Premier League net spend and how Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham's transfer spending compares

The Premier League has often dominated spending over the years, with the English top flight the most profitable football league in the world. The Premier League also ranks as highly as fourth in the most profitable sports leagues in the world, behind leaders, the NFL, and then the NBA and MLB.

With an annual revenue of around £5.9billion, the Premier League leads Spain’s La Liga, the next most profitable football league by around £884.1million per year in profit. The NHL stands between the Premier League and La Liga when it comes to the most profitable sports leagues.

With each of the Premier League’s teams receiving a chunk of those profits, receiving around £2.84billion between them last season, spending is as high as ever. That money is dished out unevenly, of course, depending on broadcast contracts and where each team finishes in the league, but each of the clubs receives £95m in equally shared broadcast fees, and even the club that earned the least money in total last season bagged £109.7million, with the biggest earner taking in £175.9million from the Premier League.

Coupled with sponsorship, ticket sales and all the other revenues clubs bring in, it pays very well to be a Premier League club, and that is reflected on the transfer front. Profit and Sustainability rules have made spending more difficult, but the vast majority of clubs still operate at negative net spending in the tens and hundreds of millions - and they can afford to do it.

With that in mind, and with the help of Transfermarkt, we have rounded up the Premier League net spend over the last five years to see which club has the best and worst balance sheet when it comes to transfers. We start with the most profitable club on the transfer front.

Premier League’s five-year net spend table

Everton - £28.39m

Leicester City - €-17.11m

Wolves - €-54.25m

Southampton - €-65.04m

Brighton - €-77.17m

Brentford - €-97.01m

Fulham - €-124.28m

Ipswich Town - €-158.16m

AFC Bournemouth - €-134.41m

Crystal Palace - €-159.08m

Aston Villa - €-166.34m

Nottingham Forest - €-223.10m

Liverpool - €-256.08m

West Ham - €-324.55m

Manchester City - €-275.79m

Newcastle United - €-421.56m

Arsenal - €-358.23m

Tottenham - €-485.29m

Manchester United - €-583.92m

Chelsea - €-797.79m

What are the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability rules?

The Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability rules restrict how much money a club can lose over a rolling three-year cycle. Clubs are only permitted to lose a total of £105million over any three-year cycle, and only £15million of that can be the club’s own money. The rest has to be made up of secure funding.

Everton and Nottingham Forest are among the teams to have fallen foul of those rules, suffering points deductions in the past. There have been calls from clubs to change the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability rules, and clubs have voted on a change, but it has already been confirmed that the current Profit and Sustainability rules will stay in place next season “after legal challenges forced a delay to an agreement on a replacement system.” It looks likely the rules will be adjusted in the future, but it will prove to be a longer process than anticipated.

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