Liverpool’s return to the summit of the Premier League last season dovetailed with a return to profitability, and the club’s 2024-25 financials, publicly released last Thursday, unveiled the platform from which they launched last summer’s £400million transfer splurge.
The champions booked a £15.2m profit, their best financial result since the 2018-19 season and a first profitable year in three. Revenue shot up £89m and 15 per cent to £702.7m, easily a club record, making Liverpool only the second English club, after Manchester City, to top £700m in annual turnover.
Spending on players for Arne Slot’s first season at the helm was minimal. Liverpool’s net spend fell below £50m, and the bulk of that went on Jeremie Frimpong, signed in May 2025, before the end of the club’s accounting period but, to all intents and purposes, a 2025-26 signing.
In what was Fenway Sports Group’s (FSG) 15th full season in charge of Liverpool, the club won the league and booked its seventh pre-tax profit. Across FSG’s reign, Liverpool’s cumulative pre-tax position sits £12.7m in the black. It perfectly encapsulates their sustainability-focused approach.
And it laid the groundwork for a transfer window like no other on Merseyside.
At the top line, Liverpool’s revenue grew across all three income streams — matchday, broadcast and commercial — something only Arsenal could mirror last season among the Premier League’s ‘Big Six’. On a club accounts basis, they were England’s highest-earning team last year, though Manchester City’s situating as part of the multi-club City Football Group (CFG) blurs matters. According to figures provided to and then disclosed by UEFA, City’s revenue in 2024-25 was £13m ahead of Liverpool’s.
The most pronounced leap came in Liverpool’s TV earnings, unsurprising given the way these are generally tethered to on-field performance. Winning the Premier League generated an extra £3.9m in prize money, but of far greater consequence was returning to the Champions League.
Liverpool’s UEFA prize money earnings jumped from £23m in 2023-24 to £82.5m last season and, per The Athletic’s estimations, they’ve already earned a smidgen more than that this season. Overturning their deficit against Galatasaray next week would take Champions League takings to around £95m in 2025-26, close to their record UEFA haul of £101.7m when they were finalists in 2021-22.
More TV money drove two-thirds of the overall £89m revenue leap, but there was solid growth elsewhere too.
The completed expansion of the Anfield Road End in the middle of 2023-24 paid clear dividends last season, with gate receipts rising to £115.6m. Liverpool are one of only four English clubs whose matchday income exceeds £100m, though they do rank the lowest among those four: Tottenham Hotspur earn around £10m more at the gate, while Arsenal and Manchester United each top £150m.
Those Anfield works have helped shift Liverpool’s matchday income up by £31.4m (37 per cent) since 2018-19, and though that’s a noteworthy rise all of the three sides mentioned above have grown more in that time. So too has Newcastle United’s gate income, albeit from a much lower base. Liverpool rank eighth in Europe in both overall matchday income and the amount generated per home match. The latter figure of £4.3m trails Arsenal, Spurs and United but is noticeably higher than Chelsea (£3.1m) and Manchester City (£2.9m).
Matchday revenues at Anfield passed the £100m mark (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)
Slower growth, but still growth, took place commercially. Liverpool earned £323.5m there, and the prior year overtaking of Manchester United was reversed. Even so, Liverpool’s commercial revenues still rank third in England, sixth in Europe and are likely to continue growing: a new kit supplier deal with Adidas began in August 2025, and is expected to trump earnings from the previous agreement with Nike.
Income from that Nike deal actually fell last season, partly explaining the slowing commercial income growth. Kit and merchandising revenues dropped from £127.3million to £124.4m and, while the Adidas deal is also incentivised and can fluctuate according to sporting performance and global sales, the expectation is it will prove a better earner for Liverpool moving forward. Even with reduced income last season, Liverpool were one of only six clubs in Europe — alongside Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, United and Arsenal — to earn over £100m in 2024-25 from their kit deal.
Revenues at Anfield are healthily growing, then, though falling out of the Champions League next season would deplete TV money. The size of the prize pot in UEFA’s premier club competition is hard to overstate: £2.467billion is distributed to competing clubs each season, versus just £565m to Europa League teams.
Liverpool have been well managed and would be able to stand the hit, though like several others reliable Champions League participation has become key to their business model, not least because of rising running costs. When they last missed out in 2023-24 it coincided with a club record pre-tax loss, even as overall revenues actually grew that season.
Liverpool’s wage bill was always going to rise once it became clear last season would be a successful one, with the attendant bonuses of winning the Premier League and a return to Champions League football ensuring a jump on 2023-24.
