Football finance, from the outside inThe Orange LedgerFor professionals

Analysis

How we estimate matchday revenue

The squad cost rule counts last season's gate receipts per home match, times this season's home matches. Most clubs have not yet filed last season's accounts, so the receipts are an estimate. This is how the Orange Ledger counts the matches and estimates the money, what we got wrong before October 2026, and how far the estimate could be out.

By Updated · View updates14 min read

Figures as of 15 October 2026, Orange Engine release V2BX · Latest figures · What the engine does not capture

Latest note, 25 October 2026: editorial, no figure changed. All 9 correction notes are at the end.

The squad cost ratio compares what a squad costs with the revenue the rule counts. One line of that revenue is matchday income, and the rule does not take it from the accounts. It builds it. This article explains how the rule builds it, the two things we have to supply, and how we supply them.

What the rule does

The rule takes a club’s gate receipts for last season, divides them by the number of home matches the club played last season, and multiplies the result by the number of home matches it counts for this season.

So three numbers decide a club’s matchday line: how many home matches it played last season, how much it took at them, and how many home cup ties it has averaged over three seasons. A club in Europe has a fourth: how many European home matches the rule counts.

The two counts

Counting matches should be the easy part, and until October 2026 we had not done it properly. We had counted home cup ties for two clubs and assumed two or three a season for the rest. We had also assumed last season’s number of home matches for most clubs instead of counting it.

Both are now counted, for every club, from the clubs’ own match reports: one report for every home cup tie of the last three seasons, and one for every European home match of the last two. For the nine clubs in Europe this season the reports also cover every European home match of the season before those, 2023/24, because the rule averages their European home matches over three seasons. Where a club’s website does not allow automated access (Arsenal and Manchester City), or carries no report of a match, we used Sky Sports’ match reports. Each report is archived with a timestamp, so the count can be checked.

One tie is the exception: Sunderland’s home FA Cup match with Stoke in January 2025 has no report we can archive, so Sunderland are counted at the three ties we can show, one a season under the rule, where the fourth would make it two. One European match rests on something other than a match report: Brighton’s home match with Ajax in October 2023, for which we hold the club’s own analysis of the match. It was a Europa League match, so on our reading it does not enter Brighton’s count this season.

The corrections were not small. Newcastle played 13 home cup ties in three seasons, so the rule counts five a season where we had two, and it played 31 home matches last season where we had 24. Twelve of the twenty clubs had too few cup ties; eleven had the wrong number of home matches.

The two counts pull against each other. More home matches this season means more revenue under the rule. More home matches last season means the same receipts are spread more thinly, so each match is worth less. A club that goes deep in the cups gets more matches counted and a lower average for each.

Which competition counts

The European part of the rule turns on one phrase. It counts the higher of the home matches a club is guaranteed this season in “the relevant UEFA Club Competition” and the average number it played at home in “the relevant UEFA Club Competition” over the last three seasons, rounded up. (Rule A.1.29(d)(iii).) Until 7 October 2026 we had applied only the first of the two.

Our reading. The relevant competition is the one the club is in this season: the Champions League, the Europa League or the Conference League. A past season the club spent in a different European competition, or out of Europe, counts nil. The average is always over three seasons, so a club with one past season in the competition divides that season’s home matches by three. A play-off or qualifying home leg this season is a guaranteed match, and past qualifying home legs in the same competition count in the average.

What it changes. Three clubs’ counts move. Arsenal played seven, seven and five Champions League home matches in the last three seasons: an average of 6.33, which rounds up to seven, against a guaranteed four. Manchester City played five in each of the three, so five are counted, against a guaranteed four. Brighton have not played in the Conference League before, so their average is nil and the guaranteed number applies. It is four, where we had three, because their play-off home leg of August 2026 is one of them. The other six clubs in Europe this season stay at the guaranteed four.

The other reading. The phrase could mean whichever UEFA competition the club was in each past season, so that every European home match of the last three seasons goes into the average. Arsenal, Manchester City and Brighton would be counted as they are now. Two more clubs would move. Their home matches are listed most recent season first, and the ratios are those of the update of 9 October 2026:

Club European home matches, any competition Average, rounded up Counted on the other reading (on ours) Ratio on the other reading (on ours) Assumption range on the other reading
Aston Villa 7 / 6 / 7 7 7 (4) 76.8% (77.4%) 72.6 to 80.6%
Liverpool 6 / 5 / 5 6 6 (4) 72.1% (72.9%) 68.3 to 76.8%

Villa’s three seasons were in the Europa League, the Champions League and the Conference League, the last with one qualifying home leg. Liverpool’s were in the Champions League twice and the Europa League. Both are in the Champions League this season. On our reading Villa’s one Champions League season gives six home matches and an average of two, and Liverpool’s two give eleven and an average of 3.67, which rounds up to four, so both are counted at the guaranteed four.

