UEFA\u2019s report also showed that the number of takeovers in European soccer \u201cdropped for a third consecutive year,\u201d with 29 clubs changing hands compared with 28 in 2022. Instead, UEFA said, \u201cprivate capital is more and more accessing football through minority stakes, structured equity and private credit, reflecting a separation between capital deployment and control\u201d (FINANCIAL TIMES, 2\/25<\/a>).<\/p>\n

LARGE LOSSES: THE ATHLETIC\u2019s Chris Weatherspoon notes Premier League club Chelsea booked the \u201chighest pre-tax loss in English football history in the 2024-25 season,\u201d with a $480.6M pre-tax deficit. Only La Liga club Barcelona\u2019s $655.3M loss in 2020-21 has \u201cever exceeded that scale of deficit\u201d in European soccer, and that was a year \u201cimpacted by both the Covid-19 pandemic and the return of Joan Laporta to the role of president.\u201d UEFA\u2019s report does \u201cnot provide full details of individual club finances, so the exact make-up of the record loss is unclear.\u201d A source indicated that Chelsea\u2019s huge loss last season was, like Barcelona\u2019s before them, \u201cdriven by significant non-cash, accounting entries\u201d (THE ATHLETIC, 2\/26<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European top-flight soccer clubs \u201clost more than\u201d $1.18B (all figures U.S.) last year \u201cdespite record revenues of more\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,200299,94247,561,82],"class_list":["post-501396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-earnings-and-ipos","tag-international-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}