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Detailed accounts highlight the growing financial might of the elite, and the challenges the rest of the division faceThe financial figures for 2024-25, the most recent season available, for the eight Women’s Super League clubs who published detailed accounts illustrate a growing gulf between the rich and the poor. The Guardian breaks down the key numbers. Note, any figures exceeding £1m have been rounded to the nearest £10,000.Accounts for the year ending 31 May 2025 Turnover: £21.54m (up from £15.26m in 2023-24) Total wage bill: £11.32m (up from £9m) Profit/loss after tax: profit of £22,000 (previously lost £15,000) Broadcasting revenue: £2.02m (up from £956,000) Matchday revenue: £5.9m (up from £4.35m) Commercial revenue: £1.78m (up from £649,000) Wages as a % of revenue: 53%Financial health With their impressive attendances at the Emirates Stadium a significant outlier in the WSL, Arsenal lead the charts for matchday revenue comfortably. However, their vast revenues were predominantly made up of £11.9m of “group income”, listed separately to commercial revenue, while their broadcast revenue was boosted by £1.4m distributed by Uefa in relation to their successful run to the 2024-25 Champions League title. The accounts state Arsenal remain reliant on their parent undertaking, KSE UK Inc, for continued financial support.Accounts for the year ending 30 June 2025Turnover: £1.34m (up from £1.29m in 2023-24) Total wage bill: £5.00m (up from £3.53m) Profit/loss after tax: loss of £7.29m (previously lost £5.28m) Broadcasting revenue: £452,000 (up from £330,000) Matchday revenue: £344,000 (up from £221,000) Commercial revenue: £360,000 (down from £522,000) Wages as a % of revenue: 72%Financial health Brighton have sustained substantial losses year after year, but their accounts confirm chair, Tony Bloom, has fully committed, by letter, to continue to provide support in the form of non-recall of existing loans and the “provision of additional funding if required”. Brighton, who are determined to invest in the growth of women’s football for the long-term, are pushing ahead with plans for an £80m purpose-built women’s stadium.Accounts for the year ending 30 June 2025Turnover: £21.31m (up from £11.50m in 2023-24) Total wage bill: £14.52m (Up from £10.29m) Profit/loss after tax: loss of £17.10m (previously lost £8.42m) Broadcasting revenue: £2.27m (up from £1.70m) Matchday revenue: £3.01m (up from £2.69m) Commercial revenue: £16.03m (up from £11.50m) Wages as a % of revenue: 68%Financial health Chelsea’s loss of more than £17m seems alarming, but in reality a huge chunk of that relates to the purchasing of Kingsmeadow, the women’s team’s then-home stadium, from Chelsea Football Club Limited for a total consideration of £12.08m. It has been widely reported that the move helped Chelsea’s men’s team’s efforts to avoid a Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) breach. Since then, Chelsea have announced they will play all of their home league fixtures at Stamford Bridge, which they hope will boost their matchday revenues closer towards Arsenal’s levels.Accounts for the year ending 30 June 2025Turnover: £2.93m (down from £3.16m in 2023-24) Total wage bill: £2.87m (up from £2.38m) Profit/loss after tax: loss of £1.28m (previously lost £558,000) Broadcasting revenue: Unspecified Matchday revenue: Unspecified Commercial revenue: Unspecified Wages as a % of revenue: 98%Financial health Everton have struggled to bring in revenues akin to that seen at most of their WSL rivals and, as a result, their wages-to-revenue ratio is worryingly close to 100%. However, it should be remembered that this set of financial data relates to Everton’s final season playing home matches at Walton Hall Park, their meagre former home. In 2025-26 they moved home fixtures to Goodison Park, which is understood to have made a big difference to matchday revenue.Accounts for the year ending 31 May 2025Turnover: £6.13m (up from £4.91m in 2023-24) Total wage bill: £3.12m (up from £2.58m) Profit/loss after tax: profit of £168k (previously made £594,000) Broadcasting revenue: £962,000 (up from £907,000) Matchday revenue: £341,000 (up from £168,000) Commercial revenue: £4.83m (up from £3.83m) Wages as a % of revenue: 51%Financial heath Alongside Manchester United, Liverpool are one of only two WSL clubs to record a profit over the past eight years combined, and while their supporters may sometimes wish for more investment from the board