Huddersfield Town hailed as underdog as Premier League clubs hit £3.6bn revenues

Huddersfield Town has been lauded as an underdog success after its ascension to the Premier League this year, as a new report shows that clubs in the League recorded revenues of £3.6bn in the 2015/16 season.

Deloitte’s Annual Review of Football Finance found that, combined, the top 92 clubs in the Premier and Championship leagues returned £4.4bn in revenues, in the final year before the start of the new broadcast deals in 2016/17.

Despite wage costs increasing by 12% to £2.3bn, Premier League clubs recorded a third consecutive season of operating profits in excess of £500m in 2015/16, and have generated combined operating profits of over £1.6bn over the past three seasons, more than they managed in total over the previous 16 seasons combined.

Deloitte experts said that Huddersfield Town’s rise to the top proved that any club could enter the Premier League, regardless of budget.

In the Championship overall revenues increased to a new record level of £556m in 2015/16, and have risen by 74% in the last decade.

But for the third time in the last four years, clubs spent more on wages, with the bill coming in at £561m, than they generated in revenue, resulting in a record operating loss of £261m. They made pre-tax losses of £241m. This follows two seasons of operating and pre-tax loss reductions.

Adam Bull, senior consultant in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, commented: “With clubs standing to earn a revenue uplift of at least £170m from promotion to the Premier League, rising to over £290m if they survive one season, Championship clubs continue to be tempted to spend excessively relative to their revenues, particularly on wages.

“Huddersfield Town’s promotion at the end of the 2016/17 season again demonstrated the opportunity for any Championship club to reach the Premier League, regardless of their budget.

“Indeed, Huddersfield became the eighth club in the last five seasons to win promotion without the aid of parachute payments, and in 2015/16 had the Championship’s fourth-lowest wage costs.”