The Chelsea owners continue to make headlines.
Their ‘creative accounting’ a running joke.
With the Chelsea accountant(s) clearly winning player of the year each season ahead of any of the playing squad, since these American owners took over from Roman Abramovich.
The American ownership group having sold themselves two hotels that the club owned in the Chelsea 2022/23 accounts, to avoid PSR sanctions due to losses beyond the allowed three season £105m limit.
Twelve months ago, the 2023/24 accounts saw the Chelsea owners sell to themselves the Chelsea women’s team, to avoid PSR sanctions. The Chelsea owners claiming a valuation of £200m for the women’s team, despite those accounts showing the women’s team had revenues of only £11.5m in the 2023/24 season AND lost £8.7m.
Now Chelsea have finally submitted their 2024/25 accounts, available to see by the public via Companies House online.
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire pointing out some of the key figures in these Chelsea 2024/25 accounts:
Revenue £491m
Wages £359m
Average weekly wage £152,000
Amortisation £214m which is up 9% on the 2023/24 accounts.
Underlying loss £296m
Pre tax loss £262m
Kieran Maguire then summing up just how outrageous the latest Chelsea accounts are….
“In terms of day to day cash management, from ticket, broadcasting, commercial sales less wages, overheads etc (and excluding player transactions) Chelsea spent £355m more than they generated in 2024/25…”
What is the final goal?
What I think though is often overlooked when it comes to what the Chelsea owners are up to with their creative accounting, is what is the final goal?
Quite clearly the American ownership has only got involved in Chelsea due to a desire to enrich themselves, but how exactly this is ever going to happen in the longer-term, is a total mystery. Unless they are hoping to strike oil under the Stamford Bridge pitch…
Apart from the creative accountancy moves, the only thing these Chelsea owners have been successful with, is burning through staggering amounts of money.
We have now seen 22 Holdco Limited (Also referred to as BlueCo 22) release their accounts for the year ending 30 June 2025, they are the Chelsea parent company which owns both Chelsea and Strasbourg (which the American owners bought in June 2023).
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire reporting this a year ago when BlueCo 22 released their 2023/24 accounts – 10 April 2025:
“Chelsea parent company 22 Holdco Ltd, which owns both Chelsea and Strasbourg, lost £473 million in 23/24 taking losses to almost £1.1 billion in the first two trading years. The company borrowed £967 million and repaid loans of £317 million in the year.”
Kieran Maguire now reporting this after BlueCo 22 finally released their 2024/25 accounts via his social media – 13 April 2026:
“Chelsea parent company BlueCo 22, which owns both Chelsea and Strasbourg, and strips out all the transactions between group companies, lost £630m in 24/25, taking total losses since the company formed in 2022 to £1,675 million, or £10.4m a week since the acquisition date of Chelsea.”
Now remember what Financial Fair Play is all about…
Financial Fair Play (FFP) was introduced to ensure (or so we were told…) that owners of clubs didn’t get unfair advantages due to putting in ridiculous sums of extra cash. That it was all about clubs only allowed to roughly spend what revenues they generated. That by bringing in these FFP restrictions it would ensure stability and prevent owners of football clubs running up massive losses, massive debts and so on.
FFP then morphed into PSR (Profit and Sustainability Rules), now SCR (Squad Cost Ratio) is arriving in the Premier League, but whatever label they put on it there is little to no difference. The same claims about promoting fairness and stability BUT the reality is that nothing really changes and the Chelsea owners the poster boys for how the ‘rules’ are totally meaningless. As these latest accounts show, both for Chelsea AND the overall holding company where the Chelsea owners have Strasbourg included as well in the accounts.
Special case
We also of course recently saw the perfect example of how Chelsea seem a special case.
The likes of Everton, Forest and Leicester have been docked points for breaking these brilliant fair and stable financial rules that the Premier League introduced. Whilst other clubs such as Aston Villa and Newcastle United have been massively impacted, forced to sell players they didn’t want to sell, especially young talent, to stay within the financial rules.
On top of all the accounts nonsense, Chelsea were also found to have over a period of many years to have made secret payments of tens of millions to help attract new signings to their club. Yet they received no real punishment, instead the Premier League announced that Chelsea had ‘agreed’ to pay a fine instead. So no docked points, no relegation, no ban for a year or more on buying first team players.