Yet the size of the leap was significant. The club’s previous wage bill had included £9.6m in severance payments made to Jurgen Klopp and his staff; strip those out and Liverpool’s wage bill rose by over £50m last season.
At £427.7m, it marked the first time the club’s salary costs had topped £400m, and they became only the third English club to do so (behind Manchester City and Chelsea, though the latter’s £404m in 2022-23 included notable termination payments). Liverpool have been good payers for a while now, ranking in the top two wage bills in England in four of the past six seasons.
Liverpool have the second highest wage bill in the Premier League (Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images)
Last year saw a big leap, and players doubtless enjoyed financial fruits from that Premier League title, but it is worth remembering a club’s wage bill spans well beyond the field. That’s especially the case at Anfield: in 2024-25 they employed 772 administrative staff, more than double the league average.
Splits of wage bills aren’t provided by clubs but we know, from an old UEFA report, that in 2022-23 Liverpool’s non-playing wage bill totalled £109million. Since then, administrative staff numbers have increased by 10 per cent. Players are very well paid at Anfield, and last summer’s activity has surely confirmed this season’s wage bill will increase again, but at a club their size the cost of non-playing staff is significant.
Growing commercial activity will only see those staffing costs rise higher. Liverpool recently announced their first standalone club store in London, a development they said represented “a landmark moment in the club’s continued retail expansion”. The store will open in May.
Moreover, last year was a boon for senior staff. Combined pay to directors rose to £4.2m, but that was only a £341,000 increase on a year earlier. Far higher was the leap in pay to key management personnel below board level. That rose from just £595,000 in 2023-24 to £15.5m last season, much of it in the form of share-based payments.
Those payments are linked to the equity value of FSG overall (i.e. not just Liverpool), and across directors and other key management the club incurred £9.7m in share-based payment expenses last season, or nearly half of the £19.7m compensation paid to the group in total in 2024-25. Of the overall £51.2m rise in the wage bill, £14.9m (29 per cent) was attributable to key management and directors.
Despite all that, Liverpool’s wage growth was marginally outstripped by revenue, meaning wages as a proportion of revenue fell, from 61.3 per cent to 60.9 per cent. That’s healthy enough, though high compared to peers: Spurs, Manchester United and Arsenal all boast lower percentages.
So too do Manchester City, though only if we take the wage bill presented in the club’s standalone accounts. As mentioned, City’s presence within CFG means the figures disclosed in the club’s accounts differ to those provided to UEFA for regulatory purposes.
UEFA require clubs to include everything within a ‘reporting perimeter’ in their financial submissions, regardless of where transactions fall relative to statutory entities. The requirement seeks to ensure all of the income and costs relating to a club are captured and City, as the crown jewel in a multi-club group, are directly impacted.
Using those figures, City’s wages to revenue last season sat at 65 per cent which, like Chelsea, was worse than Liverpool. Moreover, while Liverpool’s wage bill last season looks the largest in England when comparing club accounts, in reality it still trailed City’s — by over £40m.
City’s wage bill has now been the highest in England for the past seven seasons, and was the highest in Europe in 2024-25. In that context, Liverpool winning the title twice — and trailing City by just a point on two more occasions — is impressive. Of course, it also isn’t like Liverpool are scrimpers themselves; last season’s wage bill was over £50m ahead of the third-highest payers, Chelsea.
One area limiting profitability at Anfield was something now seen almost across the board: an increase in operating costs. Liverpool’s operating expenditure jumped £19m (11 per cent) last season, and at £185.6m sits near the top of the Premier League, having risen £53m in just three years.
The leap is not so stark as the one seen at Arsenal, as The Athletic recently detailed in depth, but it still shows the huge cost of operating an elite football club. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, operating expenditure gobbled up a fifth of Liverpool’s revenue. Now, the proportion is over a quarter.
The club cited the added costs of operating an expanded Anfield and inflationary pressures as the reason behind the jump, and the cost of playing more games and travelling further is evidently having an impact too.
Even so, such costs further underline why clubs like Liverpool are so keen on accessing the Champions League bounty. Dropping into the Europa League won’t reduce the number of games to be hosted and travelled to but will dramatically reduce the money earned from competing.
Liverpool lost £29.5m at the operating level in 2024-25, which sounds bad until you realise it’s currently the fifth-best pre-player sale result in the Premier League. That underlying loss halved from a year earlier, buoyed by Champions League income, but it also shows the risks of missing out. Costs fall more slowly than income.
