Championship wage bill rises to £903m as expanded playoffs increase spending incentive
Deloitte’s Annual Review of Football Finance reported that the English Championship’s collective wage bill rose to a record £903m in 2024-25, and the expansion of this season’s promotion playoffs is expected to drive further spending. Owners face greater temptation to increase outlays as a top-eight finish now offers at least a playoff place.
Clubs are spending large sums chasing Premier League income; by contrast the Premier League’s salary outlay was £4.4bn. The 24 Championship clubs together generated £942m in revenue, meaning wages consumed 96% of that total. The division’s collective net debt stood at £1.4bn at the end of 2024-25, down from £1.5bn a year earlier.
Uefa’s financial sustainability regulations cap spending on wages, transfers and agent fees at 70% of club revenues. Luton and Sheffield United spent about 59% of their income on salaries in 2024-25, aided by parachute payments after relegation from the Premier League. Only four other clubs were below 80% wages-to-revenue, while 13 clubs spent more on wages than they earned. Cardiff recorded the highest ratio, paying £39m in salaries against £26m of income (150%) and finished bottom of the table.
Deloitte estimates that newly promoted Coventry and Hull will see their revenues rise by at least £210m over the next three seasons, with potential increases up to £365m if they remain in the Premier League into 2027-28. Ipswich’s projected uplifts are lower because of parachute payments last season, with estimates around £170m and £325m respectively. Deloitte says these sums are helping to form a strata of clubs that regularly move between England’s top two tiers. Burnley have either enjoyed promotion from the Championship or suffered Premier League relegation for five consecutive seasons, and bookmakers list Burnley as fourth favourites to go up next May, with relegated West Ham and Wolves leading the promotion market.
Capology places West Ham 15th in the world for wage bills outside the Premier League and Saudi Pro League, with Wolves two places behind and Burnley a further six places back. Jarrod Bowen is reported to earn £7.8m per year at West Ham, a figure higher than the entire squad wage bills of Lincoln (£5.8m) or Bolton (£6.3m). The report notes that many top-division teams in France, Germany, Italy and Spain cannot match the salary spending of those clubs.
The Championship’s revised playoff format allows teams finishing third to eighth to qualify: third and fourth advance directly to the two-legged semi-finals, while one-legged quarter-finals see fifth and sixth host eighth and seventh respectively. That structure keeps the possibility of a playoff berth alive for many clubs late into the season and leaves January’s transfer window as a clear opportunity for additional investment. When the winter window closed earlier this year Leicester were six points from eighth and nine above the bottom three; clubs in a similar position next January may gamble on chasing a playoff place but could be relegated as Leicester were.
The National League’s six-team playoff format, used since 2017-18 with only the division winner earning automatic promotion, underlines how rare success is from lower playoff positions: the team finishing seventh in that division has never won the playoffs and sixth have prevailed only once (Grimsby in 2022), a side that was in its only season outside League Two in the past 10. In the Championship no team finishing sixth has been promoted since 2010 and Aston Villa remain the most recent fifth-placed side to earn promotion, in 2019. None of the previous seven teams finishing eighth averaged more than 1.5 points-per-game or won more than 43.4% of their matches.
Reaching the Premier League carries a reward in the region of £200m, a financial prize that is likely to shape owners’ spending decisions as clubs compete for the expanded playoff places this season.