Where the money goes

One season, four directions

The diagram below is built from our dataset and drawn to scale: the width of each ribbon is the amount of money in it. Hover or focus a ribbon for the exact figure, the number of recipients, the per-club amount and the source. Click to pin it.

You will notice the ribbon reaching the National League System is a hairline. We have not exaggerated it, and we have not exaggerated the one at the top either. The real numbers are stark enough, and any distortion would be a gift to people who would rather this argument went away.

An honest note on this picture

This page used to say that no single consolidated table of where football's money goes had been published anywhere, and that strands had to be assembled from different seasons and different sources. That was true when we wrote it. It stopped being true on 13 October 2026, when the Independent Football Regulator published its draft State of the Game report, and we would rather say so than leave a complaint standing that has been answered.

Every strand above now comes from one season, 2025/26, and from that one document. Two things are still worth knowing. The Regulator's 2025/26 figures are forecasts as at March 2026 rather than outturn, and the report is a draft open to consultation until 8 December 2026, so these numbers may yet move.

Our fourth ask does not go away because of this. One report from a regulator in its first year, published as a draft, is not the same as a standing obligation to publish the same table every season in a form anyone can check. That is what we are asking for.

Our estimate Mixed seasons and mixed confidence. Both are labelled in the table and in the tooltips.

On a linear scale a Premier League club's bar makes every other bar look like a rounding error, which is exactly what it is. That chart is not a rhetorical trick; it is a bar chart of six numbers.