How football clubs make money

In one lineA club earns money from match days, from broadcasting and from commercial deals, and treats selling players as a separate, less predictable source.

The three main income streams

Football finance usually splits a club’s income, or revenue, into three streams. The definitions below are the ones Deloitte uses in its annual ranking of the highest-earning clubs.

Matchday

Matchday revenue is money earned from people coming to games. It is mostly ticket sales, including season tickets, plus corporate hospitality: premium seats and boxes sold with food and service. Membership fees are counted here too.

Matchday income depends on stadium size, ticket prices and how many home matches a club plays. A long cup run or a European campaign adds home games.

Broadcast

Broadcast revenue is money from TV and media rights. For most clubs it arrives as a share of what their league earns from selling rights centrally. It also includes prize money and payments from domestic cups, from UEFA and other continental competitions, and from the FIFA Club World Cup.

Because much of it depends on league position and European qualification, broadcast income can rise or fall sharply from one season to the next.

Commercial

Commercial revenue is everything a club earns from its brand. It includes sponsorship, such as the name on the shirt front and the kit supplier deal, and merchandising, such as replica shirts. It also takes in the club’s other business activities, such as stadium tours, and income from events other than football, such as concerts.

Player trading: a separate line

When a club sells a player, the fee is not counted as revenue in the Money League. Deloitte states that its revenue figures exclude player and coach transfer fees, as well as VAT and other sales taxes.

In a club’s accounts, a sale usually appears as a profit or loss on disposal of players. That is the fee received minus the value of the player still left on the books. That remaining value depends on amortisation, the way a transfer fee is spread across the years of a contract.

Player trading is kept apart because it is less predictable. A club cannot count on selling a star every summer. Even so, it matters. UEFA reported in February 2026 that record transfer profits, together with recovering revenue, helped Europe’s top-division clubs return to an operating profit in 2024, for the first time in five years. The spending rules recognise this. Both UEFA’s squad cost ratio and the Premier League’s new Squad Cost Ratio add net profit on player sales to the income side, and UEFA averages it over three years.

The Deloitte Football Money League

The Deloitte Football Money League ranks clubs by revenue each year. The 29th edition, published on 22 January 2026, covers the 2024/25 season.

How it works:

• Figures are taken from each club’s published annual accounts, or directly from the club, for the financial year that ended in 2025.
• Revenue means matchday, broadcast and commercial income, as defined above. Transfer fees and sales taxes are excluded.
• Figures are converted to euros at the average exchange rate over the 12 months to each club’s year end.

The headline findings of the 2026 edition:

The top 20 clubs together reported a record €12.4bn, 11% more than in 2023/24. Commercial income was the biggest stream at 43% (€5.3bn), broadcast income made up 38%, and matchday income 19% (€2.4bn). Matchday income grew fastest, by 16%.

What the ranking does and does not show

The Money League measures income, not health. It says nothing about profit, debt or how much a club spends on wages. A club can rank high and still lose money.

Rankings can also move for reasons unrelated to how the club is run. Exchange rates change the euro value of English revenue. Clubs close their accounts on different dates. A deep European run in one season can lift a club several places, then fall away.

Wages-to-revenue: a health check

The wages-to-revenue ratio is total wages divided by revenue. It is one of the most common ways to judge whether a club is living within its means.

It matters because wages are usually a club’s largest cost, and they are fixed by contracts that run for years. If revenue falls, for example after relegation or a season without European football, the wage bill does not fall with it. A club with a high ratio has little room to absorb a bad year.

For context, UEFA reported record revenue of €28.6bn for Europe’s top-division clubs in 2024, and said growth in player wages had settled at 2-3% a year, helped by squad cost rules.

Two cautions when comparing ratios:

1. Check what counts as wages. Some figures include all staff; others only players and the head coach.
2. Check what counts as revenue. Regulators’ ratios are not the same as a simple wages-to-revenue figure. UEFA’s squad cost ratio adds transfer amortisation and agents’ fees to wages, and adds player-sale profit to income. Its limit is 70% from 2025/26.

Reading a club’s income: a quick checklist

1. How is revenue split between matchday, broadcast and commercial? A club relying on one stream is more exposed.
2. How much of the broadcast money depends on European qualification?
3. Is player-sale profit a steady habit or a one-off?
4. Which way is the wages-to-revenue ratio moving over several years?
5. Which dates do the accounts cover? A year ending in June and a year ending in December are not directly comparable.

Where to go next

• TV rights, explained shows how broadcast income is shared.
• Sponsorship, explained looks inside commercial income.
• Football’s spending rules explains the ratios regulators use.