94% of English Clubs Loss-Making: IFR Report — SkimNews
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- The Independent Football Regulator (IFR) found 94% of clubs in England's top five leagues made losses in 2025-26, with chair David Kogan warning of 'a dangerous cocktail of rising debt and an over-reliance on owner funding'.
- Seventeen clubs across the EFL and National League would still be loss-making even if their players played for free, according to the 'State of the Game' report.
- Two-thirds of clubs could not survive more than 90 days without new owner funding, 29% could not last 30 days, and 68% have no contingency plan if their owner walks away.
- Transfer financing ballooned from £55m in 2020-21 to £779m in 2024-25 — a more than 14-fold rise — with £1.2bn of future transfer income already monetised across English football.
- The average Premier League club now earns 8.7 times the average Championship side (£341m vs £38.9m in 2024-25), up from a 2.7x ratio in 1992-93, with the big six accounting for 56% of top-flight revenues.
- Wage costs climbed 71% in League One and 63% in League Two between 2021-22 and 2025-26, with 20 clubs spending more than 80% of revenue on player wages and 17 of 18 EFL owners surveyed backing robust cost controls.
- The IFR now has the power to impose a new Premier League–EFL funding settlement if the leagues cannot agree, with Kogan saying 'this is the moment of addressing these problems before money starts to dry up.'
Why it matters: With the IFR now empowered to impose a Premier League–EFL funding settlement and a May 2030 deadline for clubs to meet 'appropriate financial resources' standards, 32 clubs sitting on just 30 days of cash face existential exposure if owner funding dries up — and parachute payments ballooning to £48.7m versus £5.3m for non-parachute Championship sides deepen the structural divide.
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