Analysis

Who the clubs owe: Premier League debt, and how much of it the owners hold

In December 2024 Everton turned £450.8m of loans into shares. The money was owed to a company controlled by the club's outgoing owner, and the loans had already been counted as equity. Five seasons of Premier League balance sheets show how much of the clubs' attributed debt is owed to their owners, how many clubs cite that support in their going-concern assessment, and what negative net assets do and do not mean.

By Arthur van de Laak30 October 2026Updated 31 October 2026 · View updates18 min read

Figures as of 28 October 2026, Orange Engine release V2CH · Latest figures · What the engine does not capture

In December 2024, as Everton changed hands, £450.8m the club owed to a company controlled by its outgoing owner was turned into shares. The loans had sat in the accounts as equity for years, because the accounting standard treated them that way, so nothing on the balance sheet looked like debt to the owner. The conversion made it permanent: money the owner had lent became money the owner had put in, and could no longer ask for back.

That is the question this piece asks of every Premier League club, season by season from 2020/21 to 2024/25: who is the money owed to? Across the twenty clubs of each season, owners and their group companies were owed between 35% and 45% of the balances attributed to a lender, depending on the season, once balances the accounts do not call loans are counted. The other attributed balances were owed to banks, bondholders and other outside lenders, and in each season a further amount could not be attributed to either side. In 2024/25, 18 of the twenty clubs cited owner support in their going-concern assessment.

Who the clubs owe

A club can owe its owner in two ways. It can borrow from the owner or from a company in the owner’s group, through loans, loan notes or finance obligations that the accounts call borrowings. Or it can simply owe a group company money that the accounts list among amounts owed to group undertakings without calling it a loan. The second kind sits outside the printed borrowings totals, and whether it is counted moves the answer.

The table covers borrowing plus related-party balances, not all of a club’s liabilities. Transfer, trade and tax creditors are excluded. The owners’ shares are shares of the balances attributed to a lender, with the amount attributed to neither side beside them and the range of the share if that amount fell all one way. Other owner balances are those not called loans.

The balances not called loans are concentrated at a handful of clubs: Wolves in every season, Villa from 2020/21 to 2023/24, Chelsea’s amounts owed to its parent in three seasons. Everton’s loans held in equity, £450.8m by 2022/23, are in neither column, because the accounts did not treat them as debt.

The split looks different within the two groups of clubs that usually compete for different things. For the traditional big six, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham, outside lenders hold most of the debt: owners and their companies held 18% of the attributed balances in 2020/21 and 31% in 2024/25. Tottenham and Manchester United account for most of the big six’s outside borrowing, £851.7m and £637.0m in 2024/25, and owe nothing in loans to an owner. Arsenal and Liverpool are the other way round, owing £340.1m and £217.9m to their owners in 2024/25, more than they owed anyone else.

For the other fourteen clubs of each season the owner is usually the larger creditor. Owners held between 57% and 61% of the other fourteen’s attributed balances from 2020/21 to 2023/24, and 38% in 2024/25, when outside borrowing in that group rose to £1,523.3m. Everton alone owed £468.5m to outside lenders that season, and the clubs that came up and went down change the group from year to year. Brighton owed their owner £406.5m in 2024/25 and outside lenders nothing.

This piece started with Chelsea. When I looked past the club’s own accounts to the holding companies above it, I found borrowing of about £1.39bn, carrying interest of around 10% to 11% a year. That rests on 10.7%, which is our calculation, not a contractual rate. Borrowing at over 10% a year is expensive by any standard, and it sits a few levels above the club, where most supporters never look. That made me want to know who the rest of the league owes, and on what terms.

The debt above the club

The tables so far stop at the nearest company that holds only the club. Above it there is usually a chain of holding companies, and what they borrow does not appear in the club’s own accounts. For each Premier League club of 2024/25, the ownership chain was followed on the Companies House register to the top company registered in the UK, and the group accounts at that level were read twice, independently, for the year ending in 2025.

Those twenty selected UK reporting companies carried £7.19bn of borrowings. That is not the debt of twenty football clubs: four of the companies are multi-club groups, fourteen are club groups and two are club companies, and the chart marks each. A difference between two bars is not a measure of which club has borrowed more. Nor can the total be set against the £4.75bn in this piece’s first table for the same season and read as the difference. A loan between two companies in a chain is a debt at the club and cancels in the group accounts above it, and the first table also counts balances not called loans and finance leases, which this one leaves out.

