What Net Spend Gets Wrong About Football Club Sustainability
Net transfer spend and wage bills have become shorthand for financial responsibility in football. They dominate coverage, shape perception, and influence debate. Yet taken in isolation, neither metric offers a reliable picture of how well a club is actually being run.
It’s an attractive shortcut but easy often enough to mislead fans, media, and even decision-makers.
Today at The Business of Football Network, we are going to explore why this significant mistake is prominent when it comes to reporting financial health within a football club.
A common belief in football finance is that net transfer spend and headline wage bills are reliable indicators of whether a club is financially responsible. These figures are easy to understand, widely reported, and frequently used by media and supporters to draw conclusions about how “well run” a club is.
Net spend, in particular, has become a popular reference point because it offers a simple narrative: spend big and you’re reckless; keep spending low and you’re disciplined. Wage bills are often treated the same way lower wages are assumed to mean prudence, higher wages excess.
But this interpretation relies on surface-level numbers, not the underlying economics of how football clubs actually operate.
Why This View Is Misleading
The first issue is that net transfer spend ignores ongoing financial obligations. Transfer fees are rarely paid upfront & instead, they are typically spread over the length of a player’s contract through amortisation. This means the true annual cost of recruitment often sits quietly on the balance sheet long after the transfer window headlines fade. Deloitte’s Annual Review of Football Finance 2025 highlights that amortisation costs now represent a significant and persistent expense for many clubs, yet they are almost never captured in net spend discussions.
Wage figures, while more meaningful, also tell only part of the story. Deloitte’s analysis of Europe’s “big five” leagues shows that in the 2023/24 season, clubs spent approximately €13.1 billion on wages, with an average wages-to-revenue ratio of around 64%. That ratio matters because wages are largely fixed costs meaning that once contracts are signed, clubs have limited flexibility if revenues fall or performance declines. A club can appear stable one season and structurally exposed the next, even if its wage bill looks “reasonable” in isolation.
Recent examples underline this point. In 2024, Reuters reported that Arsenal posted a loss of £17.7 million despite generating record revenues, largely due to rising wage costs and investment commitments. The issue wasn’t reckless spending, but how costs grew relative to long-term planning and risk tolerance.
This is precisely why regulators are shifting focus away from headline metrics. The Premier League’s move towards a Squad Cost Ratio, as reported by Reuters, reflects an acknowledgement that sustainability is better assessed through the relationship between costs, revenue, and governance, rather than net spend alone.
Why Wage Bills Alone Don’t Equal Discipline
Wages are a critical metric but only when viewed in relation to revenue, contract structure, and flexibility.
Deloitte’s 2025 review shows that across Europe’s big five leagues, wages accounted for roughly 64% of revenue in 2023/24. That ratio is far more informative than the absolute wage number, because it reflects how exposed a club is if revenues fall.