For our reading: the phrase appears three times in this part of the rule. Where it describes this season’s guaranteed matches, and where it requires the club to get past the qualifying stage, it can only mean the competition the club has qualified for this season, and the same phrase in the same clause should mean the same thing the third time. Where any competition will do, the Handbook says “a UEFA Club Competition”. That term covers more than one competition, the Super Cup among them, so “the relevant” has to be picking one out.

For the other reading: Rule A.1.14 uses the same phrase for last season’s home matches, where it has to mean the competition the club was in that season, and read season by season in that sense the average counts any UEFA competition. The only guidance that treats the three competitions as separate is the guidance on limb (e), which deals with European prize money, and it is not extended to the home gate. The rule also pools the FA Cup and the League Cup when it counts home cup ties, and the reason for keeping competitions apart for prize money, that they pay different amounts, does not apply to a gate.

We apply the first reading. The second is a sensitivity, stated here so that it can be checked: if the League applies it, Villa’s ratio is 76.8% rather than 77.4% and Liverpool’s 72.1% rather than 72.9%.

The money

Last season’s receipts are filed in a club’s accounts, and most clubs’ accounts for 2025/26 will not be filed until early 2027. Until then the figure is an estimate. For Manchester United it is nearly known, because the club’s parent publishes results quarterly. For Everton, who moved stadium, it is a forecast. For the five clubs promoted in the last two seasons, we build it from attendances and prices. For the other thirteen we start from the last filed year, 2024/25, and ask how last season differed.

The obvious way is to take 2024/25’s matchday revenue per home match and multiply by the number of home matches in 2025/26. It is wrong, and the accounts show why.

Manchester United played 30 home matches in 2024/25 and 20 in 2025/26. Matchday revenue fell from £160.3m to £153.6m: a third fewer matches and 4% less money. Chelsea swapped seven home cup ties for seven European home matches between 2023/24 and 2024/25 and took 8% more. Tottenham added seven European home matches and one cup tie and took 20% more.

Matchday revenue is mostly the league season. Season tickets and seasonal hospitality are sold for the 19 league matches, and that money arrives whether or not the club has a cup run. A cup tie or a European night adds to it, but by much less than an average share.

We fitted the four pairs of years we hold in which the mix of matches changed and the stadium did not: those three and Newcastle between 2023/24 and 2024/25. The fit gives about 0.10 of a league match for a home cup tie and 0.25 for a European home match, and it suggests growth of about 5% a year. Growth and the change in the mix of matches cannot be fully separated from four pairs: a club that played more European matches also put its prices up, and with so few years the fit cannot say exactly how much of the change belongs to each. So:

Where a club’s mix of matches did not change, the weighting makes no difference and the estimate is last year’s figure plus 5%.

How far out it could be

The weights come from four pairs of years. That is thin, and we say so. We tested a cup tie at between 0.10 and 0.25 of a league match and a European match at between 0.25 and 0.50: no club’s ratio moved by more than half a percentage point. We tested growth at between nothing and 8%: the largest clubs moved by up to one percentage point.

The ranges printed beside each club’s ratio now include this. A matchday figure not yet filed already carried a general allowance of 7% either way, and the two weights and the growth rate are now drawn across the ranges we tested, on top of that allowance. The matchday estimate remains a source of error of up to about a point at the clubs with the largest gates, and it disappears when the accounts are filed.

Adding the two together probably counts some of the uncertainty twice. We will recalibrate it against the filed figures once enough 2025/26 accounts are in.

What we got wrong

Before this, our estimates for the thirteen clubs were last year’s filed figure with an uplift we had not written down. Some were far from what the method gives. We had Arsenal’s matchday revenue 14% higher “for a deep European run”, when Arsenal played the same number of European home matches in both seasons. We had cut Tottenham’s by 7% for a shorter European run, when the filed figures say a shorter run costs little. We had Newcastle’s 21% higher without a stated reason.

Counting the matches and re-estimating the receipts moved fourteen clubs’ ratios. No club crossed the 85% or 115% line. The largest movements were Tottenham, down 1.8 points to 77.6%, and Newcastle, up 1.7 to 79.4% (each club’s current figure is on its own page).

One more error was found later. Until 7 October 2026 we counted only a club’s guaranteed European home matches, where the rule counts the higher of those and its three-season average in the same competition. Arsenal were counted at four where the rule counts seven, and Manchester City at four where it counts five.

When this stops mattering

Each club’s 2025/26 accounts replace the estimate with the filed figure. The counts stay, because they are the real ones. We will report how close each estimate was.

