Manchester United: record revenue and a seventh straight loss

On 23 September 2026, Manchester United published their accounts for the 2025/26 financial year, which ended on 30 June, and the numbers tell two stories at once. The first is a recovery: record revenue of £677.6m, above the previous record of £666.5m, earned without playing in any UEFA competition, and an operating profit of £22.6m after five years in the red on that line. The second is a haemorrhage: a loss of £43.0m, the seventh consecutive financial year in the red, and £689.0m in borrowings on 30 June. On the New York Stock Exchange, the shares fell 3% in the first 15 minutes of trading that day, according to The Motley Fool. My reading is that the accounts show a club that fixed its operations but not its finances.

The route from profit to loss takes three steps. The £22.6m operating profit ran into £69.6m of net finance costs, made up of interest, other charges and a £10.0m foreign exchange loss on unhedged dollar debt: before tax, the loss was £47.0m. A £4.0m tax credit brought the bill down to £43.0m, which is the loss after tax, not before. And the revenue record is only a club record, not a league one. In the Premier League, Manchester City had already turned over £715m in 2023/24. At the European Central Bank reference rate for 23 September 2026, United's revenue is worth €788.4m, R$4.62bn or US$899.6m, and the borrowings €801.6m or R$4.69bn. In the table, figures are millions of pounds rounded to one decimal place, so totals may differ by 0.1.

Premier League TV money drove record revenue without Europe

Broadcasting was the only one of the three main revenue lines to grow: £206.8m, up £33.9m (19.6%), driven by 3rd place in the Premier League, against 15th in 2024/25. The gain more than made up for the absence of the previous season's European games, a campaign that had ended in the Europa League final. Kieran Maguire, the football finance expert who spoke to Sky Sports, puts the extra prize money at £3m per league place. Broadcasting's share of revenue rose from 25.9% to 30.5%. The contrast came from Scotland, the day before. Celtic reported on 22 September 2026 a 22.7% fall in revenue, from £143.6m to £111.0m, mainly because they dropped from the Champions League to the Europa League, and swapped a £45.7m profit for a £6.6m loss before tax. With no European football at all, United grew revenue by 1.7%.

Matchday revenue fell £6.8m (4.2%) to £153.5m, and the explanation is the calendar: 20 games at Old Trafford, 10 fewer than in 2024/25, when cup ties and Europe added up to 11 home matches. Demand for tickets and hospitality limited the damage. By Maguire's calculation, the average charge per fan, corporate seats included, rose from around £88 or £89 to £106 per game. In commercial, the £16.0m drop has a name: the Tezos training kit deal ended before 2025/26, and sponsorship shrank by £27.9m (14.8%). Retail made up part of it, at £156.8m (+8.2%), thanks to the first full year of the in-house online store run with SCAYLE and a one-off credit. And the 2026 World Cup ruled out the end-of-season tour that, a year earlier, went to Malaysia and Hong Kong.

The cuts: lower wages, 450 fewer jobs and the Amorim bill

Employee benefit expenses, which at United cover all staff and not just the squad, fell £11.3m (3.6%) to £302.0m, or 44.6% of revenue, the lowest ratio in the seven sets of accounts in the table further down. The club credits the fall to changes in the make-up of the squad and savings from its headcount reduction programmes. There were two rounds: around 250 roles cut in July and August 2024 and up to 200 announced in February 2025, according to Fortune; the BBC puts the total at 450 people losing their jobs. Announcing the second round, chief executive Omar Berrada pointed to five straight years of losses and said: "This cannot continue". The 2024 accounts forecast annual savings of around £40m to £45m, before £10m of implementation costs, over the 2024/25 and 2025/26 financial years. Other operating expenses fell £11.2m (6.6%).

