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Ipswich Town · Financial analysis

Ipswich Town's squad cost ratio: £186m of signings and the first three-year commercial average

Ipswich Town's squad cost ratio for the 1 March 2027 test comes out at 97.9%, above the 85% green threshold by roughly £23.3m. Measured before profit on player sales it is 109.0%. Ipswich are an Appendix 2 Promoted Club with a Premier League season inside the last three years, so the rule credits their commercial income at the three-year average rather than last season's figure. Reconstructed from Ipswich Town Football Club Company Ltd's accounts and Appendix 2 of the Premier League Handbook.

By Updated · View updates25 min read

Figures as of 31 October 2026, Orange Engine release V2CI · Latest figures · What the engine does not capture

SCR 2026/27·Post-summer projection
Two charts. Left: Ipswich Town's squad cost ratio at 103.1% without the revenue the promoted-club rules add (with player trading still counted), 109.0% before player trading, and 97.9% on the rule's basis, with the range running 91.0% to 104.1% and every figure above the 85% green line and below the 115% red line. Right: profit on player sales of £15.4m in 2024/25, £30.9m in 2025/26 and £9.0m so far in 2026/27, financial years to 30 June, against a three-year average of £18.4m.
Delap, then Hutchinson, then Hirst and Clarke. Method: the last filed accounts, to 30 June 2025, are from a Premier League season, but the 2026/27 squad is largely new, so player wages are estimated player by player from two published wage sources, about £84.3m with employer costs. Amortisation is built from the June 2025 book value, less the players who have left, plus the signings since at the reported fee plus 12%. The revenue the rule adds is the 1.25 gate multiplier and the three-year commercial average over last season's estimate, £9.1m. Financial years end 30 June. Range 91.0 to 104.1%. Orange Engine release V2CI. Independent estimate, not official.

Latest change to the figures, 31 October 2026: the comparison figures for Coventry and Hull move; the ratio, 97.9%, is unchanged. Latest correction, 2 November 2026: the breakdown of the squad cost and one sensitivity are corrected, with no figure in the ratio changed. All 15 correction notes are at the end.

Ipswich Town are back in the Premier League one season after going down, promoted automatically in second place. Like Coventry and Hull, they are an Appendix 2 Promoted Club. Unlike them, Ipswich were in the Premier League within the last three seasons, and that changes how the rule counts their commercial income. The 2026/27 squad has been rebuilt from the accounts and from a player-by-player estimate of what the current squad is paid.

Ipswich Town 2026/27
Squad cost ratio, 1 March 2027 test 97.9%
SCR before player trading 109.0%
Green headroom −£23.3m
Assumption range 91.0 to 104.1%
Stress case (costs only) 108.9%

The squad costs £177.4m against £162.8m of the football revenue the rule counts, which is 109.0% before any player trading. The three-year average of profit on player sales, £18.4m a year, brings the figure to 97.9%, still above the 85% green threshold.

Taken together, the twenty clubs of this season’s Premier League come to 75.3% on the same basis; Ipswich Town’s 97.9% is above that. The full table for every club in the series is at Premier League SCR 2026/27.

What the accounts say

Ipswich Town Football Club Company Ltd files accounts for the club company, to 30 June. It holds every player registration and employs the staff: 189 in playing, training and football management, 180 in administration, commercial and the stadium. Since 3 June 2026 its shares have been held by Gamechanger Holdings Ltd, which is owned by Gamechanger 20 Ltd, the parent; since the year end Gamechanger 20’s majority holder has been Portman Holdings LLC.

The year to 30 June 2025 was Ipswich’s Premier League season, in which they finished 19th and went down. Turnover was £155.4m: £107.6m of league distributions and broadcasting, £29.0m of commercial income, £7.6m of merchandise and £11.2m from tickets. Staff costs were £77.1m. The club made £15.4m of profit on player sales, almost all from Liam Delap’s move to Chelsea in June 2025.

The June year end decides which financial year a transaction falls in, though not whether a sale counts for the March 2027 test, which the transfer windows decide.

Why the wage bill is estimated player by player

For most clubs in this series, players’ wages are estimated as a share of the filed staff cost and moved forward through the windows since. At Ipswich the filed £77.1m is a Premier League bill, but for a squad that has since been largely replaced, so this reconstruction estimates the 2026/27 wage bill directly and uses the filed figure only as a check.

