Cardiff City Finished Bottom of the Championship With a £35m Hole in the Accounts
Relegation to League One is rarely painless. Cardiff's numbers show just how expensive a last-place finish can be.
In the 2024-25 season covered by these accounts, Cardiff City finished bottom of the Championship and were relegated to League One, a chastening campaign that saw the club change managers during the season as results failed to improve.
Turnover still rose by around 11% to close to £26m, but that growth did little to offset a pre-tax loss of around £35m, one of the heaviest in the division that year, as relegation-threatened squad costs continued regardless of results on the pitch.
Net assets sit around minus £70m, a deficit that reflects years of Championship-level spending without the parachute protection that comes with dropping out of the Premier League, leaving Cardiff more exposed than several of their relegation-threatened rivals.
Staff costs of around £39m against turnover of £26m show a wage bill that had drifted well out of line with what a bottom-of-the-table Championship club could realistically sustain, a mismatch that relegation has now forced the club to address.
Bottom place in the Championship came with a financial bill to match. Cardiff's rebuild in League One will be shaped as much by these accounts as by whoever the club appoints to lead it.
Cardiff City bounced straight back from League One, winning promotion back to the Championship for the 2026-27 season under new manager Barry-Murphy.
Cardiff's relegation was as much a financial story as a footballing one, a wage bill that had outgrown what bottom-of-the-table Championship football could support.