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3 hours ago
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After reviewing eight seasons’ worth of Women’s Super League clubs’ financial accounts, it seems appropriate to start by offering a sincere apology to any reader who has become accustomed to seeing the phrase “the big four” in Women’s Super League coverage in reference to Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United. Financially speaking, that is a myth. There has actually been no such thing in recent times. There has, in fact, been a big two: Arsenal and Chelsea.
On the pitch that quartet have lifted every major domestic women’s trophy since 2014 but, off it, the two London clubs have left the rest of the pack in their dust in regard to wages and turnover, together recording more revenue in 2024-25 than the rest of the division combined.
There are several other striking trends across the data. Namely, rapidly rising revenues and rapidly rising expenditure, as well as a heavy reliance on club owners to fund the sizeable losses. Cumulatively, WSL clubs have recorded post-tax losses of more than £111m when combining all of the figures available since the division switched to a winter calendar in the summer of 2017.
Resisting that pattern are Manchester United, who have recorded a profit of £1.34m since relaunching their senior women’s team in the summer of 2018. In contrast, Chelsea have lost more than £36m over the same timeframe, and there are four further clubs – Brighton and Hove Albion, Leicester City, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur – who have each lost eight-figure sums when adding up their losses across those years.
United, who this summer have made clear their intention to focus on youth development in an attempt to build long-term success, believing current levels of spending in the transfer market are unsustainable, are a unique case study. In the 2022-23 campaign, when they finished second, missing out on the WSL title on the season’s final day, their wages amounted to under 50% of their revenue, in a season when Manchester City, Tottenham and Brighton all spent more than 100% of their revenue on wages. This is not uncommon across men’s and women’s football. A recent report from Deloitte, for example, highlighted that 13 men’s Championship clubs spent more on wages than their revenue in 2024-25, with that division’s collective wage bill growing to more than £900m and to 96% of revenue.
Wages for elite women’s players are soaring – – on average across the WSL they quadrupled between 2019 and 2025. Revenues rose strongly over that timeframe too, with the largest chunk of matchday revenue growth coming at Arsenal, whose gate receipts were just £45,000 per season nine years ago and totalled nearly £6m in 2024-25. On average across WSL clubs, for whom data is available, wages rose by 28.2% between 2023-24 and 2024-25, while over the same period post-tax losses increased by more than 53%, albeit a large chunk of that can be apportioned to Chelsea’s purchase of their former home ground, Kingsmeadow, from their parent club for about £12m during 2024-25.
Chelsea – who won the league for a sixth straight year in 2024-25 – had a total wage bill that was more than five times larger than an Everton side who finished eighth in the WSL, and just under three times that of Manchester United, who finished third that season. Arsenal were the only other club, along with Chelsea, whose wage bill exceeded £10m. Both clubs recorded turnover that was around twice that of their Manchester rivals. Significantly, that came before their respective spending in the summer 2025 window, when Arsenal broke the £1m barrier to land the Canada winger Olivia Smith and Chelsea followed suit later that summer with the signing of Alyssa Thompson.
Overall, the WSL has had a 75% increase in agents’ fees year-on-year, according to data released by the Football Association, with Chelsea exceeding the £1m mark last season. In comparison, West Ham, who finished 10th in 2025-26, spent £97,000, while relegated Leicester spent less than a tenth of what Chelsea did.
Soon then there could be a new force in the WSL in the shape of London City Lionesses. Their wage bill for 2024-25, when they won promotion from the second tier, has not been made public, but their operating loss of £10.6m was more than 10 times their revenue of £902,000. That came before dramatic moves in the transfer market across the past three windows, which have included the signing of former Ballon d’Or winner Alexia Putellas.
As the WSL now gears up for the 2026-27 campaign – the first in which there are expected to be points penalties on the line for any teams whose player wage bills exceed a threshold of “80% of your revenue plus up to £4m of owners’ contributions” – the season ahead is one where the financial accounts will matter more than ever.
