Nottingham Forest lost a club record £71.1million in the 2024-25 financial year, even as revenue jumped over £200m for the first time.
Forest’s wage bill remained largely unchanged despite the club’s impressive seventh-place finish in the Premier League, but the club’s underlying loss-making had been building. In 2023-24, Forest made £10.1million ($13.4m at current rates) but that profit came after they had booked more than £100m in player sales. Without those, last season saw a return to a significant overall loss.
The 2024-25 results take rolling three-year pre-tax losses in NF Football Investments Limited, Forest’s parent company, to £130million. The number in the club-specific accounts differs slightly but is materially the same. Either figure exceeds the Premier League’s loss limit under its profit and sustainability rules (PSR), but clubs can deduct ‘good’ expenditure on infrastructure, academy and other similar investments.
When Forest breached PSR and were docked four points in 2023-24, they had just been promoted, so their loss limit was £61m. After three straight years in the top tier, their limit is the standard £105million figure. Forest’s three-year loss to the end of 2024-25 was similar to two years prior, but the extra year allowed meant the club did not fall foul of domestic regulations this time.
Compliance with UEFA’s financial rules, which Forest must adhere to having qualified for this season’s Europa League, is much less certain.
The Athletic had projected Forest would breach both UEFA’s football-earnings rule — similar to the Premier League’s PSR, but with a lower loss limit — and the squad-cost rule, which restricts clubs to spending 70 per cent of relevant income on transfer and agent fees and player wages.
Forest’s 2024-25 accounts do little to change those projections, and it seems likely the club breached each of the European governing body’s rules. When contacted by The Athletic, Forest did not provide a response. Punishments range from a monetary fine (for squad-cost rule breaches) to agreements with UEFA to restrict future losses (football-earnings rule). Unless they win this season’s Europa League, Forest won’t be in UEFA competition in 2026-27, making the latter less consequential in the immediate term.
Operating performance improved last season despite the worsening bottom line, albeit Forest still lost £57.1million on a day-to-day basis. Losing more than £1m a week at the operating level still pitched Forest’s underlying result as the eighth-best in the Premier League on most recently available figures, reflecting the turbulent nature of English club finances. However, many clubs with worse operating losses recover some of the deficit through player sales.
Forest managed that ably in the 2023-24 financial year, when the departures of Brennan Johnson, Moussa Niakhate and Orel Mangala (and, more curiously, Odysseas Vlachodimos) generated £100.5million in player profits, more than the club had managed in the previous two decades combined.
Last season saw a return to their average levels, with £15.9million in player sales generating just £7m in profit, which helps explain the huge overall loss, even as underlying numbers improved. Forest’s operating result has sat deep in the red for years, bottoming out at a £75.3m loss in 2023-24 before last year’s £18.2m improvement.
Multi-faceted revenue growth spearheaded that improvement. TV income at Forest leapt almost £30million after they finished 10 spots higher in the Premier League.
Commercial income rose significantly, too (by £9.4million, or a third). Likewise, gate receipts at the City Ground have more than doubled in the three years since promotion. Forest’s matchday income of £20.4million is the Premier League’s 12th-highest, roughly in line with where their average attendance sits. Plans to expand the club’s old home to 52,000 seats, two-thirds larger than its current capacity, were unveiled in December.
Forest’s turnover was 10th in the Premier League last year, up from third-bottom in the season immediately following promotion, a jump driven by the higher league finish. Every Premier League club outside the traditional ‘Big Six’ relies on broadcast income for more than half of their annual revenues. On-field and financial performance, at least at the top line, are much more closely linked than at clubs with huge commercial operations. That link served Forest well last season but also highlights the perils of potential relegation to the Championship, where TV income drops sharply.
While the bottom-line loss will generate attention, Forest’s miserly wage growth was impressive considering the size of last year’s improvement in league finish.
Forest had underperformed significantly in the 2023-24 season, finishing 17th with the division’s ninth-highest wage bill, but those sub-par results were flipped last season. They finished seventh with only the 10th-most expensive staff. The club’s wage bill of £168.3million, following only a one per cent increase in the year, left them firmly ensconced in the mid-table glut of clubs carrying wage bills between £155m and £176m.
