Chelsea have confirmed a pre-tax loss of £262.4 million for the 2024/25 financial year, the largest annual deficit ever recorded in the Premier League and the biggest in English football history.
The figure eclipses the previous record of £194.9 million posted by Manchester City for the 2010/11 season, meaning Chelsea’s loss is more than £65 million greater than any club has previously declared.
It is also a dramatic reversal from their 2023/24 accounts, when the club posted a profit of £128.4 million, a figure that was largely inflated by the sale of Chelsea Women to a parent company subsidiary for close to £200 million.
Per Ben Jacobs, the scale of the loss is not a reflection of Chelsea’s direction of travel. Revenue reached £490.9 million for the year ending June 2025, the second-highest in the club’s history, driven by their fourth-place Premier League finish, winning the UEFA Conference League, and their victory at the Club World Cup.
The problem is that costs grew faster. Increased operating costs were cited as the primary driver of the loss, and the figures also include fines, among them the £10.75 million Premier League sanction related to agent payments made under former owner Roman Abramovich.
The summer of 2025 brought record player sales, and while agent fees contributed to costs, Jacobs reports they are understood to be in line with the Premier League average as a percentage of each transaction.
Chelsea were deemed compliant with the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules for the three-year period ending 2024/25, which allows maximum losses of £105 million over three years, with certain expenditure such as infrastructure, youth development and women’s football excluded from the calculation.
Chelsea Women also posted a loss of £17.1 million despite generating £21.3 million in revenue, though matchday income hit a record £3 million as average league attendance exceeded 10,000 per game.
Looking ahead, revenue for 2025/26 is projected to reach approximately £700 million, which would represent a 50 per cent increase since the Clearlake-Boehly consortium took over in 2022.
Champions League football this season contributed roughly £80 million in prize money as the club reached the last 16.
