English football is going through a particularly worrying financial crisis. According to an investigation by Daily Mailwhich relays a 245-page report published by the Independent Football Regulator (IFR), 94% of English clubs are recording financial losses, while more than 60% of EFL and National League teams are technically insolvent. An alarming situation despite the record revenues generated by English football, which exceeded 10 billion euros during the 2025-2026 season. Of this sum, 8 billion comes from the Premier League, compared to a billion for the Championship, 460 million for League One and League Two combined, and only 70 million for the National League. The financial gap between the elite and the lower divisions continues to widen: while a Premier League club earned on average 2.7 times more than a second division team in 1992, this ratio has now reached 8.7. A difference that pushes many teams to spend beyond their means in the hope of reaching the elite. Even more worrying, more than a quarter of the clubs concerned could not survive more than a month without the financial support of their owners.
This situation is explained in particular by the explosion of salaries and the growing debt of clubs. Between the 2021-2022 and 2025-2026 seasons, salary expenditure increased by 33% in the Premier League, by 32% in the Championship, but above all by 71% in League One and 63% in League Two. Commissions paid to agents also jumped from €375 million to €691 million, while English football’s overall debt rose from €3.3 billion in 2020-21 to €4.85 billion in 2024-25, with a projection of €6 billion for 2026-27. Faced with these figures, the IFR is calling for urgent reforms, in particular better redistribution of income between divisions and stricter control of expenses. “ While some of our clubs are among the richest and most competitive in the world, others are on the brink of financial disaster », Alerted David Kogan, president of the regulator. Discussions are currently underway between the Premier League and the EFL around a deal providing an additional €2.1 billion over ten years for the lower divisions. The IFR has already warned that it could intervene if no compromise is found between the different bodies of English football.
