English Premier League clubs’ wage bill rose by 15% to £2.9bn in the 2017-18 season, hitting profits – despite them making record revenue during the campaign.
Having five teams each reaching at least the last 16 of the Champions League helped push revenue to £4.8bn, according to analysis from Deloitte.
That brought profit before tax down to about £400m for the clubs, a reduction from about £500m a year earlier.
Tim Bridge, a director in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, said: “The increased wage expenditure was expected given the busy transfer market in the 2017-18 season, with two record transfer windows driving estimated Premier League gross spend of £1.9bn.”
“With the emphasis now on clubs to generate revenue growth from sources other than central broadcast distributions, it may be that we see the levels of pre-tax profit diminish over the next few years,” he said.
The “big six” clubs of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham accounted for 89% of the league’s pre-tax profits, according to financial data firm Vysyble.
Premier League clubs paid out more than £260m to football agents in the 12 months to the end of January 2019, an increase of £49m on the previous year, according to documents released by the Football Association.
Liverpool were the highest-spending club in the top flight, paying £43m to agents in that period.
Chelsea (£26m) and Manchester City (£24m) were the next biggest spenders.
Fees to agents went up despite spending on transfers falling by more than £500m when compared with the previous season.
