When Chelsea F.C. reported earlier this year it had sold its women’s team to its own parent company for nearly £200 million ($269 million), investors scratched their heads: the team looked like it was only worth a quarter of that amount.
The transaction made more sense when considering that the London soccer club’s owners, BlueCo 22, are led by Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly, who wants to invest more in the men’s squad without breaking Premier League spending rules.
The internal accounting sale means Boehly now owns a women’s team valued at £198.7 million. Chelsea, a separate entity, can count the June 2024 deal toward its profit for that season and continue to spend heavily on new players without risking the fines and point deductions that can result from violating the league’s 2013 profit and sustainability mandate.
Indeed, as the summer transfer window approaches its Sept. 1 close, Chelsea has racked up the third-highest total for new players of any club in Europe for the 2025-2026 season so far.
Such internal asset sales are a tactic English teams are increasingly using to spend big on talent without violating the rules encouraging clubs to manage their money responsibly. Under the league’s parameters, teams must limit their total losses over a three-year rolling period to no more than £105 million.
Aston Villa F.C. and Everton F.C. also sold their women’s teams internally this summer, taking advantage of similar accounting maneuvers to limit their paper losses. The tactics have stirred up backlash against the rules, which also give clubs — especially smaller ones — an incentive to sell young and promising players who have come up through their academies during transfer season. Proceeds from those sales count as pure profit on the books.
The backlash was evident when Newcastle United F.C. and Aston Villa met for their Aug. 16 season opener, with supporters on both ends offering profane chants about league corruption.
“There do need to be some safeguards in place,” Kieran Maguire, associate professor in football finance and accounting at Liverpool University, said. However, the rules as they stand protect wealthy, established clubs such as Chelsea, while penalizing the new rich such as Newcastle, he said.
Newcastle sits on almost unlimited money since Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund purchased the club in 2021, but the profitability requirements prevent it from spending as heavily as more established competitors with higher revenue.
“We’re controlled by PSR,” Newcastle manager Eddie Howe said in August after his team lost to Liverpool F.C. “That’s still limiting what we can do and that’s the reality.”
Accounting tricks
Last season, teams including Everton and Nottingham Forest F.C. bumped up against the profit rules, receiving points deductions for financial losses that placed them at risk of relegation to the second tier of English football. Other clubs appear to have heeded the warning.
“A year ago there were six teams in danger of breaking the limits,” Maguire said, including big clubs like Newcastle and Manchester United F.C. “This year there are none.”
Some of that is down to making more money through higher ticket prices and increasingly lucrative international competitions such as the Champions League, which draws top teams from across Europe. Accountants have also found successful workarounds.
“Creative accountants are key members of the Premier League now,” Maguire said.
Proceeds from Chelsea’s sale of its women’s team helped the club declare an overall pre-tax profit of £128 million for the 2023-2024 season, the last year for which it has published results. The previous year, the club declared a profit of £76.5 million on the sale of some hotels, allowing it to cut its losses to £89.9 million.
In both cases, the assets were sold to its owner BlueCo 22, which lost £430 million in 2024.
Christina Philippou, associate professor in accounting and sport finance at Portsmouth University, said by phone that her calculations showed the women’s team to be worth £60 million to £70 million. Maguire said he would normally value a team at double its revenue, making Chelsea Women worth £22 million on sales of £11 million. “As women’s football is growing so fast I might increase that to six times earnings, or £66 million,” he said.
Neither figure is close to the actual sale price. The Premier League can check if such internal sales are fairly valued but Chelsea subsequently sold a 10% stake in the women’s team to an outside investor for £20 million. That, it says, shows the team was valued correctly.
Meanwhile, Chelsea is one of the transfer market’s biggest spenders, dishing out 280 million euros ($328 million) on new players so far in the 2025-2026 season, according to Transfer Markt.
In June, Aston Villa said that it had followed Chelsea’s lead by selling its women’s team to its owners for more than £50 million.
Everton in July announced that it, too, had sold its women’s team to its parent company.
“Clubs have learned to stay within the system,” Philippou said.
Talent drain
Football fans also oppose the rules because they give clubs incentives to sell players who have risen up through their youth system.
“The most important thing that PSR has done to change the transfer market is encourage the sale of academy players,” Philippou said.
Aston Villa sold one of its youth academy graduates, Jacob Ramsey, to Newcastle for £40 million in August, recognizing the entire amount as profit as it bumped up against loss limits.
Sales of players who had transferred in from other clubs would have to be recorded as a profit or loss on the original sale price, which is amortized over the term of their contract.
Newcastle, in turn, had sold a promising young midfielder, Elliot Anderson, to Nottingham Forest the previous year for £35 million, when it was in danger of breaking the spending rules.
Chelsea has sold players worth 277 million euros this transfer window, largely offsetting the cost of acquisitions from outside the league.
“The Premier League dwarfs other European leagues in terms of money,” Maguire said. “That means it can afford to buy the big players.”
Eight of the top 10 spenders in this transfer window are Premier League clubs, the profit rules notwithstanding.
Outside scrutiny
English clubs have started attracting attention from Europe’s governing body, UEFA, which has stricter financial rules than the Premier League. UEFA requires clubs to break even over three years and caps squad costs at a percentage of revenue. It also doesn’t allow profits on internal deals to count against its loss limits.
In July it fined Chelsea 31 million euros for breaking its spending rules, along with Aston Villa, which has so far managed to avoid Premier League sanctions.
The Premier League intends to follow UEFA’s lead, but in February postponed the introduction of a cap on squad costs until 2026 at the earliest. Premier League clubs — which own the league — also voted against ignoring internal sales for profit calculations.
“For many of the clubs the current rules work to their advantage,” Maguire said. “Why would they want to change?”
