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The Premier League continues to set new records for revenue, but its struggle to make money does not look like ending any time soon. Nevertheless, the recent sale of a substantial minority stake in Liverpool, valuing the club at a chunky £5.5 bln, shows that the appetite to invest in football clubs remains undiminished. It also demonstrates that good money can be made from investing in the beautiful game, as this represented a massive return on the £300m that FSG paid to acquire Liverpool in 2010. This is partly because England’s top tier holds an enormous financial advantage over leagues in other countries, but the question remains whether the Premier League can ever be profitable, given its recent record of large losses. So let’s take a look at the trends over the last 10 years to see whether these shine any light on how the Premier League finances are developing. Indeed, there have been some interesting changes in 2024/25, the last season when clubs have published their accounts. Clearly, the figures for 2019/20 and especially 2020/21, when virtually all games were played behind closed doors, were significantly impacted by the COVID pandemic, but it’s been pretty much business as usual in the four seasons since then. Profit/(Loss) The bad news is that the overall pre-tax loss significantly widened from £164m to £792m, which is the Premier League’s worst result since the COVID-impacted 2019/20 season. This means that the Premier League has now lost money seven years in a row. Obviously, this was adversely impacted by the pandemic, which led to the huge losses reported during the COVID seasons with £992m in 2019/20 and £689m in 2020/2. However, it has not been much better since then, losing a hefty £2.3 bln in the last four seasons, leading to an annual average loss of £564m. That represents a dramatic worsening compared to the performance before the pandemic, e.g. it generated £786m profit in the four seasons up to 2018/19.