Furthermore, Liverpool’s overall £15.2m pre-tax profit would have been lower were it not for £12.9m in one-off income derived from ‘an insurance settlement relating to historic loss of earnings’. The Athletic has not been able to determine what the sum relates to.
Last summer’s whopping transfer spend opened eyes far beyond Merseyside, with plenty wondering just how the club could afford to commit such a huge amount on new players. Liverpool’s latest accounts lay bare its extent: a net transfer spend of £229m between June 1 and the deadline day capture of Alexander Isak.
That figure doesn’t include the signing of Frimpong, so in reality Liverpool’s summer outlay was even greater. Yet it’s also testament to the foundations laid under FSG that Liverpool were in a position to go as big as they did.
2024-25 showcased a recurrent theme at Anfield, whereby transfer spending waned. Before Frimpong’s arrival, Liverpool spent scarcely anything. Last season’s net spend of £44.4m was comprised almost entirely of his signing and the undisclosed but no doubt sizeable costs involved in renewing the contracts of Virgil van Dijk and Mohamed Salah.
A ‘down’ year in terms of new signings allowed a few things to happen. First, the improved financial performance already outlined set the club up with a more solid revenue platform. Second, it allowed for a further reduction in Liverpool’s transfer debt, which was already relatively low.
Even as their committed transfer spend last season was small, Liverpool still used a net £59.5m of their available cash on transfer instalments. Doing so helped bring that transfer debt down even further.
The signing of Alexander Isak was part of a summer transfer splurge enabled by modest spending the season before (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Based on most recently available figures, Liverpool’s net transfer debt of £54.9m at the end of May — so even after the arrival of Frimpong — was the fifth-lowest in the Premier League.
By contrast, Manchester City’s big spending last January and before the Club World Cup left net transfer debt at £327.6m at the end of last June; Manchester United’s figure was £314m at the end of December 2025; and Spurs owed £279.3m at last check (June 2024). Even Arsenal, who had their own ‘down’ year in 2024-25 to facilitate a big summer this season, owed £70m more on transfers than Liverpool at the end of May 2025.
The £229m net spend after that date will have seen Liverpool’s transfer debt increase, but the point here is they had given themselves plenty of scope for that. There’s no set limit or good level of transfer debt for clubs — United and City can meet £300m-plus liabilities much more readily than, say, Bournemouth or Brentford — but relative to their peers Liverpool entered last summer with far smaller future payments needing to be met.
Notable too is how much lower the net spend figure is than the over £400m the club paid out for new players. Last summer saw Liverpool’s player sales shift up noticeably, to the point that 2025-26 is their second-best season on record for player sale profits, only trumped by 2017-18, when Philippe Coutinho was sold to Barcelona.
Making money from player trading hasn’t been central to the FSG business model, but there are clear signs of that changing. Just as many clubs are realising the need to make money from transfer fees which trend ever higher, so at Anfield. 2024-25’s £53.3m profit on player sales was key to turning a profit and is, in fact, only trumped by this season, the Coutinho year and 2014-15 (£54.2m, when Luis Suarez was sold, again to Barcelona). Last season’s sum included the €10m (£8.4m) extracted from Trent Alexander-Arnold even as his Liverpool contract only had a month left to run.
Key here is how Liverpool’s player sales figure this season stems from selling multiple players for good money — Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez and Jarell Quansah, to name just three — as opposed to the relative one-off nature of those previous seasons.
Intermittent big player sales have helped avoid the need for Liverpool to lean on FSG for funding over the years, so it’s a little paradoxical that owner money has started flowing in right as the club starts showing itself to be a better seller of players.
After seven straight years of no or negative owner funding, 2024-25 was the second season running in which FSG provided cash. The amount put in last season — £19.2m — was significantly lower than the previous year’s £127.3m, but people with knowledge of the matter, speaking anonymously to protect relationships, have confirmed to The Athletic that it came from the same source.
Dynasty Equity bought a small stake in FSG in September 2023, resulting in that £127m flowing to Liverpool, and it was from Dynasty that last year’s investment came too.
Interestingly, Liverpool didn’t actually need it. Cash outflows at the club have been high in recent seasons, not least because of those Anfield Road End works, but their completion reduced that strain last season. Capital expenditure dropped from £60m to £19m.
As a result, Liverpool’s free cash flow — cash generated after covering operating costs and capital spending, like that on transfers — rebounded from £113m in the red to £24.7m in the black, the first time it has been postive in three seasons.