Exceptional items shrank from £36.6m to £8.2m. In 2024/25 the bill was the restructuring and Erik ten Hag's exit; in 2025/26 it was mainly Ruben Amorim's dismissal, the end of the restructuring and extra contributions to the Football League pension scheme deficit. Amorim left on 5 January 2026 with the team 6th in the Premier League, and his move to AC Milan cut the payoff: Sky Sports reports £16.7m due to him and his coaching staff and more than £8m saved; the BBC, £16.5m and £8.5m. The release does not break out what he was paid. Michael Carrick took over as interim, won 11 of 16 games, finished the season 3rd and was appointed permanently on 22 May 2026, on a contract until 2028. As I see it, the change cost little in 2025/26; the bigger bill sits in the 2026/27 forecast.

The Champions League clause: United's wage bill rises and falls with Europe

The pattern in the table is written into the club's own accounts. In 2019/20 the wage bill fell 14.5%, with "contracted reductions" in salaries for missing the Champions League; in 2020/21 it rose 13.6% on "contracted increases" for taking part. In 2022/23 it dropped 13.7%, with squad turnover and, again, no Champions League; in 2023/24 it grew 10.0% with the return; in 2024/25 it fell 14.1%, mainly because the team played in the Europa League. The accounts describe Champions League triggers in squad contracts, and the 2026/27 forecast already builds in the next one: the 23 September 2026 release refers to the return to the competition "and associated player staff cost increases". My reading is that the clause is smart insurance in bad years, because wages shrink with revenue, and a brake in good years, because much of the European money reaches the bank already spoken for.

The squad costs twice: in wages and in amortization, which spreads the price of each signing over the length of the contract. Amortization reached £211.8m in 2025/26, 67.2% above the £126.7m of 2019/20, and swallowed almost all of the £216.4m adjusted EBITDA. Without the £46.9m profit on player sales, the operating result would have been negative. In cash terms, the club paid £292.3m for players and received £148.6m; the net outlay fell from £230.0m to £143.7m, mainly because United sold transfer fee receivables that other clubs would only pay later. Selling receivables, to my mind, is borrowing by another name: it flatters the year's cash and takes money from the years that follow. And the summer of 2026, with Carlos Baleba, Andrey Santos and Youri Tielemans, cost £148m by the BBC's count, a sum that starts to weigh on amortization in 2026/27.

Why the operating profit became a loss: interest, currency and debt

Net finance costs jumped £48.4m (228.3%) to £69.6m, and currency explains most of it. In 2024/25 the unhedged dollar debt had produced a £22.9m foreign exchange gain; in 2025/26 it produced a £10.0m loss, a swing of £32.9m. Strip currency out of both years and finance costs rose anyway, from £44.2m to £59.7m (our calculation). Gross finance costs of £77.7m were 3.4 times the operating profit. Maguire told Sky Sports the interest bill was "almost £70m", "£1.4m a week" and "£200,000 a day": his number is the whole net cost, currency included. In the cash flow statement, interest paid came to £38.8m. Not even the club's own adjustment saves the bottom line: excluding exceptional items and currency on the debt, and with tax recalculated at a normalized 25% rate, United calculate an adjusted loss of £21.6m.

On 10 June 2026 the club refinanced its dollar debt. It issued $550m of senior secured notes at 5.36%, maturing on 10 June 2031, to prepay, with a contractual make-whole premium, the 3.79% notes that would have matured on 26 June 2027. The term loan was extended from 6 August 2029 to 10 June 2031. The dollar principal, unchanged from 2019 to 2025, rose to $775m, and the annual coupon on the new notes is $29.5m (5.36% of $550m, our calculation). Until its 2022 accounts, the club published net debt, borrowings minus cash; from 2023 onwards, the figure in the table is ours, using the same definition. On 30 June 2026 it reached £621.7m, more than triple the £203.6m of 2019.

Borrowings are not the whole story. Trade and other payables stood at £474.0m on 30 June 2026, and club sources told the BBC that around 75% of the £473m cited in its report is outstanding transfer fees, close to £355m by our calculation. Maguire puts transfer debt at between £350m and £400m and reckons football and traditional debt together come to around a billion pounds; the BBC wrote that overall debt, which stood at £1.3bn at the end of December 2025, had come down but remained above a billion. These are analyst and press figures, not numbers from the accounts. The roots go back a long way: by Maguire's count, quoted by the BBC, cumulative finance costs since the leveraged Glazer family takeover in 2005 have passed a billion pounds. He told Sky Sports that part of the rise in debt was down to exchange rates and that the Glazers "brought it upon themselves" by borrowing in the United States.