Slowing wage growth and those record revenues meant the club’s wages-to-turnover metric fell to its lowest level in decades. In their 13 Championship seasons before promotion, Forest spent significantly more than 100 per cent of their income on wages. Even in the two past Premier League seasons, they hovered around the 90 per cent mark. Last year’s figure of 76 per cent was much healthier, though still above the 70 per cent threshold desirable for a football club.
Whether the improvement will continue this season is uncertain. By The Athletic’s estimate, Forest have earned around £17million from their journey to the Europa League quarter-finals, and could top £30m if they win it, helping offset the fall in Premier League prize money. Underlying profitability will hinge on how much Forest spend on their playing squad.
Squad costs extend beyond the wage bill, and player investment since promotion has been significant. In three Premier League seasons, Forest have spent £383.1million on signing players.
There are caveats to that, not least how everyone else in the Premier League spends a lot too. Forest’s squad at the end of last June had cost £308.6million to compile, but on the latest numbers, 12 Premier League squads cost more. Forest arrived in the top tier with a threadbare team on the back of 23 years in the English Football League. Big spending helped keep them up, even if it also incurred that four-point deduction.
Last season saw more modest spending at Forest, but things have ramped up again since. These latest accounts disclose a further £208.5m gross was spent between July and December 2025 — taking Forest’s outlay on incomings in four years well clear of half a billion pounds.
That sum includes the cost of their early-season managerial upheaval, and Forest’s separate accounts may have inadvertently disclosed how much the short-lived Ange Postecoglou marriage cost them to end.
The club accounts, signed in early October before Postecoglou’s departure, disclose post-June transfer and staffing change costs of £205.6million. NF Football Investments’ accounts, signed in December, mention that departure and have an updated figure of £208.5m. With little to no transfer business done in that time, the £2.9m difference would appear to relate to the cost of sacking Postecoglou; Sean Dyche was jobless before being appointed, so costs there should be minimal. Again, when contacted by The Athletic to clarify, Forest did not provide a response.
Underpinning all of this is continued funding from the club’s owners or, more specifically, Evangelos Marinakis. He owns 80 per cent of the club and is generally assumed to be its primary, or sole, funding shareholder. Last season saw a further £89million injected into the club as shares. Owner funding since Marinakis took over in May 2017 is nearing £250m.
The club has also taken on external lending in recent seasons, ostensibly to fund the largesse that has followed promotion to the Premier League. A £55million facility held with Rights and Media Funding Group was replaced and upsized in December 2024, with Apollo Management, a New York-based asset management company, lending Forest £80m over an initial three years.
The loan generates £7million in annual interest costs and can be extended by two years if all parties agree. Those debts are a drain on profitability, especially when you factor in how Forest are managing future instalments from Tottenham Hotspur’s £47.5m purchase of Brennan Johnson in September 2023.
Forest were due £32.5m of Johnson’s transfer fee between 2024 and 2026, but agreed a deal with Macquarie, a lender that would give Forest £28.2m in exchange for those remaining instalments. In effect, Forest paid £4.3m in interest costs to receive the Johnson cash up front.
Forest sought to receive the sale money from Brennan Johnson upfront (Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)
Several of Forest’s revenue streams increased last season, but the fact that Marinakis still provided significant sums illustrates how much Forest spent in the initial battle against relegation, and the ongoing cost of keeping up with the rest.
Revenue jumped, and there was impressive growth in matchday and commercial income, but without a Europa League in the trophy cabinet at the end of the season, TV money will fall back. Significant investment has been made in the squad in 2025-26, too.
Player sales top £50million this season, which shows Forest moving toward offsetting those large operating deficits. Yet that income stream is lower than might have been expected. The big sale of Anthony Elanga to Newcastle United was in part limited by a sell-on clause payable to Manchester United. Overall income on transfers of £52.5m between July and December pales in comparison to the more than £200m spent.
With a relegation battle still to be won, four managers employed in a single season and that stadium revamp to be funded, the costs of running Nottingham Forest are unlikely to dwindle.
Selling Morgan Gibbs-White last year would have helped financially, but the club deemed him too important to lose. Elanga was allowed to go, alongside others, and such sales have become crucial to Forest’s financial picture. It would be no surprise if another big departure occurs this summer.