Landmark regulator report finds 94% of English clubs operating at a loss

The majority of clubs in the English football pyramid are financially precarious, according to the Independent Football Regulator’s first ‘State of the Game’ report, which found that 94 per cent of teams across England’s top five divisions made a loss in the 2025/26 season.

The watchdog, enshrined in UK law last year in a significant shift for English football governance, has called for “urgent reform” to protect the long-term sustainability of clubs. Despite record levels of money flowing into the game — driven largely by the Premier League’s global commercial reach — nearly all clubs remain dependent on owner investment to stay afloat. Around two thirds of clubs reported they would not survive beyond 90 days if their owners withdrew support, while almost one third said they could not last more than a month.

The regulator described English football as a “game loaded with risk”, identifying clubs in the Championship, League One and League Two as particularly exposed. The pressure to overspend in pursuit of promotion — and the financial rewards that come with reaching the Premier League — has pushed many clubs to operate on what the report calls “cliff edges”.

Regulator chair David Kogan and CEO Richard Monks wrote in the report’s opening remarks: “The conclusion is clear: we can’t afford to waste any more time failing to address the levels of financial risk which have become embedded in English football.”

The pair pointed to recent high-profile cases as evidence of the systemic danger. “When a club is taken to the brink of collapse as Sheffield Wednesday, Derby and Wigan were in recent times, it affects not just the team and their supporters but the whole community and the local economy,” they wrote. Sheffield Wednesday, Derby County, Reading and Wigan are among the clubs to have entered financial distress in recent years, following the outright collapses of Bury and Macclesfield Town in 2019 and 2020 respectively.

Kogan and Monks described the report as “the start of a long-term process to present the reality of the game” and said the IFR remains committed to its statutory objective of making clubs and the wider pyramid more financially sustainable. The report, they said, should serve as a “wake-up call” for the sport.