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Chelsea Football Club’s holding company has posted a record pre-tax loss for a Premier League team, underlining the scale of the task at hand for its US owners and the wider struggles of English top-flight clubs to report profits.
Chelsea FC Holdings reported a pre-tax loss of £262.4mn in the financial year ended June 2025 despite revenues increasing to £490.9mn from £468.5mn a year earlier, according to a statement by the club on Wednesday.
This was the club’s second-highest revenue figure in history, boosted by higher broadcasting income thanks to finishing fourth in the league.
The losses are a blow for private capital firm Clearlake Capital and US financier Todd Boehly, who led the £2.5bn takeover of Chelsea from Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich in 2022.
“This is a record pre-tax loss for a Premier League football club,” said Kieran Maguire, associate professor in football finance at the University of Liverpool. “That’s significant in an era when clubs are trying to prove they are not just trophy assets, at a time when the government has introduced a football regulator.”
Chelsea expects to report revenues of about £700mn in 2025-26, according to a person close to the club, bolstered by its return to the lucrative Uefa Champions League and winning last summer’s Fifa Club World Cup. Chelsea was now profitable on an operating basis, the person added.
Chelsea is not alone among Premier League clubs in reporting heavy losses in the 2024-25 season. Tottenham Hotspur reported a pre-tax loss of £120.6mn; the holding company for West Ham United reported a pre-tax loss of £104mn; and Nottingham Forest’s parent company made a pre-tax loss of £71mn.
Chelsea sunk to the record loss despite making a £57.9mn profit from selling players on the transfer market.
The west London club said operating expenses had “risen markedly” due to its return to European football. A person close to Chelsea also pointed to non-cash adjustments and writedowns on the value of certain players, but more details are expected within the club’s accounts.
The pre-tax loss is wider than Manchester City’s prior record of £197mn in the 2010-11 season and Chelsea’s own £155.9mn deficit in the pandemic-hit 2020-21 financial year.
Chelsea had made a £128mn pre-tax profit in the year ended June 2024, boosted by the sale of its women’s team to another entity within the group. Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of social media website Reddit, took a minority stake in the women’s team in May 2025.
Under its new ownership, Chelsea has focused on signing younger players in order to have the ability to increase their value over time. The club has enjoyed success in patches, winning the Uefa Conference League and the Fifa Club World Cup last year, as well as returning to participate in this season’s Uefa Champions League.
However, the men’s team is sixth in the Premier League table, battling to qualify for Europe’s elite tournament next season. The club parted ways with former head coach Enzo Maresca in January after a poor run and appointed Englishman Liam Rosenior to replace him.