and a more competitive team on the pitch, they are run as a relatively stable business, with wages consistently sitting between 50 and 60% of revenue.Accounts for the year ending 30 June 2025Turnover: £10.62m (up from £6.60m in 2023-24) Total wage bill: £8.49m (up from £7.04m) Profit/loss after tax: loss of £2.83m (previously lost £3.16m) Broadcasting revenue: £1.71m (Up from £889,000) Matchday revenue: £1.97m (up from £1.04m) Commercial revenue: £6.93m (up from £4.68m) Wages as a % of revenue: 80%Financial health City will hope a first WSL title triumph in a decade can lead to them ending Arsenal and Chelsea’s dominance of the division. It helps that their Abu Dhabi ownership opened their wallets to ensure top scorer Khadija Shaw performed a U-turn in May and signed a lucrative new contract. This year’s return to the Champions League should help City’s finances.Accounts for the year ending 30 June 2025Turnover: £10.74m (up from £9.17m in 2023-24) Total wage bill: £5.88m (up from £5.03m) Profit/loss after tax: profit of £397,000 (previously lost £119,000) Broadcasting revenue: £1.15m (down from £1.73m) Matchday revenue: £1.22m (down from £1.87m) Commercial revenue: £3.44m (down from £4.98m) Wages as a % of revenue: 55%Financial health Operating on just over a third of Chelsea’s wage bill, it is not surprising United have yet to win a WSL title and they are expected to slip further behind rivals in terms of playing budget due to a focus before the new season on youth development. It will anger some United fans to see their club have made a profit of £1.34m since reforming as a senior women’s side in 2018, during a time when their rivals are investing. Their bank balance will also have been aided further this summer by the £850,000 sale of Melvine Malard to Chelsea, a new club-record sale.Accounts for the year ending 30 June 2025Turnover: £4.41m (up from £3.39m in 2023-24) Total wage bill: £4.30m (up from £3.45m) Profit/loss after tax: loss of £2.83m (previously lost £2.73m) Broadcasting revenue: £267,000 (no change) Matchday revenue: £433,000 (down from £513,000) Commercial revenue: £3.39m (Up from £1.48m) Wages as a % of revenue: 98%Financial health Tottenham have upped their game on and off the pitch, increasing investment in the women’s team and being rewarded with a fifth-placed finish in the WSL last season. One of their biggest hindrances has been matchday revenue, which is 10 times smaller than Arsenal’s. Growing attendances has to be a priority.There were four clubs competing in the 2024-25 WSL season who did not publish detailed financial figures. Relegated Crystal Palace recorded a turnover of £1.32m (up from £914,000 in the 2023-24 campaign, when they were promoted) and made a post-tax loss of £1.99m. Leicester City, who survived the drop, recorded a loss after tax of £4.80m, having similarly lost £4.13m. Neither Aston Villa nor West Ham United have published detailed financial figures, throughout their time in the top tier, with West Ham explaining in their most recent submission to Companies House that they was entitled to exemption from audit under section 479A of the Companies Act 2006. Villa’s men’s team’s accounts did reveal that there was a total expenditure of £7.65m (up from £5.94m) on the women’s team in 2024-25. That would put the club roughly in mid-table in terms of overall expenditure.Grabbing the headlines this summer with a remarkable recruitment drive, London City Lionesses are heading into their second season as a top-flight club and are set to be one of WSL’s biggest spenders. Their accounts showed an operating loss of £10.6m for 2024-25, when they won the second-tier title, and their expenditure was widely expected to rise last season. That loss was more than 10 times their revenue (£902,000) and Michele Kang, the ambitious American businesswoman who is are financing the club, will know revenues need to grow.Birmingham City and Charlton Athletic have been promoted to the WSL before the new season, alongside the returning Crystal Palace. Birmingham look best-equipped to establish themselves in the top tier. Their 2024-25 turnover of £6.1m would have sat comfortably in mid-table in the WSL and they also made a profit of £141,000 in that period. Their wage bill of £2.47m – in a season when they finished second in the second tier and narrowly missed out on promotion on the final day – was only £400,000 smaller than the wage bill of Everton, who finished eighth in the WSL. Charlton’s accounts on Companies House are overdue.

