Sunday Edition - August 23

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Happy Sunday. I’m usually an early sleeper, but I stayed up late last night to watch Match of the Day. I had to. It’s the Premier League’s opening weekend, and the 3 pm blackout here in the UK means I couldn’t catch some of the games. If you’re asking, I’m on the side of the fence that wants to scrap the blackout. And as our Friday edition explored, that could become a reality as soon as next season.

That aside, I saw a stat this week showing that trust in the media has fallen to a new low. One reason, I suspect, is that the media hasn’t done a good job separating fact from opinion. More than ever, readers (like me) want to know when something is established fact and when it’s interpretation. So, true to our word, that’s what we’re doing with our weekend deep dives.

Today’s edition looks at the Premier League club valuation debate and what it could mean for the league’s future. We lay out the facts and present the arguments for and against today’s valuations. Then, contributing writer Ben gives his take, followed by a counterargument from our co-founder.

And in case you’re already thinking ahead, next week I’ll share what I got wrong about the Independent Football Regulator.

Enjoy the read.

Premier League clubs are spending at record levels while racking up mounting losses. Yet investors are valuing them more highly than ever, raising the question of what exactly they believe they’re buying.

With a week left in the transfer window, Premier League clubs are on track to break last year’s record transfer spending. At the time of writing, English top-flight clubs have spent a collective €2.77bn this summer, according to Transfermarkt data. While this figure is still well below last year’s €3.61bn record, this year’s spending rate is slightly ahead.

But that spending power does not mean Premier League clubs are financially healthy. Deloitte’s annual football finance review found that aggregate pre-tax losses for all 20 top-flight clubs totalled £948m in the 2024-25 season, a “notable deterioration” of more than 600% from the previous season. Plus, only eight clubs reported an operating profit that year, compared to 13 in the season before.

Yet, there is little sign that this has dented investor appetite for Premier League clubs, as some had predicted a couple of years ago. In a Bloomberg article in August 2024, titled ‘America’s love affair with investing in the Premier League fades’, football finance academic Christina Philippou argued that there are “fewer and fewer investors willing to pay for an asset that is increasingly loss-making.”

Recent deals suggest this isn’t the case - and in fact, they show that Premier League club valuations are on the rise. Last week, Fenway Sports Group (FSG) agreed to sell a 38% stake in Liverpool FC, a deal that valued the club at around £5.5bn. In May this year, Forbes had valued Liverpool as the fourth most valuable football club in the world at £4.6bn, around £900m below the valuation implied by the FSG transaction. Even more interesting, FSG paid £300m for Liverpool in 2010. Sixteen years later, investors are valuing the club at more than 18 times that amount.

Chelsea may tell a similar story. Todd Boehly and Mark Walter are in talks to sell their minority stakes to Clearlake Capital in a potential deal that would value the club at more than £5bn after it was bought for a total of £4.25bn in 2022.

These rising valuations come as English football has introduced an Independent Football Regulator (IFR), the first of its kind in European football, with the impact of this increased regulatory oversight yet to be seen.

Clearly, despite signs of financial strain and greater regulation, the prices investors are willing to pay for Premier League clubs suggest they remain remarkably bullish about the long-term value of Premier League clubs.

Below, we share both sides of the argument: why clubs should and shouldn’t be valued the way they are. Then, contributing writer Ben shares his take, and co-founder Tim gives his counterargument.