The split follows how each set of notes labels the debt, which is not always who holds it. 22 Holdco’s own £595.9m is labelled a bank loan, though the note names no lender. Everton’s £468.5m sits under other lenders, though its facilities are a JP Morgan Chase Bank facility of £130m and a 30-year facility of £350m secured on the stadium; how much of each is drawn is not printed.

Five companies carry £4.29bn of the total, or 60%. 22 Holdco, above Chelsea, is the largest at £1.39bn, about a fifth of the whole, all of it labelled bank loans. Tottenham owes £851.7m, of which £770.7m is long-term bonds sold to US investors. City Football Group owes £739.7m, across a group that holds other clubs too, and Red Football Limited, above Manchester United, £673.8m. NCUK Investment, above Newcastle, owes £631.1m, of which £572.8m is owed to its parent with no rate or terms printed. Brighton’s £406.5m, Arsenal’s £340.1m and Liverpool’s £283.9m are owed to their owners or parents as well.

What the outside debt costs

The accounts rarely print one rate for a company’s borrowing, so every rate in the table below is our calculation, not a printed figure: the year’s interest on outside loans divided by the average of the opening and closing outside loans. Loans from owners and related parties are out of both sides of the sum, so an interest-free balance cannot pull the rate down.

Ten of the thirteen come out at 7% or more on this calculation. It is a guide and no more, because an average of two year-end balances is not the balance carried through the year: Liverpool’s bank loans fell from £116.0m to £69.0m, which is one reason our 7.0% sits above the printed 5.74%. Chelsea’s 10.7% is the calculation behind the 10% to 11% above, and it is not a contractual rate. Its accounts do not say whether interest rolled up on 22 Holdco’s own loan is inside that figure.

Some of the rates need a further warning. Debt that moved sharply in the year makes the average weak: Aston Villa’s rose from £20.5m to £110.6m, Brentford’s bank debt from £36.7m to £70.5m, and Bournemouth’s from £33.0m to £50.2m, with £3.0m of that opening balance undescribed. Interest the accounts leave unlabelled is not counted, and counting it would take our calculation to 12.3% at Chelsea, 19.5% at Aston Villa, 10.4% at Newcastle and 8.3% at Liverpool; Southampton has a further £1.0m of this. Manchester City and Bournemouth also capitalised £19.2m and £1.0m of interest, which would take our calculation to 10.0% and 14.8%. Wolves’ accounts cover 13 months, and the interest is scaled to 12. Crystal Palace’s interest includes arrangement fees. At Southampton, Palace and Leicester the owners’ loans carry printed rates of their own, 9.5%, 5% and 6%, which are not in the table.

Seven clubs have no rate here. Everton’s period is its first: the group took on its borrowings by acquisition on 18 December 2024, so there is no opening balance, and the interest covers about six months. West Ham held no bank debt at the opening date and drew its overdraft during the year, so the average of two dates understates the balance carried. Fulham capitalised £6.7m of interest and charged £17,000, so the charge says nothing about the rate. Brighton’s balance is a director’s loan, interest free and repayable on demand, which leaves no outside debt to price. Arsenal’s £340.1m parent loan has no printed rate, and the accounts print £3.2m of bank interest with no bank balance beside it. Ipswich’s £14.6m is almost all loan notes issued to a related party, at a printed 12%, so it is not outside debt. Nottingham Forest’s printed rates of 8.20% and 8.75% cover about £108m of its £228.2m of other loans, and the notes do not tie the rest to its interest.

Owner support cited in the going-concern assessment

Every set of accounts states whether the directors consider the company able to carry on, looking at least twelve months ahead, and on what grounds. That going-concern statement is where a club says what it is relying on, and whether its owner is part of it. Citing support does not mean a club would fail without it: it can be one consideration among several.

“Owner support cited” means the statement names the owner’s or the parent’s support among its grounds. “Conditional support” means support promised only if something goes wrong, such as relegation, or a promise not to call in loans already made: Liverpool’s parent gave that promise from 2020/21 to 2023/24, and Brighton’s from 2021/22 to 2023/24. West Ham’s owners promised support only in a downside case in 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23.

