There are quite a few answers to this, and I won\u2019t pretend to suggest I\u2019ve covered them all here. But let\u2019s give some of the big ones airtime.<\/p>\n
The most obvious point is the relative lack of downside risk in the NFL. There are 32 teams in professional American football\u2019s top flight, and the competition\u2019s format means none of them can be relegated at the end of a season, no matter how badly they perform. That, from a financial perspective, provides an earnings floor that simply doesn\u2019t exist in football\/soccer.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t get much insight into the finances of the NFL other than from the annual accounts of the league\u2019s only publicly owned franchise, the Green Bay Packers, but even those help make clear why its franchises have such value placed on them. In the year to March 31, 2025, covering the 2024 season, the Packers received $432.6million (\u00a3328.8m) in national revenues \u2014 an equal share that all 32 teams receive. That is just the equally distributed amount; teams make more on top from local revenues, some of them substantially so.<\/p>\n
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The Green Bay Packers are the NFL\u2019s only publicly owned team (Logan Bowles\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
NFL teams also share part of ticketing revenue equally, and merchandise and licensing deals are also organised centrally. It all adds up to one thing that investors love: stability. The NFL\u2019s broadcast deals are huge in their own right but a big attraction to would-be team owners is the fact that they\u2019re also long-term. The NFL\u2019s current agreement runs to 2033, meaning its franchises can model revenues way down the line. Such long-term deals don\u2019t exist (yet?) in football.<\/p>\n
Alongside that earnings floor is a cost ceiling: the NFL\u2019s (hard) salary cap. That is rising steadily but is pegged to the league\u2019s revenue growth. In the 2024 season, the salary cap was $255.4million (\u00a3194.1m), or just 59 per cent of each team\u2019s share of national revenues. There are many other costs besides player salaries, but the league\u2019s financial model is clearly pointed toward limiting expenditure and making teams profitable.<\/p>\n
Scarcity value plays its part. The NFL has 32 teams \u2014 English football\u2019s top two divisions alone have 12 more than that. And the NFL only plays from September to February; as few as 17 games per team each season if they aren\u2019t among the 14 to make the Super Bowl play-offs. Football, it could be argued, is diminishing its worth by almost never taking a break and playing virtually year-round.<\/p>\n
The value of such a small cohort of teams also increases when some of the NFL\u2019s most important rules seek to prevent one or two sides from dominating the league for years on end. Think of how its annual college draft<\/a> gives the previous season\u2019s worst-performing team the chance to pick the best player among that year\u2019s intake from the university level. In the past eight years, five teams have won the Super Bowl. In the same period, only two clubs have been Premier League champions. In the eight NFL seasons from 2008 to 2015, eight different sides won the big prize.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s where the NFL is based. The United States has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, and most of the NFL\u2019s fans are concentrated there. That gives plenty of scope to charge top dollar for tickets, merchandise, whatever. Football, and the Premier League in particular, is watched by more people globally but, on average, those fans will have less money in their pockets than their NFL peers.<\/p>\n The Philadelphia Eagles are the reigning NFL champions (Patrick Smith\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n Has there been a new TV rights cycle starting this year in the Premier League that explains the spike in transfer spending by the clubs? \u2014 Papageorgeo90.<\/strong><\/p>\n Kind of. The new domestic TV rights cycle began this season and runs to the end of 2028-29. Across four years, it is worth \u00a36.7billion to the Premier League, an increase on the previous 2022-25 cycle, which generated \u00a35bn. A key caveat is that the old deal covered three years, whereas this one is over four. On a per annum basis, domestic rights growth has been pretty flat.<\/p>\n Broadcasters are also getting more bang for their buck. Up to 270 Premier League games will be broadcast live in the UK this season, a big increase on the previous campaign\u2019s 200. The domestic deal is generating around \u00a36.2million per game over the next four years, a massive drop on the \u00a310.2m per match the 2016-19 deal produced. Yet it still adds up to a similar amount of money in Premier League pockets: around \u00a31.7bn annually.<\/p>\n The greater drivers behind continued transfer spending are the Premier League\u2019s more lucrative overseas deals. These don\u2019t run along the same timeframes as the domestic contracts \u2014 for example, NBC\u2019s \u00a32billion deal to screen games in the U.S. spans six seasons from 2022-23 to 2027-28 \u2014 but combined domestic and international rights over the next three seasons results in a total figure of \u00a312.25bn, 17 per cent up on the \u00a310.5bn of 2022-25. Plenty more money in club pockets.