Seven straight losses: United's accounts from 2018/19 to 2025/26

The series demolishes two excuses. The first is the pandemic, which weighed on 2019/20, with games pushed into the next financial year and played behind closed doors, and on 2020/21, when almost three quarters of the £92.2m loss came from a £68.2m tax charge (before tax, it was £24.0m). It does not explain the five years that followed. The second excuse is the league table: United finished 3rd in 2019/20, 2022/23 and 2025/26 and lost money in all three seasons, and the only profit in the series, £18.9m, came with a 6th-place finish. Added together, the seven losses come to £448.8m. Over the seven years, the net finance result comes to a cost of roughly £249m, 56% of the £444.4m of losses before tax (our calculations, on the thousands-of-pounds figures in the accounts). More than half of the hole sits below the operating line.

A stadium estimated at £2bn and owner funding that dried up

The land has entered the accounts: £63.5m spent buying sites for the 100,000-capacity stadium announced on 11 March 2025. ESPN reported on 9 July 2026 that the project placed the stadium about 350 metres north-west of Old Trafford, in Stretford, at a cost of around £2bn; the BBC wrote on 23 September 2026 that it is likely to exceed that. Foster + Partners was confirmed as architect on 10 September 2026. The accounts do not say where the money will come from, the question Maguire asked on Sky Sports; according to the BBC, the club says it earmarked for the project the extra money from June's refinancing, which raised £89.5m net. My reading is that, with seven straight losses and £689.0m in borrowings, United cannot pay £2bn out of cash: they will need a partner, more debt or a partnership with the public sector.

And the owners' money stopped. Sir Jim Ratcliffe bought, through Trawlers Limited, 27.7% of the group's voting rights, and the deal brought in £158.5m in new shares in 2023/24 and £80.0m in 2024/25, £238.5m in total. In 2025/26, the share issue line in the cash flow statement was zero, and the new money came from the refinancing, at a higher rate. This, for me, is where the accounts get uncomfortable for the owners. Record revenue and adjusted EBITDA show the cuts worked at operating level. The absence of fresh equity and the bigger debt show that the 2025/26 transition was paid for with credit, not with shareholders' capital.

What the Champions League return means for the 2026/27 accounts

The forecast published on 23 September 2026 is the most revealing part of the release. With the Champions League return, the club projected revenue of £740m to £760m for 2026/27, up 9.2% to 12.2%, and adjusted EBITDA of £205m to £225m, between 5.3% below and 4.0% above 2025/26. At the midpoint of both ranges, revenue would grow by £72.4m and EBITDA would slip by £1.4m: wages and other costs would grow by £73.8m, more than all the new money. The release attributes the gap to the competition and the wages that come with it; the same day, The Motley Fool noted that, at the midpoint, EBITDA would come in below 2025/26 despite higher revenue. For 2026/27, the club also announced new partners for the training kit and the sleeve. And results on the pitch did not help early on: on 23 September 2026, the BBC had the team 12th in the Premier League.

The verdict, in my reading, comes in two halves. The good half: Berrada's United delivered at operating level what the 2024 and 2025 cost-cutting plan set out to do, with wages at 44.6% of revenue, record adjusted EBITDA and an operating profit after five years of losses on that line, and without Europe. The bad half: the debt tied to the 2005 leveraged takeover grew bigger and more expensive, with a $775m principal, $550m of it in 5.36% notes due 2031, on top of hundreds of millions in transfer fees payable and a stadium estimated at £2bn with no financing announced. The 2026/27 Champions League will not fix that on its own, because the club's own forecast sends the new money to the wage bill. The figures of 23 September 2026 were preliminary and unaudited, as the release says; the audited annual report, the Form 20-F, will confirm or correct every line of this analysis.