The Championship is the most exciting league in football. Its finances tell a very different story.
Leonard Curtis has just published its first Football Finance Report on the EFL Championship, and the numbers are striking:
📉 Loss-making, every year. The league failed to post a combined pre-tax profit in any of the last ten seasons. In 2024/25, losses totalled £258.9m, an average of £11.3m per club.
💷 Wages outpace income. 13 of 23 reporting clubs spent more on wages than their entire turnover in 2024/25.
⚖️ New Squad Cost Rules, big gap to close. Applied retrospectively to 2024/25, 18 of 23 clubs would have breached the new 85% threshold.
🪂 Parachute payments distort the picture. Clubs receiving them generated 2.8x the revenue of those without, and were more than four times as likely to be promoted (31.4% vs 7%). In 2024/25, three of the four parachute clubs finished in the top three.
🌍 Digital reach is the opportunity. West Ham, Wolves and Burnley hold 48.6% of the division’s social following. Wrexham’s following is around five times what its fundamentals would predict, proof that a strong story can matter as much as spending power.
👩 Women’s football is attracting serious capital. WSL2 went fully professional in 2025/26, and investors are moving in.
The takeaway for me: financial resources shape the Championship, but the smartest clubs are finding ways to grow revenue without simply raising their risk.
Huge thanks to Leonard Curtis and authors Jonathan Dyson, Dr Dan Plumley and Prof Rob Wilson for the depth of analysis. Well worth a read:
🔗 www.leonardcurtis.co.uk/football-finance-report-2026
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