That comes to £71.5m a year of gross pay. Employer’s national insurance and pension add 15%, the middle of a 14% to 16% range and in line with the 15.3% Ipswich paid in 2024/25, taking it to £82.3m. The range around the build runs from 15% below to 20% above, wider on the upside because so many rows rest on a single source or an estimate, and its midpoint adds a further 2.5%: £84.3m in the central case (£71.5m × 1.15 × 1.025), against a filed staff cost of £77.1m for the whole of the club’s staff in 2024/25.

Amortisation: this summer is more than half of it

Amortisation is the annual charge that spreads a transfer fee over the player’s contract, measured from the day he was registered to the day the contract ends. The rule caps the period at five years. The fees below are as reported. The rule’s cost of a registration also takes in the League’s transfer levy, agents’ fees and the other costs of the transfer, so for every player signed since the June 2025 accounts, and for the book value of a player who has left, the cost is the reported fee plus 12%.

No contract this summer runs past five years, so the cap changes none of them.

How the rule builds a promoted club’s revenue

For several revenue lines Appendix 2 sets or floors a promoted club’s figure. Ipswich are the first club in this series where one of those lines turns on the club’s own Premier League history.

The three-year commercial average and the 1.25 gate multiplier together add about £9.1m against last season’s estimated commercial income, with the cost of merchandise taken off, and the unadjusted Championship gate, worth 5.2 points. Without them, with player trading still counted, the ratio would be 103.1%. They are worth a little more here than at Hull, where the figure is 4.7 points: on this provisional estimate Ipswich’s own commercial income, with the cost of merchandise taken off, is below the £15m floor, and the three-year average lifts it further than the floor would.

Player trading

The rule adds the profit or loss on sales in the six most recent transfer windows and divides it by three (Rules A.1.13 and A.1.53). For the March 2027 test that period starts on 2 February 2024; Ipswich made no sale carrying value between then and the start of their 2024/25 year, so it is the years to June 2025, 2026 and 2027.

The average is £18.4m, and player trading brings the ratio down by 11.1 percentage points. More than half of that comes from 2025/26, the Hutchinson year, which stays in the average for the 2027/28 test too. At that test Delap’s sale to Chelsea in June 2025, about £12.5m of profit, also stays in, because it falls in a later transfer window than the rest of 2024/25, so on the sales known so far the average is about £17.5m. Most of 2025/26, Hutchinson’s sale included, drops out after that.

How sure is this?

The central figure is 97.9%, and the range runs from 91.0% to 104.1%. Three estimates drive the uncertainty:

Smaller items move it by less: without the promotion step-up the ratio would be 96.2%, and with the head coach at £2m, 97.2%. Leaving Button out takes it to 97.5%. The stress case, the worst case on costs alone, with every uncertain cost input set against the club at once and revenue held at the central estimate, is 108.9%.

How this was done

The figures are an independent reconstruction, not the Premier League’s calculation. The 2025/26 accounts will replace the estimated Championship gate and commercial income, and the commercial estimate decides whether the three-year average or last season’s figure applies.

Corrections and updates (15)

25 September 2026 · Data correction · figures not recorded

Correction, 25 September 2026. Harry Clarke’s fee from Preston, undisclosed by both clubs, was first estimated at £0.5m. It has since been reported at about £3m, which adds about £2.4m to 2026/27’s profit on player sales and moves the ratio from 89.3% to 88.9%. No other figure behind the ratio changed.

2 October 2026 · Data correction · SCR 88.9% → 88.8% · before player sales 99.1% → 98.8%

Correction, 2 October 2026. The ratio is 88.8%, from 88.9%, and 98.8% before player trading, from 99.1%. Arijanet Muric’s cost is now £8.0m, so more of it was still on the books at June 2025: amortisation falls to £76.3m, but his sale produced less profit and the three-year average of sale profit falls to £19.2m. Conor Townsend’s arrival and George Hirst’s extension are also recorded. Ipswich are £7.2m above the green line, the range is 82.7% to 94.9% and the stress case 99.4%; every sensitivity moves down by about a tenth of a point, and the most favourable, 86.8%, still does not bring the figure below 85%. Coventry’s figure in the comparison is now 61.2%. The conclusion does not change: Ipswich are the one promoted club above the line.

3 October 2026 · Data correction · no change to the ratio

Update, 3 October 2026. Coventry’s figures in the comparison moved: their ratio is now 61.0%, from 61.2%, and the revenue the rule counts for them is now £164.2m, from £163.5m, after home matches were counted from match reports and last season’s matchday receipts were re-estimated (How we estimate matchday revenue). Ipswich’s own figures are unchanged. A separate review of agents’ fees on signings since the last accounts is under way and may raise both clubs’ figures; we will report its result.

