Premier League Debt Exceeds GBP3 Billion

Thu, 04 Jun 2009

Total debt among the 20 football clubs in the English Premier League topped £3 billion at the end of the 2007/08 season, according to new figures Deloitte .

In its Annual Review of Football Finance, the company revealed that Chelsea are most in the red, owing a staggering £711m, followed by Manchester United with £649m, Arsenal (£318m) and Liverpool (£300 million).

However, the figures showed that the overwhelming majority of Chelsea's debt (£701m) is a 'soft loan' provided by owner Roman Abramovich.

In the 2007/08 season, the Russian billionaire provided a further £123 million to the club, also via an interest-free soft loan .

According to Deloitte, the majority of Manchester United and Liverpool’s debt is in the form of bank loans taken out by the clubs’ owners to finance takeovers.

As a result, United had to pay a net interest bill of £69 million in 07/08, while Liverpool paid out £35 million in debt interest payments.

Arsenal's £318 million debt includes £250 million in long-term bonds taken out to finance their new stadium.

The Deloitte report explained: "The top ten list of Premier League clubs by levels of net debt are, unsurprisingly, made up of those clubs which have one or more of three characteristics: The strongest performing and highest revenue generating clubs, those that enjoy significant, non-interest bearing, benefactor loan support and those that have recently been acquired by new owners."
add to favouritesnewsletterlink to this pagesend to friendpost comments

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.