<\/p>\n What is the one thing (the collapse of a broadcaster, a rule change, et cetera) that could burst the Premier League balloon? \u2014 Noel B.<\/strong><\/p>\n Broadcast rights have long underpinned the league\u2019s growth and, as mentioned above, continue to fuel club spending. If the bottom were to fall out of those, if a broadcast partner reneged on payments, say, and nobody else could pick up the slack, it would be a seismic shock.<\/p>\n Premier League clubs are overwhelmingly loss-making even with those huge broadcast revenues. The more they earn, the more they spend. Across the competition\u2019s first 32 seasons to the end of 2023-24, its member teams lost a collective \u00a34.4billion before tax. Only nine of those 32 years were profitable on a division-wide basis, the two most recent being in 2016-17 and 2017-18 and coming as a result of that huge 2016-19 TV rights deal, as massive revenue increases sped past cost growth. The latter soon caught up.<\/p>\n Clubs are massively reliant on TV money. Most have already committed that money due in future years, and more, on wages and transfer fees. In 2023-24, all bar the traditional \u2018Big Six<\/a>\u2019 sides relied on broadcasting income for over half of their total annual revenue.<\/p>\n Revenues from Sky Sports and other broadcasters are vital to Premier League clubs (Robbie Jay Barratt \u2013 AMA\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n How much does pure profit offset the books in PSR\/financial fair play positively? \u2014 Allen J.<\/strong><\/p>\n The monetary figure obviously differs with each deal, but the idea behind \u2018pure profit\u2019 (a phrase that has entered the footballing lexicon recently, but one I can\u2019t really stand, sorry) is that the player you\u2019re selling has no book value (eg, an academy graduate who cost his club nothing to buy). The asset value assigned to them is zero, so when you sell them, the proceeds are equal to the profit. Hence, pure profit.<\/p>\n That isn\u2019t strictly true, though.<\/p>\n If, for example, you\u2019ve got a really high-profile former academy player on your books, chances are they will have a book value. Harry Kane didn\u2019t cost Tottenham Hotspur anything when he joined them as a kid, for example, but you can be sure there were some chunky agent fees involved each time he renewed his contract with them after turning professional, and those payments are \u2018capitalised\u2019 and form part of a player\u2019s book value. OK, it will still be a lot less than the book value of a \u00a360million signing or whatever, but the idea that the entire sales proceeds will be booked as profit might not be wholly accurate.<\/p>\n One of the big criticisms of PSR is that it encourages (some would even say forces) clubs to sell their current or former academy players. There\u2019s some truth to that as it makes it easier to generate profits when the guy leaving has little to no book value, but if a club are in desperate need of profit to comply with the rules, then it\u2019s a result of their own previous decision-making.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also not like selling an academy player for \u2018pure\u2019 profit will automatically generate more money than another sale.<\/p>\n Take the hypothetical situation where Club A has received a \u00a315million bid for Academy Graduate X, who they don\u2019t really want to sell. They\u2019ve also got Player Y, signed for \u00a350million three years ago and with two years left on his contract, for whom they\u2019ve received a \u00a335m bid. Player Y\u2019s book value is \u00a320m, so accepting the bid would recognise \u00a315m profit \u2014 the same as if they sold Academy Graduate X.<\/p>\n Of course, to the outside world, it looks like they\u2019ve taken a \u00a315million hit on Player Y, but in this instance, there\u2019d be no financial rules-based incentive to sell Academy Graduate X instead. All of which is to say: clubs aren\u2019t without choice in these matters.<\/p>\n It\u2019s for this reason that some of the complaints about \u2018having\u2019 to sell academy players are a bit disingenuous. Clubs don\u2019t have to. They choose to, because they\u2019ve got themselves into a position where they need to generate profit (and reduce losses) quickly. Selling a player is the fastest way to do that; selling an academy player with little to no book value is the most efficient.<\/p>\n What new PSR\/FFP rules would The BookKeeper bring in or change (and change to what)? \u2014 Kier Do you have an opinion or gut feeling that PSR in the Premier League, in its current framework, must change?\u00a0\u2014 Max M.<\/strong><\/p>\n With the increasing noise, can you see these rules changing anytime soon? I think that at least the \u00a3105million loss figure (across three seasons) needs to be adjusted for inflation. \u2014 Jamie S.<\/strong><\/p>\n Would you \u2014 and if so, how would you \u2014 change PSR around homegrown players to encourage clubs to nurture and retain their young talent? \u2014 Dan S.<\/strong><\/p>\n Quite a few similar questions here, so we\u2019ve grouped them.