UEFA’S LATEST ANNUAL survey of the finances of European football shows the ongoing boom in European football, as the League of Ireland continues to perform respectably in a European context on all revenue streams aside from broadcast income. 

Uefa’s latest landscape report shows that the total revenue of all top-division clubs across their 55 member nations will exceed €30 billion for the first time in 2025, having reached a record €28.6 billion in 2024. 

The report assesses figures up to the end of the 2024/25 season, and thus analyses the League of Ireland on the 2024 season, given it runs along a calendar year schedule. 

While revenue booms, the report accentuate the gap between the Premier League and the rest: between 2014 and 2024, the Premier League’s TV revenues grew by €1.5 billion, while the total TV revenues for all top-division clubs across all of Uefa’s other 54 member nations grew by €1.6 billion. 

The Premier League’s TV revenue boom goes against a wider trend, which has seen the growth of broadcast income become outpaced by other revenue streams. Across that 2014-24 period, TV revenues are up 59%, but much larger increases have been recored in income from Uefa competitions (153%), sponsorship and commercial revenue (82%) and gate receipts (75%).

The Premier League therefore dominates transfer spending. Between 2021 and 2025, Manchester United recorded the highest net spend in world football, totalling €794 million, followed by Chelsea (€754 million), and Arsenal (€675 million.) 

In terms of gross spend across the same period, Chelsea outstrip all, with a staggering €2.25 billion paid in transfer fees. Next come Manchester City (€1.46 billion) and Manchester United (€1.25 billion.) 

The League of Ireland’s total revenue for 2024 came to €38 million, 27% of which came from Uefa competitions – the majority of which was earned by Shamrock Rovers in the Conference League – 26% of which came from gate receipts, and 23% of which was classes as commercial income. The remaining 24% of income is filed as miscellaneous, meaning that clubs once again made almost nothing from broadcast income, a long-persisting fact.

The League of Ireland ranks 33rd of 55 member nations for their total revenue, though slip to 36th on the rankings of broadcast income. 

The €10 million in total Uefa income for 2024 will have been significantly higher for 2025, as both Shamrock Rovers and Shelbourne competed in the league phase of the Conference League. 

The LOI spent a total of €18 million on wages and amortisation in 2024 (ranking 32nd in Europe) while the ratio of player wages: total income stood at 61%. 

The report also notes that Premier Division clubs were subject to nine takeovers and changes of ownership between 2020 and 2024, the seventh-highest figure across all of Europe’s top divisions. 

Many of those were part of multi-club models, but it is interesting to note that this trend is now slowing: the number of multi-club owners taking over a club fell from 44 to 16 in 2024, while there was a slight increase in multi-club investment – whereby a multi-club model takes a minority stake in a new club – from 13 to 17.