Football News

Two clubs are far ahead in wages and turnover, but London City Lionesses could be new force after big transfer movesAfter reviewing eight seasons’ worth of Women’s Super League clubs’ financial accounts, it seems appropriate to start by offering a sincere apology to any reader who has become accustomed to seeing the phrase “the big four” in Women’s Super League coverage in reference to Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United. Financially speaking, that is a myth. There has actually been no such thing in recent times. There has, in fact, been a big two: Arsenal and Chelsea.On the pitch that quartet have lifted every major domestic women’s trophy since 2014 but, off it, the two London clubs have left the rest of the pack in their dust in regard to wages and turnover, together recording more revenue in 2024-25 than the rest of the division combined.There are several other striking trends across the data. Namely, rapidly rising revenues and rapidly rising expenditure, as well as a heavy reliance on club owners to fund the sizeable losses. Cumulatively, WSL clubs have recorded post-tax losses of more than £111m when combining all of the figures available since the division switched to a winter calendar in the summer of 2017.Resisting that pattern are Manchester United, who have recorded a profit of £1.34m since relaunching their senior women’s team in the summer of 2018. In contrast, Chelsea have lost more than £36m over the same timeframe, and there are four further clubs – Brighton and Hove Albion, Leicester City, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur – who have each lost eight-figure sums when adding up their losses across those years.United, who this summer have made clear their intention to focus on youth development in an attempt to build long-term success, believing current levels of spending in the transfer market are unsustainable, are a unique case study. In the 2022-23 campaign, when they finished second, missing out on the WSL title on the season’s final day, their wages amounted to under 50% of their revenue, in a season when Manchester City, Tottenham and Brighton all spent more than 100% of their revenue on wages. This is not uncommon across men’s and women’s football. A recent report from Deloitte, for example, highlighted that 13 men’s Championship clubs spent more on wages than their revenue in 2024-25, with that division’s collective wage bill growing to more than £900m and to 96% of revenue.Wages for elite women’s players are soaring – – on average across the WSL they quadrupled between 2019 and 2025. Revenues rose strongly over that timeframe too, with the largest chunk of matchday revenue growth coming at Arsenal, whose gate receipts were just £45,000 per season nine years ago and totalled nearly £6m in 2024-25. On average across WSL clubs, for whom data is available, wages rose by 28.2% between 2023-24 and 2024-25, while over the same period post-tax losses increased by more than 53%, albeit a large chunk of that can be apportioned to Chelsea’s purchase of their former home ground, Kingsmeadow, from their parent club for about £12m during 2024-25.Chelsea – who won the league for a sixth straight year in 2024-25 – had a total wage bill that was more than five times larger than an Everton side who finished eighth in the WSL, and just under three times that of Manchester United, who finished third that season. Arsenal were the only other club, along with Chelsea, whose wage bill exceeded £10m. Both clubs recorded turnover that was around twice that of their Manchester rivals. Significantly, that came before their respective spending in the summer 2025 window, when Arsenal broke the £1m barrier to land the Canada winger Olivia Smith and Chelsea followed suit later that summer with the signing of Alyssa Thompson.Overall, the WSL has had a 75% increase in agents’ fees year-on-year, according to data released by the Football Association, with Chelsea exceeding the £1m mark last season. In comparison, West Ham, who finished 10th in 2025-26, spent £97,000, while relegated Leicester spent less than a tenth of what Chelsea did.Soon then there could be a new force in the WSL in the shape of London City Lionesses. Their wage bill for 2024-25, when they won promotion from the second tier, has not been made public, but their operating loss of £10.6m was more than 10 times their revenue of £902,000. That came before dramatic moves in the transfer market across the past three windows, which have included the signing of former Ballon d’Or winner Alexia Putellas.As the WSL now gears up for the 2026-27 campaign – the first in which there are expected to be points penalties on the line for any teams whose player wage bills exceed a threshold of “80% of your revenue plus up to £4m of owners’ contributions” – the season ahead is one where the financial accounts will matter more than ever.