£6.8bn in. £4.4bn out.
How to read this — Follow a band from where the money starts to where it lands.
Matchday passed £1bn for the first time, and wages took £4.4bn of the £6.8bn.
In plain terms Money flows left to right. Each band is one route, and a thicker band carries more.Source · Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance 2026 · 8 July 2026
One rule, twenty different ceilings
Nearly two thirds of what the clubs earned from football went out as wages. So the new rule caps that spending as a share of what each club earns.
You think
A spending cap is one line drawn above every club. Nobody may cross it.
Actually
85%of your own revenue
The line is drawn at 85% of each club's own revenue plus what it makes selling players, so there are twenty lines.
Same percentage, different revenue: Manchester City earned £694m, Bournemouth £182m.
85% of 2024/25 revenue is about £590m at Manchester City and about £155m at Bournemouth. Both real ceilings are higher, because player-sale profit adds to the base.
In plain terms Two panels: on the left what most people assume, on the right what the numbers show, with the one figure that settles it.Source · Premier League rules and The Swiss Ramble club accounts, 2024/25
Four terms, plainly
Think of two families told to spend at most 85% of what they earn. Same rule, different amounts.
- Football revenue
- Money a club earns from playing: broadcast, matchday and commercial income. Not owner money, not player sales.
- Squad Cost Ratio
- Squad spending (wages, agents' fees, transfer fees) as a share of revenue plus player-sale profit. Earn £100 that way, and £85 is your ceiling.
- Amortisation
- A transfer fee counted a slice at a time over the contract, not all at once.
- PSR
- The old rule: a club could lose at most £105m over three seasons, whatever its size.
Source · Premier League and The Swiss Ramble
Bournemouth's money is the shared money
The ceiling depends on revenue, so where does it come from? Three streams, and the league shares only one.
How to read this — Each dot is one club. The closer it sits to a corner, the more of that club's money comes from that stream. The table below gives the exact shares, and pressing one picks it out.
How to read this — Each dot is one club. The closer it sits to a corner, the more of that club's money comes from that stream. The table below gives the exact shares, and pressing one picks it out.
Bournemouth — 4% Matchday, 82% Broadcast, 15% Commercial. Most lopsided: 82% down Broadcast.
| Team | Matchday | Broadcast | Commercial | Leans |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manchester City | 11% | 40% | 49% | Commercial |
| Liverpool | 17% | 38% | 46% | Commercial |
| Arsenal | 22% | 40% | 38% | Broadcast |
| Manchester United | 24% | 26% | 50% | Commercial |
| Aston Villa | 10% | 65% | 25% | Broadcast |
| West Ham | 17% | 58% | 25% | Broadcast |
| Bournemouth | 4% | 82% | 15% | Broadcast |
Broadcast money, shared nearly equally by the league, is 81.5% of Bournemouth's income and 40.2% of Manchester City's, whose biggest stream is commercial at 49.0%. Shares are of the three named streams.
In plain terms A triangle, because the three shares must add to a hundred and only two are ever free. Each corner is all of one channel, the centre is an even split, and distance FROM a corner is how little that channel is used.Source · The Swiss Ramble, club accounts 2024/25
Wages against revenue, seven clubs
So the smallest earner leans hardest on shared money. Now look at what wages alone take from each club.
Bournemouth spent 86.8% of revenue on wages. The league average was 65%.
In plain terms Each bar is one club, sorted longest first. The reference line is the league average. A longer bar means more income going out.Source · The Swiss Ramble and Deloitte · 2024/25
The line falls as revenue rises
Wages are only part of a squad's cost, so add the transfer fees, spread over the contracts. Aston Villa already breaks UEFA's tighter 70% version, on The Swiss Ramble's reading.
How to read this — The fitted line slopes down, so clubs that earn more spend a smaller share. Dots high on the left are already spending more than they earn. The buttons switch the axes.
Each club's wages plus player amortisation, as a share of its 2024/25 revenue, from the accounts.
In plain terms Each dot is one club. Across is what it earned, and up is how much of that its squad cost. The rule's own measure also counts agents' fees and player-sale profit. So every official figure sits lower.Source · The Swiss Ramble, club accounts 2024/25, and UEFA
How to read this — The fitted line slopes down, so clubs that earn more spend a smaller share. Dots high on the left are already spending more than they earn. The buttons switch the axes.
Wages barely moved. Losses grew sevenfold.
Those dots are already over the line, but the losses came from elsewhere. Aston Villa's £17m profit came from selling its women's team and property rights for £114m, not from football.
Wages went from 64% to 65% while losses rose sevenfold. The accountants Deloitte put much of the £812m rise down to decisions about selling players and club assets.
In plain terms The headline numbers from the story, each with its unit and a one-line note.Source · Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance 2026 and The Swiss Ramble
The clubs voted this in themselves
Wages were not the problem, yet the new rule targets wages plus transfer fees. Here is how it arrived.
A rule change needs fourteen of the twenty clubs, and this one got them.
In plain terms The key events in order down a rail, with coloured dots flagging the pivotal moments.Source · Premier League, Deloitte, The Swiss Ramble
The IPL draws one line for ten
Enough clubs chose a share of themselves. A cap can be an amount instead, and you have seen that at a cricket auction.
The IPL cap is one amount for all ten. At the 2026 auction one franchise had ₹2.75 crore left and another ₹64.3 crore.
Source · ESPNcricinfo, IPL 2026 auction