According to a report from UEFA, Chelsea suffered the largest pre-tax loss in English football history between 2024 and 2025.
Chelsea booked the highest pre-tax loss in English football history in the 2024-25 season, per data released by UEFA.
The European Club Finance and Investment Landscape report, issued annually by the governing body, includes the 10 clubs with the highest losses in a given season.
Last season, the west London club finished either at the top or bottom of that group; however, the magnitude of Chelsea’s defeat stands out. The team ran a pre-tax deficit of €407 million (£342 million) in their third full season under Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly’s ownership consortium. Only Barcelona’s €555 million deficit in 2020-21 has ever been greater than that in European football. That year was impacted by both the Covid-19 pandemic and Joan Laporta’s return to the presidency, and the Catalan team chose to record significant one-time expenses in that financial year.
Since UEFA’s report does not provide complete information about each club’s finances, it is unclear how the record loss was made up exactly. The Athletic attempted to get in touch with Chelsea but received no response. As a result of declining revenues and significant cost increases, Chelsea has experienced significant operating losses in recent years, exceeding £200 million in each of the previous three seasons.
According to a source with knowledge of the club’s business dealings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships, Chelsea’s significant loss last season, like Barcelona’s, was caused by significant accounting entries that did not involve cash. According to the source, these included write-offs of player value and write-offs of other assets, both of which occurred when Chelsea deemed the player’s book value unlikely to be recovered and impaired that value in their books. The make-up of those assets is unknown.
The source also mentioned one-time cash items that hurt Chelsea’s numbers in 2024 and 2025. Among these was the €31 million (£27 million) fine imposed by UEFA after Chelsea was found to have violated two of the organization’s financial regulations last year. According to the same source, neither the club’s underlying operating performance nor its future financial situation were reflected in the enormous deficit. Several high-cost, one-time items were booked into the same financial reporting period, indicating that the previous season reflected a tidying up of historical issues.
Chelsea’s transactions that fall outside of UEFA’s and the Premier League’s respective financial regulations have made it more difficult to track the club’s recent financial results. The most high-profile of those included the internal sale of the club’s women’s team, and similar intragroup transactions covering two hotels and a car park.
But UEFA also applies more stringent rules when it comes to player trading. The governing body requires that clubs exclude deals which it deems akin to grossed up player swap deals, a category that Chelsea’s signing of Omari Kellyman from Aston Villa in June 2024, with Ian Maatsen going the other way, fell into.
Additionally, similar to the Premier League this time around, clubs were prohibited from amortizing a player’s transfer fee over a period of more than five years following a rule change prior to the 2023–24 season. Chelsea regularly sign players up to contracts longer than that, meaning there is a divergence between the amortisation figure — and thus the overall profit or loss figure — presented in their accounts and what is submitted to football’s governing bodies.
All of which is to say that Chelsea’s annual accounts may well show a different, lower loss than that detailed in the latest UEFA report. However, the latter is the relevant figure for European financial regulatory purposes. So, will Chelsea be penalized? Even after we deduct for allowable costs on youth teams and the like, Chelsea’s rolling three-year loss for UEFA purposes was €622 million (£528 million), an enormous sum that far exceeds the €60 million loss limit imposed by UEFA’s Football Earnings rule.
However, it should not result in harsher penalties for the club. Chelsea’s Football Earnings deficit in 2024–25 could be kept within “the projected deficit submitted in the business plan,” according to a settlement agreement reached with UEFA last summer. To put it another way, the terms of the settlement agreement would be fulfilled if the loss remained at the level Chelsea indicated and agreed upon with UEFA. Sources say this was the case.
On the domestic front, The Athletic has previously estimated Chelsea could have lost £300million pre-tax in 2024-25 without breaching the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR). Although the loss presented for domestic PSR purposes may differ from the club’s UEFA submission, the figure outlined here would be higher than that. In any case, sources claim that Chelsea did not violate PSR in 2024 and 2025. As a result, despite the fact that their loss in the Premier League submission was still evidently substantial, Chelsea remained within their rolling loss limit of three years.
The club is confident that it is operating in accordance with the terms of the settlement agreement and other financial rules, citing improved underlying performance and, among other things, significant player sales, according to that above-mentioned source, speaking with knowledge of Chelsea’s affairs. Last summer, Chelsea made around £300 million from transfers. According to the same source, Chelsea’s significant loss in 2024–25 is the result of a period of business rationalization and not indicative of Chelsea’s future finances. The expectation is that Chelsea will abide by financial regulations at home and abroad, helped by rising revenues this season, not least as a result of returning to the Champions League.
According to the Athletic, Chelsea has already received £80 million in prize money from the competition. That settlement agreement stipulates that Chelsea can only lose €5 million in Football Earnings during the current 2025-26 season. Increased revenues — commercial performance has and should continue to improve, especially now a front-of-shirt sponsor has been found — alongside those player sales will help the club towards that goal and, as mentioned, the expectation is Chelsea will be compliant.
The most recent UEFA report reveals a wage-to-revenue ratio of 76%, which is significantly higher than is typical for one of football’s “bigger” clubs. The £231 million in operating expenses that the report details for Chelsea last season reflect that size. Those and the club’s wage bill reported to UEFA combined for a total cost of around £605m, against revenue of just £491m — and that is before including the costs of amortising player transfer fees, which stood at £190m in 2023-24 and will be higher in UEFA submissions. While the record pre-tax loss was worsened by one-off items, Chelsea still ran a large operating loss last season.
When the club’s accounts are filed at the end of the month, we won’t have a clearer picture of the finances for 2024–25.