Within the big six, three or four clubs a season cited owner support, and Manchester United’s statement did not in any season where both readings agreed. Among the other fourteen, the count rose from 10 in 2020/21 to 14 in 2024/25, which in the last season was every one of them. The one club unclassified in 2024/25 is Liverpool. Its statement relies on a refinanced £350.0m credit facility and on its parent’s confirmation that it does not intend to call the parent loan in the next 12 months. One reading took that as owner support and the other could not say, so the readings differ. The same promise counted as conditional support in the four seasons before, so the nought in that column for 2024/25 is not a change in what the parent said.

Negative net assets, and what they mean

Between five and seven clubs a season had negative net assets: more liabilities than assets on their balance sheets. Crystal Palace and Wolves did in all five seasons.

Negative net assets are an accounting result, not a legal finding. Claims that clubs are “technically insolvent” treat the two as one. Section 123(2) of the Insolvency Act 1986 asks a court to compare the value of a company’s assets with its liabilities, contingent and prospective liabilities included, which is not the same sum as the balance sheet, and section 123(1)(e) asks whether the company can pay its debts as they fall due. Negative net assets on their own do not mean a club cannot pay its bills, and the going-concern statement is where the directors say whether it can.

Who the creditor is changes what negative net assets mean. In 2024/25 Brighton’s negative net assets were £9.8m, while the club owed its owner £406.5m and outside lenders nothing. Had those loans been shares, as Everton’s became, Brighton would have shown net assets of about £397m. Wolves are the same shape: negative net assets of £186.0m in 2024/25 against £247.5m owed to their owner’s group. A shortfall owed mostly to the owner is a choice about the form the owner’s money takes, and it stays a choice for as long as the owner does not ask for it back.

Nottingham Forest are the other shape. In 2024/25 Forest’s negative net assets were £246.9m, against £136.2m owed to the owner and £228.2m to outside lenders, so even with every owner loan turned into shares the balance sheet would still show negative net assets. Crystal Palace, Southampton and West Ham were in the same position that season on smaller sums.

The twenty clubs, 2024/25

Each row below is the club at the nearest company that holds only the club, with the type of the top UK company from the section above. The creditor mix is our label: mostly owners at two-thirds or more of attributed balances, mostly outside at a third or less, mixed in between.

The nearest company can show a different picture from the top one. Chelsea’s shows no borrowing because the debt sits above it, and Newcastle’s shows none owed to its owner because the £572.8m sits at NCUK Investment. Manchester City’s £102.0m is owed to its group, while City Football Group’s own £739.7m is bank debt. Wolves’ £247.5m is owed to its group at the club company; note 29 of W.W. (1990)’s accounts says there is no such balance at that level, though the group line is illegible in both readings. Ipswich’s £14.6m of loan notes, issued to a related party, is unattributed here because the two readings classed it differently; the lender table above shows it under owners and related parties.

What the charges register adds

A lender who takes security registers a charge at Companies House, and the register says what the charge covers. At the end of 2024/25, 19 clubs had at least one charge outstanding, 114 in all. That is a register count, not 114 drawn loans: a charge can stay registered after the loan is repaid, because a company does not have to tell the registrar it has been satisfied. Fourteen clubs had a charge over their stadium or other land, and fourteen a floating charge over all their assets. Arsenal’s charge is over shares; Brentford, Liverpool and Manchester United had charges over receivables.

The register is narrower than the debt it secures. Of the 595 pairings of an outstanding charge with a club’s season, 100 match a borrowing in that season’s accounts by the lender’s name and 425 only by the kind of lender. The other 70 match nothing in the accounts read. Fourteen clubs in 2024/25 had a charge whose register entry does not say what it covers. Charges over broadcasting income or transfer receivables appear rarely: one club in 2020/21 (West Brom, over central income) and one in 2021/22 and 2022/23 (West Ham, over transfer receivables).

My view is this. Ownership in the Premier League isn’t only about money given; it’s about money lent. Owner money that pays down expensive debt, or builds a stadium or an academy, makes a club stronger. Owner money that goes into the squad mostly feeds the next round of transfer fees and wages, for every club chasing the same players.

Football’s income keeps rising, and most of each rise is spent on the squad. While that continues, clubs will keep borrowing, and the price of that borrowing will reflect the risk. The real question isn’t whether money comes in, but whether clubs can run at a profit on what they earn. That’s the question our proposed Dynamic SCR is built to answer.