Chelsea’s inventive methods of staying on the right side of the financial rules set by the Premier League have helped them massively in the transfer windows of recent years.
A lot has been made of the huge financial investments that the club have made into their playing staff since Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali took over, and that looks set to continue into the 2025 summer transfer window.
After announcing the signing of Liam Delap, the likes of Hugo Ekitike, Mike Maignan and Jamie Gittens could follow suit either before or after the Club World Cup.
A report from The Athletic has stated that the Blues have the largest PSR headroom in the Premier League this summer, even without selling first team stars.
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Photo by Image Photo Agency/Getty Images
Chelsea’s ‘genius’ blows up the transfer market with £300m masterstroke
Chelsea have sold hotels and even their own women’s team in order to balance the books in recent years, and have ultimately found a way to be able to outspend their Premier League rivals in the transfer market.
Financial expert Adam Williams has praised the accounting team at Stamford Bridge as ‘geniuses’ for their ability to turn what could have been a big loss into the healthy position they find themselves in.
He said: “Chelsea are an anomaly with PSR. If you look at operating loss – which is how businesses measure performance without non-recurring items like the hotel and women’s team sale – they are running at a deficit of £200m per season.
“You have to hand it to their accounting team, to turn those figures into £300m worth of PSR headroom is genius, even if most fans would argue it isn’t really in the spirit of the rules.
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“The clubs themselves, however, disagree. The Premier League didn’t get enough votes from clubs to close the intra-company asset sales loophole. It’s worth pointing out that UEFA don’t take the same approach and Chelsea will breach their PSR threshold, but they aren’t likely to get a significant punishment. It will probably be a modest cash fine and some form of spending plan.
*“The £300m worth of headroom means they can lose £300m this season, which technically ends for Chelsea at their year-end accounting date on 30 June, and still comply with PSR. Given that the operating losses are likely to be in the region of £200m again, you can expect a big loss. However, the fact that several of the sales they made in 2024-25 were ‘pure profit’ trades for PSR purposes means that it will probably be a more modest loss than people are expecting, though that will be offset by the fact that a few more sales technically went through in the last financial year.*“
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Photo by Marc Atkins/Getty Images
Will PSR catch up with Chelsea?
Eventually, the Blues are going to run out of assets to sell, and Williams believes Chelsea will need to significantly increase their revenue to be able to compete at the same level in the market.
He said: “Eventually, however, I think gravity will catch up with them unless they can massively increase revenue. The quick way to do that is results on the pitch – progress in the Champions League especially. But that’s a volatile revenue stream. That’s why they want to expand Stamford Bridge, which would deliver what is known as ‘sticky revenue’, i.e. it isn’t going to vary hugely from one season to the next. Obviously, that’s going to take a lot of time and goes beyond the next few PSR cycles.
*“Their 2024-25 and 2025-26 calculations will include the women’s team sale proceeds, but beyond that they will have huge amortisation and wage costs. Without a big increase in revenue, it’s going to be more difficult to operate within the PSR quota.*“
Boehly is an advocate for moving away from Stamford Bridge and having Chelsea play their home games at a new stadium, however that is unlikely to occur for many years due to the multiple issues facing them.