The inaugural Leonard Curtis Football Finance Report – which includes a foreword written by former West Ham, Wolves and Norwich City player Matt Jarvis – was launched at an event at the National Football Museum in Manchester on 16th September attended by over 100 guests, including EFL club CEOs, sports finance leaders and media.
The new report features a first-ever Financial Performance Index for the Championship, ranking clubs based on their financial and sporting performance for the 2024/25 season (the most recent where financial data for the year is available).
The Index highlights the growing influence of parachute payments on a club’s financial position.
The top four revenue-generating clubs in 2024/25 were Leeds United, Sheffield United, Burnley and Luton Town – all in receipt of parachute payments. Those four teams alone (total £363.9m) made up almost 40% of the league's entire revenue (£920.3m) in 2024/25.
The report, authored by a team of sports business journalists and leading football finance academics, including Prof Rob Wilson and Loughborough University’s Dr Dan Plumley, warns that parachute payments are turning the Championship into a “two-tier competition”.
Parachute payment clubs more than four times as likely to win promotion
Data in the report shows that Championship clubs receiving parachute payments generated 2.8 times the average annual revenue of non-parachute clubs across the ten-year period from 2015/16 to 2024/25 (£59.7m vs £21.3m).
In the last two reported seasons (2023/24 and 2024/25), the average revenue advantage of clubs in receipt of parachute payments was as high as £62-66m per club.
The figures also suggest that clubs with parachute payments were more than four times as likely to win promotion as those without them (31.4% vs 7%) over the ten-year period.
In 2024/25, parachute clubs had an average +26.8-point advantage, with three of the four recipients finishing 1st (Leeds United), 2nd (Burnley) and 3rd (Sheffield United).
In addition, the report underlines the growing challenges the Championship faces around spending control. The data shows that while league revenues grew from £546.5m in 2015/16 to £920.3m in 2024/25, the combined wages-to-turnover ratio never fell below 91%.
In 2024/25, 13 of 23 reporting clubs spent more on wages than their entire turnover (Sheffield Wednesday did not file accounts for the year due to being in administration).
Speaking about the report, Dr Dan Plumley said: "The Championship is an incredible football competition, watched by fans all over the world. The financial growth of the league in the last decade is commendable, and the strength of the English football pyramid should never be underestimated.
“However, revenue growth has also brought with it cost pressures as many clubs in this league look to chase the riches of the Premier League.
“The report presents wage cost and profitability challenges with many clubs reliant on owner funding to ultimately remain solvent. The financial gap between the Championship and the Premier League remains an issue, with parachute payments continuing to be an exacerbating factor.
“The league itself remains strong, but for many clubs, financial sustainability remains an issue."
“A near £1bn league that cannot control its wage bill”
Alex Cadwallader, a director and insolvency practitioner at Leonard Curtis, said: “The overarching story to emerge from this report is the growing structural inequality in the Championship, alongside a financial model that remains difficult to sustain.
“The Championship is a near £1bn league that cannot control its wage bill. It is a financial paradox, with record revenues across the league, unsustainable spending and yet a promotion race increasingly tilted towards the richest clubs.”
Matt Jarvis calls for “more sustainable financial model” to preserve magic of the Championship
Former West Ham, Wolves and Norwich City player Matt Jarvis, who wrote the report’s foreword, commented: “My experience tells me that the greatest asset the Championship has is the competition itself. It is relentless. It is physical. It is unpredictable. It is emotional.
“The challenge for the clubs, the league and the wider game is to preserve everything that makes the Championship so special while finding a more sustainable financial model for the future.”
SCR mapped for 2024/25: 18 of 23 clubs fail the test
The Leonard Curtis Football Finance Report comes as the EFL implements new Squad Cost Rules (SCR), with each club’s spending on player and manager-related costs, including transfer fees, limited to 85% of its income.
Applying the new SCR retrospectively to 2024/25, the report’s analysis finds that 18 of 23 reporting clubs would have breached the 85% threshold, with 11 above 100%. Preston North End would have been at 160% and Oxford United at 152%.
When allowing for the maximum £16m owner equity injection permitted in one season under SCR, three clubs would have breached the limit (Burnley, Leeds United and Cardiff City).
Prof Rob Wilson, who is a professor of applied sport finance and co-author of the report, said: “While SCR should encourage clubs to live more closely within their means, because permitted spending is linked to revenue, higher-revenue clubs retain the ability to sustain much larger playing budgets.
“The rules may therefore improve sustainability without addressing the league’s competitive imbalance, with the Championship’s promotion race increasingly won in the balance sheet.”
Digital Footprint Index highlights opportunities across Championship
An additional feature in the Leonard Curtis Football Finance Report is a new Digital Footprint Index for the Championship, ranking the division’s current 24 clubs by total following across TikTok, Instagram, X, Facebook and YouTube.
The findings further underline the dominance of clubs with recent spells in the Premier League, with last season’s relegated trio of West Ham (18.28m followers), Wolves (12.55m) and Burnley (3.83m) holding 48.6% of the Championship’s following for 2026/27.
Prof Wilson said: “For the first time, we’re putting a measure on the digital value and opportunity across the Championship. The findings point to significant untapped potential if clubs can combine compelling stories with younger, international audiences to build brand value far beyond what traditional football fundamentals would predict.
“For clubs, investors and commercial partners, that creates a major opportunity to rethink how digital reach is built, valued and monetised.”
WSL2 going fully professional attracts new investors
Women’s football is also explored in the report, with analysis of the challenges and opportunities created by the WSL2 (formerly the Women’s Championship) becoming fully professional in 2025/26.
Expert contributor Gessica Howarth – vice-president and a founding member of Sphera Partners, a growth equity investment firm with a key focus on women’s sport – said: “Five years ago the question was whether a professional second tier could exist in England at all. It now exists, sets attendance records, commands transfer fees and is attracting investors who sit on the boards of some of the largest sports franchises in the world.
“The flip side is that where a women’s team still lives inside a men’s club, it is in practice discretionary spend. Professional standards have raised the cost of competing faster than the revenues have arrived, and the honest answer is that someone has to fund that gap for long enough for the commercial base to catch up.
“Most women’s teams still have minimal dedicated commercial resource of their own, and that is where the upside is being left on the table.”
“Championship is divided between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’”
The Leonard Curtis Football Finance Report also contains a message from Leonard Curtis CEO Dan Booth, who leads the PE-backed corporate restructure firm, which helps business owners and their advisers navigate complex, challenging situations every day.
“The cost of running a football club in a billion-pound league is not for the faint-hearted. We see this play out in this report,” he commented.
“The Championship is divided between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ in terms of revenue and the ability to spend on new players. While some have their sights set on the prize, others are simply trying to survive, and we can draw obvious parallels to owner-managed businesses currently fighting with everything they have got.”
He added: “Like football the business landscape is highly competitive. Companies must operate amid changing markets, rising costs, evolving technology and client expectations, while continuing to invest in their people and communities.
“A Championship football club is no different. Success never really comes from one individual or one moment. It is built through collective effort, strong foundations and the ability to make the right decisions.”
kitround partnership
In addition, the report profiles sports kit waste campaigners Wendy Carter and Adam Stevens, co-founders of kitround.
This data-driven circular ecosystem is designed to cut waste, support pre-gamed affordable kit redistribution, stimulate participation and keep kit out of landfill.
Leonard Curtis is partnering with the organisation to drive change for the better. Dan Booth said: “It’s a movement which is challenging the status quo and making a difference. We want to see it fly.”