In fact, Liverpool’s free cash flow in 2024-25 was the best in the Premier League, at least on the figures we have available. Clubs are increasingly turning to extra funding, be it from owners or elsewhere, to cover cash outflows driven by both operating losses and big net payments on transfers. Liverpool, by contrast, didn’t actually need the money provided to them by FSG last season. They were one of only three Premier League clubs whose most recent accounts didn’t display negative free cash flow (with the caveat that Manchester City don’t produce a cash flow statement).
Instead, a chunk of money went toward paying down existing external debt. Liverpool’s borrowings under their revolving credit facility (RCF) fell from £116m to £69m, in turn ensuring a reduction in cash interest payments (down from £8.7m to £6.7m). That Dynasty/FSG funding came in as a loan, so the owners are now owed £217.9m but, importantly, the sum is interest-free.
Even so, there are signs external lending will be relied upon more going forward. Liverpool have sharply increased their borrowing capacity in recent seasons.
Throughout FSG’s ownership, the club has had access to RCFs, in effect, easy-access borrowings. The maximum lending available under the RCF stood at £200m for five years, until September 2024, when the club refinanced at a lower interest rate and upped the limit to £350m. As mentioned above, only £69m of that had been drawn down at the end of May 2025, leaving Liverpool within easy reach of a further £281m if they choose to access it.
Of course, such lending doesn’t come free. Liverpool pay a nominal interest rate of 5.74 per cent on amounts drawn down from the RCF meaning a theoretical full drawdown would incur interest costs of £20m per year.
No drawdowns are disclosed between June and late September, when the accounts were signed, but The Athletic understands Liverpool view the RCF as a resource upon which they can lean as and when cashflow requirements arise. By nature, RCFs are flexible, allowing both lending and repayment with relative ease.
While unknown, full usage of the facility this season looks unlikely. Other than during the Covid-19 pandemic, when they briefly maxed it out, Liverpool have maintained significant headroom under their RCFs, with £50m of extra borrowing capacity available at every financial year end under FSG’s ownership, except in 2020.
Upsizing the facility implies an intent to use it more, and the transfer fees now committed to will clearly need to be funded at some stage, but any fears of Liverpool being unable to foot those bills should be allayed. That £281m in available RCF capacity pretty much covers both the existing net transfer debt and the £229m spent since the end of May.
Football moves quickly. A year ago, Liverpool sat on the cusp of a 20th league title, and The Athletic detailed a club with booming revenues and, at least by the standards of modern English football, gleaming financials.
Now, Arne Slot’s side find themselves in a battle to retain Champions League football. English clubs’ dominance of UEFA coefficient rankings mean it’s highly likely the Premier League’s top five this season will again qualify for 2026-27’s league phase, but even that might not be sufficient for Liverpool. They currently sit sixth, tied on points with fifth-placed Chelsea.
Missing out would hamper next season’s income but, in the immediate term, this year looks another healthy one in a financial sense. That £105m in player profits should offset most if not all of the transfer fee amortisation costs brought onboard last summer, and further improving revenues look likely — especially if Galatasaray are overcome on Wednesday. Of course, how much Liverpool’s TV money grows in 2025-26 will also depend on where they finish in the Premier League.
Impacting the 2025-26 bottom line, too, though, is the death of Diogo Jota. Liverpool’s latest accounts detailed at least part of the financial impact of the Portuguese’s passing last July, outlining how this year’s figures will include the full impairment of Jota’s existing book value on the day he died. £14.4m will hit Liverpool’s current year figures in that respect, around double what Jota’s amortisation charge would otherwise have been, given he had two years remaining on his contract. Not disclosed is the cost of paying out the remainder of that contract to Jota’s family, something Liverpool confirmed they would do last summer.
And if all that sounds grimly corporate in light of genuine human tragedy, the club acknowledged as much in their accounts, stating: “While this financial assessment is necessary for financial reporting processes, it does not reflect the immeasurable personal and professional loss experienced by the club.”
That loss has had an undoubted yet immeasurable impact on the current season, one often forgotten amid the rush to opine on a club which remains, in every sense, one of football’s largest.
On the pitch may not be going as planned but off it, as we wrote a year ago, Liverpool have been run remarkably by FSG, particularly when up against some rivals for whom sustainability is a foreign concept.
Note how neither the Premier League nor UEFA’s financial rules make an appearance in this analysis. Liverpool been well clear of the troubles others have flirted with.
Missing out on the Champions League this spring would put a dent in that sustainability, but Liverpool, perhaps more than any of football’s ‘big’ clubs nowadays, don’t really operate in the short term.
Last summer’s largesse was years in the making and had eyes fixed on the future. One underperforming season won’t see FSG rip things up and start again.