<\/p>\n Something needs to change, and a redistribution of wealth within the game (not just the Premier League) would be a huge one. That\u2019s not really specific to PSR, it\u2019s a much broader shift. More prize money going to the better teams is antithetical to fair sporting competition. Unfortunately, reversing that would be a pretty radical suggestion, and it won\u2019t happen any time soon, not least because club owners shelling out billions to buy and then invest in their team won\u2019t happily give up the advantages of being among the rich sides.<\/p>\n If we ignore that egalitarian dream and just look at improving the system, and are cognisant of the potential legal issues that would arise (and I don\u2019t claim the expertise to argue them one way or the other), one immediate improvement would be to implement a hard salary cap. Unmooring spending limits from revenues would make for greater competitive balance and better reward good management. There\u2019s a fair argument that it would also cause some \u2018big\u2019 clubs to rethink things and not just throw good money after bad.<\/p>\n If we stick with loss limits, they should be reduced rather than increased. If the idea is sustainability, it makes little sense to say clubs can lose more money. People point to the rising costs of wages and transfer fees as a reason to increase loss limits, but those continue to rise because teams continue to choose to spend their money in that way. It\u2019s not something they have no control over, and that\u2019s proven by the fact that wages stagnated in the Premier League in 2023-24 for the first time in a long time. That it came after a season in which PSR bared their teeth can\u2019t have been a coincidence.<\/p>\n European football governing body UEFA\u2019s allowable loss limit is less than the Premier League\u2019s, so lowering wages has already happened at continental level, and its squad-cost rule is directly targeted at what teams spend on players. The Premier League has had its own squad-cost rule in place last season and this season, but each time it has been \u2018in shadow\u2019; in other words, clubs track against it but there are no repercussions if they exceed the limit.<\/p>\n People often say imposing spending limits in the Premier League will see its players flock abroad, but the reality is hardly any clubs outside England could afford the wages that would still be offered here, even under a salary cap. Some would leave, but Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain can only sign so many players. With the Saudi Pro League in recent years, we\u2019ve also already seen that the number who are happy to move elsewhere solely for the money on offer is limited.<\/p>\n Ivan Toney joined Al Ahli in the Saudi Pro League last year (Yasser Bakhsh\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n A big problem for the Premier League is that the clubs effectively govern themselves; new rules must be agreed by them. The hope is that the new independent football regulator<\/a> will shift the balance and implement rules unhampered by self-interest. I worry it won\u2019t happen, though.<\/p>\n Moving away from a loss-based rules framework to one focused on cost control would help clubs retain young talent. There\u2019s much less incentive to sell an academy player, or anyone really, if profitability matters less. That\u2019s a little more the case with UEFA\u2019s squad-cost rule, where player profits over the past 36 months are prorated to a single year, meaning it\u2019s less easy to find an immediate fix. But there\u2019s still some\u00a0incentive to do it.<\/p>\n Alternatively, you could provide direct incentives to retain club-trained players. If our hypothetical hard salary cap comes in, teams could be given a higher budget if a percentage is assigned to homegrown talents. Even under the current system, there could be tweaks made to make it more attractive to keep and play your own academy stars. The rules already allow youth-programme-related expenditure to be deducted, so they could be extended to wage allowances.<\/p>\n How are Premier League top clubs able to spend over \u00a3200million every season yet they pay high wages? Even if you consider amortisation, wouldn\u2019t you have values carried forward from previous seasons\u2019 transfers? \u2014 Alex K.<\/strong><\/p>\n You\u2019ve touched on a really important point that often gets brushed over in our PSR-focused world.<\/p>\n It\u2019s often said player sales provide an immediate boost to the bottom line, which they do (provided the move is profitable), whereas transfer fees don\u2019t need to be worried about half as quickly. That\u2019s sort of true, but it isn\u2019t like those costs never fall due. Just as clubs have to pay off fees even if they use future instalments (and that\u2019s why we\u2019re seeing transfer debt in the Premier League surge), so they must prepare for the hit to their bottom line in future years. Under PSR, player sales stay in a club\u2019s calculation for three years, but players are regularly signed on four- or five-year deals.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2198619639.jpg\")
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