Sources and caveats. Premier League Handbook 2026/27, Appendix 2, Rules A.1.14 and A.1.29(d), including (d)(iii). Matchday revenue from each club's accounts filed at Companies House, and Manchester United plc's results for 2025/26. Home matches counted from the clubs' own match reports and, for Arsenal and Manchester City, Sky Sports' match reports, archived on 3 October 2026, and those of the 2023/24 European home matches on 6 October 2026. The weights and the growth rate are estimates fitted to four pairs of filed years and will be refitted as more are read. Independent estimate, not an official calculation, and not advice.

Corrections and updates (9)

4 October 2026 · Methodology change · several figures: see the note

Update, 4 October 2026. The uncertainty in the matchday estimate is now part of the range printed beside each club’s ratio, on top of the general allowance of 7% either way for a figure not yet filed; this note had said it was not yet included. Bournemouth’s gate receipts are now its ticket income plus its “hospitality and events” line, £11.4m, from £15.6m, the sum of all four lines its accounts print. Tottenham’s ratio is now 82.1%, from 77.6%, and Newcastle’s is now 84.2%, from 79.4%, after registrations were counted at the reported fee plus 12% and merchandise at gross profit, and cup prize money was rebuilt from each club’s cup ties (Three definitions in the squad cost rule, and what they change).

5 October 2026 · Methodology change · several figures: see the note

Update, 5 October 2026. Tottenham’s ratio is now 82.3%, from 82.1%, and Newcastle’s is now 83.9%, from 84.2%, after contract lengths were measured from their dates and, at Newcastle, revenue from the rest of the club’s group was counted (the engine changelog).

5 October 2026 · Data correction · several figures: see the note

Correction, 5 October 2026. Manchester United’s matchday revenue for 2025/26 is £153.6m, not £153.5m: the printed figure is £153,555,000. Nothing else changes.

7 October 2026 · Regulatory interpretation · several figures: see the note

Update, 7 October 2026. This note now states the European part of the rule in full and has a new section, “Which competition counts”. The rule counts the higher of a club’s guaranteed European home matches this season and its three-season average in the same competition, rounded up; we had applied only the first. Three estimates moved: Arsenal’s ratio is now 59.5%, from 60.7%, Manchester City’s is now 75.4%, from 75.7%, and Brighton’s is now 79.5%, from 79.9%. The match reports now also cover the European home matches of 2023/24 for the nine clubs in Europe this season (the engine changelog).

9 October 2026 · Methodology change · several figures: see the note

Correction, 9 October 2026. Last season’s commercial revenue is now estimated by one published method for every club, with its own bounds, and no longer carries the general allowance of 7% either way (how we estimate last season’s commercial revenue). This note said that every figure not yet filed carried that allowance; it now says that a matchday figure not yet filed does. The matchday method is unchanged. Tottenham’s central estimate is now 80.4%, from 82.3%, in a range of 76.4% to 85.6%, with about 13% of the modelled outcomes above the 85% line, and Newcastle’s is now 84.7%, from 83.9%, in a range of 78.9% to 88.6%, with about 37%: the estimate does not reliably tell which side of the line either club is on. Arsenal’s ratio is now 59.9%, from 59.5%, Manchester City’s is now 73.8%, from 75.4%, and Brighton’s is now 79.1%, from 79.5%. The table under “Which competition counts” is restated from a run of the model on the other reading: Aston Villa’s ratio would be 76.8%, against 77.4% on ours, where the table had 75.3% against 76.0%, and Liverpool’s 72.1%, against 72.9%, where it had 73.2% against 74.0%.

15 October 2026 · Editorial · several figures: see the note

Clarification, 15 October 2026. Wording only; no figure changed. The ranges quoted 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 the 85% line quoted in the note above are withdrawn.

15 October 2026 (second) · New evidence · several figures: see the note

Update, 15 October 2026, second correction of the day. Newcastle’s ratio is now 84.9%, from 84.7%, after a sell-on Newcastle are reported to owe Everton was counted (the engine changelog).

23 October 2026 · Methodology change · two figures: see the note

Correction, 23 October 2026. This article is the record of its own release, but one parenthesis gives two clubs’ figures as they stand now. Tottenham’s ratio is now 80.9%, where it said 80.4%, and Newcastle’s 81.3%, where it said 84.9%, after both clubs’ average profit on player sales was taken, on 23 October, over the six transfer windows Rules A.1.13 and A.1.53 name, rather than three financial years. Nothing else changes. See the engine changelog.

25 October 2026 · Editorial · no figure changed

Correction, 25 October 2026. No figure in this record changed. The sensitivity said Villa’s ratio would be 0.7 points lower on the other reading; the table beside it gives 76.8% against 77.4%, which reads as 0.6. The sentence now gives the table’s two figures. And the paragraph on the clubs that moved gave Tottenham’s and Newcastle’s current figures and said the notes give each club’s range, which they do not; a record of this release now points to each club’s own page instead.