4 October 2026 · Methodology change · SCR 88.8% → 94.1% · before player sales 98.8% → 104.5%

Correction, 4 October 2026. The ratio is 94.1%, from 88.8%, and 104.5% before player trading, from 98.8%. The squad cost rule defines three things in its own terms, and in each we had used the figure from a club’s accounts (Three definitions in the squad cost rule, and what they change). What a registration costs. The rule counts everything a club pays in connection with a transfer: the fee, the League’s 4% transfer levy and agents’ fees. For players signed since Ipswich’s last accounts we now count the reported fee plus 12%. Squad cost is £174.4m, from £168.6m, and the three-year average of sale profit is £18.4m, from £19.2m, because a player sold now leaves at a higher book value. This is the result of the review of agents’ fees that our earlier notes promised. Merchandise. The rule counts merchandise at gross profit, sales less the cost of the goods, where we had counted sales in full. Ipswich’s accounts give merchandise sales of £7.6m and not their cost; we take off £3.4m, on an estimated margin of 55%, in a range of £2.7m to £5.0m. For a promoted club the rule takes a three-year average of commercial revenue where that is higher, and it is. The cost of the goods comes off each of the three seasons, so the average is £22.6m, where it would be £25.7m with merchandise at sales value. Cup prize money. The rule counts a three-year average of what a club received from the FA Cup and the EFL Cup. We had entered £1.0m for Ipswich, a figure with no calculation behind it. Rebuilt from Ipswich’s cup ties in the last three seasons and the FA’s published prize fund and broadcast fees, it is £0.3m, in a range of £0.2m to £0.9m. The figure is provisional: the EFL publishes no prize money, some broadcast fees are not published, and the top of the range allows for a share of the gate at away ties, which the rule may or may not count. The revenue the rule counts is £166.8m, from £170.7m. Also moved: the range is 88.0 to 100.8%, from 82.7 to 94.9%; the overshoot of the 85% threshold is £16.9m, from £7.2m; the stress case is 104.9%, from 99.4%; the chance that the ratio is above 85% is about 99%, from about 75%. Ipswich remain above the green threshold and below the red one.

5 October 2026 · Methodology change · SCR 94.1% → 95.8% · before player sales 104.5% → 106.5%

Correction, 5 October 2026. The ratio is 95.8%, from 94.1%, and 106.5% before player trading, from 104.5%. We now measure each contract from the day the player was registered to the day it ends. A player who signs in August on a five-year deal has a contract of four years and ten months, because contracts end on 30 June; we had spread his cost over five full years. 36 of Ipswich’s contract lengths change, 6 of them against an end date we have derived as the 30 June the announced length points to, where no source states the date. The yearly charge for registrations is £83.7m, from £82.1m. The range is 89.7% to 102.5%, from 88.0% to 100.8%. Virtually all modelled outcomes are above 85%, up from 99%. No threshold is crossed. Commercial revenue is now taken from the group’s accounts. The rule tests a club together with its football companies. The group’s filed commercial total reduces the countable commercial figure by about £1.9m. The underlying intra-group fee is printed differently in the parent and club accounts (£1.639m and £1.334m), so those figures are recorded as a reconciliation issue rather than used to set the adjustment. The commercial revenue the rule counts is lower in each of the three seasons of its average: the average is £20.9m, from £22.6m, and the revenue the rule counts is £165.1m, from £166.8m. On the contract change alone the ratio would be 95.0%. Most clubs move because contract costs are now measured to their actual or derived expiry dates; six also move for club-specific reasons. See the engine changelog.

7 October 2026 · Data correction · no change to the ratio

Update, 7 October 2026. Coventry’s figures in the comparison moved: their ratio is now 64.6%, from 64.1%, and their squad cost £109.6m, from £108.8m, after Caleb Yirenkyi’s fee was taken at a reported £26m, where we had £23.1m (the engine changelog). Ipswich’s own figures are unchanged.

