Southampton's Turnover Nearly Doubled in the Premier League. They Still Finished Bottom With a Historic Points Tally
A full season of Premier League broadcast money couldn't paper over one of the worst top-flight campaigns English football has seen.
In the 2024-25 season covered by these accounts, Southampton finished bottom of the Premier League with one of the lowest points totals in the competition's history, sacking Russell Martin midway through the season and appointing Ivan Juric, who was unable to arrest the club's slide back to the Championship.
Turnover still nearly doubled, up by around 88% to close to £160m, as a full season of Premier League broadcast revenue replaced the Championship-level income of the promotion campaign the year before, a reminder of just how much a single top-flight season is worth regardless of results.
That windfall did little to prevent a pre-tax loss of around £45m, as a squad and wage bill built with survival in mind proved nowhere near good enough, leaving net assets in deficit by around £110m by the end of the period.
Staff costs of around £110m against turnover of £160m show a wage bill that had scaled up rapidly for Premier League survival, a cost base the club is now unwinding back in the Championship after finishing with a historically poor points return.
Few clubs have banked a bigger single-season revenue jump for a worse return on the pitch. Southampton's accounts are the clearest evidence yet of how badly that promotion campaign went once results are stripped away from the money.
Southampton remained in the Championship for 2025-26 and were later deducted four points and expelled from that season's play-offs after breaches of EFL regulations relating to the unauthorised filming of an opponent's training session.
Southampton's Premier League return generated the kind of money most Championship clubs can only dream of. It bought them one of the worst top-flight seasons on record.