9 October 2026 · Methodology change · SCR 95.8% → 97.1% · before player sales 106.5% → 108.1%

Correction, 9 October 2026. The ratio is 97.1%, from 95.8%, and 108.1% before player trading, from 106.5%. Last season’s commercial revenue is now estimated by one published method, the same for every club. Ipswich’s 2025/26 accounts are not filed, so the figure is an estimate. We had £22.1m for 2025/26, a Championship season, a judgement of ours. It is now £15.0m, a provisional relegated-class estimate: the £34.7m filed for 2024/25, the Premier League season, lowered by 56.7%, the middle of six relegations we have read in filed accounts (how we estimate last season’s commercial revenue). It is drawn between £12.1m and £31.2m, the largest and smallest of those six falls. For a promoted club the rule takes the higher of last season’s figure, the three-year average and £15m; the three-year average is the highest and is what counts: £18.5m, from £20.9m. The estimate stays provisional until the 2025/26 accounts are filed. The range is 90.4% to 103.5%, from 89.7% to 102.5%. The published ratio crosses no threshold. This article said that Ipswich’s credited revenue, £165.1m, was a little higher than Coventry’s £164.0m, and that the promoted-club rules matter less here than at Hull because Ipswich’s own commercial income was well above the £15m floor; it now says that the credited revenue, £162.8m, is a little lower than Coventry’s, and that Ipswich’s own commercial income on this estimate, with the cost of merchandise taken off, is below the floor, so the rules add 5.2 points here against 4.8 at Hull. This article said that agents’ fees of £20m would give about 98.9%; it now says 100.2%, above 100%. The stress case is now described as what it is: the worst case on costs alone, with revenue held at the central estimate. See the engine changelog.

15 October 2026 · Editorial · no change to the ratio

Clarification, 15 October 2026. Wording only; no figure changed. The ranges in this article are assumption ranges, the spread of the model’s inputs between assumed bounds, not calibrated or confidence intervals, and the shares of modelled outcomes above or below a threshold quoted in the notes above are withdrawn.

16 October 2026 · Assumption revision · no change to the ratio

Updated 16 October 2026: loans out now recorded; wage relief shown in ranges. Ipswich Town’s own figures do not move: its players out on loan are recorded, but its wage estimate is built player by player for this season’s squad, so no separate allowance is added. The twenty clubs taken together now come to 75.6%, from 75.8%. See the engine changelog.

24 October 2026 · Methodology change · no change to the ratio

Correction, 24 October 2026. No figure changed. The article described the sale-profit average as three financial years. The rule averages the sales of the six most recent transfer windows (Rules A.1.13 and A.1.53). For this season’s test that is the same thing at Ipswich, which made no sale carrying value between 2 February 2024 and the start of its 2024/25 year. For the 2027/28 test it is not: Delap’s sale to Chelsea on 4 June 2025, about £12.5m of profit, falls in a later window than the rest of 2024/25 and stays in, so on the sales known so far the average at that test is about £17.5m, where taking 2024/25 out whole gives about £13.3m.

25 October 2026 · Data correction · no change to the ratio

Correction, 25 October 2026. Ipswich’s ratio is unchanged at 97.1%. The comparison with the other clubs says the twenty clubs together come to 74.9%, from 75.6%: the corrections of 23 October to other clubs moved the total, and the sentence was updated then without a note here. The ratio without the revenue the promoted-club rules add, 102.3%, counts player trading, unlike the series’ figure for the revenue the rule adds at the other clubs, which is taken before trading; the text and the chart’s description now say so. The section on the range said almost all of the uncertainty is in the wage estimate, over a list that includes other estimates; it now says three estimates drive it. Hull’s trading support is £16.9m a year, from £16.8m, after Hull’s correction of 23 October. The sentence on the June year end said it matches the rule’s calendar, which counts transfer windows from 2 February 2024 (Rule A.1.53); it now says what the year end decides. Twelve of the fourteen signings rest on one wage source, not thirteen: eleven, plus Florentino. And Omari Hutchinson’s book value is given at both dates the article uses, £17.9m at June 2025 and about £17.3m at his sale in August.

26 October 2026 · Regulatory interpretation · SCR 97.1% → 97.9% · before player sales 108.1% → 109.0%

Correction, 26 October 2026. The ratio is 97.9%, from 97.1%, and 109.0% before player trading, from 108.1%. The fee Ipswich paid Strasbourg for Gary O’Neil now counts. A fee one club pays another for a head coach is part of the squad cost, spread over his contract (Rule A.1.22(d)); compensation a club receives for releasing one counts with the profit on player sales (Rule A.1.29(g)). We had counted neither. The fee is €5m as reported in June 2026, £4.3m, on a three-year contract, so £1.4m a year; it is not yet in filed accounts. The squad cost is £177.4m, from £175.9m; the squad cost is £23.3m over the 85% line, from £21.9m; without the revenue the promoted-club rules add the ratio is 103.1%, from 102.3%; the stress case 108.9%, from 108.1%. Ipswich’s loan income is now in the range. Fees a club receives for lending players count with the profit on player sales (the guidance to Rule A.1.29(g)). The filed accounts give a total for loan income without saying how much is fee and how much is wages recharged, so the central figure counts none of it and the range allows anything from none to all of it; only income from 2 February 2024 counts (Rule A.1.53), and 2025/26’s waits for the accounts. Ipswich filed £2.8m for 2024/25 and £1.3m for 2023/24. The range is 91.0% to 104.1%, from 90.4% to 103.5%. Each estimate in the section on how sure the figure is moves by the same fee: agents at £20m give 101.0%, from 100.2%; commercial income at the bottom of its range 98.4%, from 97.6%, and at the top 93.1%, from 92.4%; a remaining life of 3.0 years 99.4%, from 98.6%, and 3.8 years 96.7%, from 95.9%; no promotion step-up 96.2%, from 95.4%; the head coach at £2m 97.2%, from 96.4%; Button left out 97.5%, from 96.7%.

28 October 2026 · Data correction · no change to the ratio

Correction, 28 October 2026. Ipswich’s ratio is unchanged at 97.9%. Elsewhere in the article, the twenty clubs together come to 75.1%, from 75.0%. We checked every transfer in our records against published sources and corrected sixteen entries at eleven clubs where the club’s announcement or a reputable report, read on the page, gives a different fee, contract length or date. The corrections move Arsenal, Chelsea, Sunderland, Crystal Palace and Tottenham up, and Coventry, Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth down. Coventry’s figures, quoted for comparison, follow Coventry’s correction of today: 64.0%, from 64.6%, on a squad cost of £108.6m, from £109.6m.

31 October 2026 · Data correction · no change to the ratio

Correction, 31 October 2026. The comparison with the other promoted clubs moves with their corrected fees: Coventry’s squad cost is £107.7m, from £108.6m, and its ratio 63.5%, from 64.0%; Hull’s is £114.6m, from £115.6m, and 66.4%, from 67.0%. The twenty clubs together come to 75.3%, from 75.1%, because Chelsea’s and Liverpool’s filed sale profit replaces our modelled figures and 19 transfer entries are corrected across the league. Omari Hutchinson’s fee is now shown as undisclosed, £20m central in a range of £18m to £22.5m, and his signing is dated 1 July 2024. Ipswich’s own ratio, 97.9%, is unchanged. Figures that follow from these are restated with them in the text. The correction does not reverse the article’s conclusion.

2 November 2026 · Data correction · no change to the ratio

Correction, 2 November 2026. Ipswich’s ratio is unchanged at 97.9%. The breakdown of the squad cost left out the head coach’s fee. It listed £84.3m of wages, £83.7m of amortisation and £7.9m of agents’ fees, £1.5m short of the £177.4m total; the rest is the £1.4m a year for Gary O’Neil’s release from Strasbourg, counted since 26 October, and the article now lists it. The €5m is the reported package, bonuses included; how much of it is fixed is not published, and the whole of it is counted, an assumption of this reconstruction rather than an established fee. Without the three-year commercial average, with the £15m floor in its place, the ratio is 99.8%; the article said 99.0%, a figure not updated with its later corrections. Also corrected. The article dated Omari Hutchinson’s arrival 30 June 2024, the day it was announced; his five-year contract is counted from 1 July 2024, as the note of 31 October said, and on either date he is inside the June 2025 book value, so no figure moves. The sensitivity on agents’ fees now says that about two-thirds of the FA’s total is counted as an expense, an assumption of this reconstruction, the rest being already inside the cost of signings; £20m still gives 101.0%, and the whole of it as an expense 104.5%. The next accounts are due by 31 March 2027, not around December 2026. Since 3 June 2026 the club company’s shares have been held by Gamechanger Holdings Ltd, owned by Gamechanger 20 Ltd; the article had named Gamechanger 20 as the direct parent. Hull’s promoted-club figure is 4.7 points, from 4.8, after Hull’s correction of today. The revenue list now includes the £1.2m of cup income and academy grant in the total, and Rules A.1.22(d) and A.1.53 are added to the sources.