Spain’s top professional football league, LaLiga, closed the 2024/25 season with record revenues of €5.46 billion, up 8.1 percent from the prior year. The figure covers the 20 clubs of the top flight as well as the second division, LaLiga Hypermotion, and reflects a decade’s growth of more than 125 percent.
The chief engine has been commercial revenue (sponsorship deals, licensing and international partnerships), which surpassed €1.5 billion for the season and has now cleared €1 billion for the third consecutive year. Broadcast rights, the traditional backbone of football finances, were broadly flat year-on-year, contributing €1.87 billion. Transfer income (from player sales) rose to €797 million, up from the previous season’s €645 million.
More than 17 million people – more than ever before – attended matches this season, stadiums running at 84.5 percent capacity in the top flight. Squad costs remain below 70 percent of revenues, in line with UEFA guidelines, and the league body itself turned a small net profit of €6.2 million, reversing the prior year’s loss (of just over €5m).
LaLiga expects revenues to exceed €5.7 billion for the 2025/26 season and to approach €6 billion the year after that – thanks in part to a new domestic broadcast deal with Telefonica and DAZN. The deal is to generate €6.1 billion from 2027 to 2032 – or 9 percent more than the current arrangement.
How does LaLiga measure up to comparable leagues?
Because the five major European leagues publish their financial data at different times, over different periods and with different methods, the grounds for comparison are shifty at best. Deloitte will be publishing its Annual Review of Football Finance as usual, but not until June. Still, there are things to say.
Of Europe’s big five only LaLiga and the Bundesliga have published official aggregate figures for 2024/25. The Bundesliga’s top flight generated €5.12 billion – marginally less than LaLiga’s combined two-division total (€5.46bn). Operating profit for both divisions together amounted to €271.5 million.
England’s Premier League has generated something like €7.9 billion, to judge by club-level accounts filed to date and analyst projections (Matchday Finance). It is dominant over all comers and has been so for years.
Italy’s Serie A and France’s Ligue 1 have not yet published results for 2024/25. Their most recent complete figures, from 2023/24, are an approximate €2.9 billion and €2.6 billion respectively (Deloitte). Ligue 1’s revenue for 2024/25 will no doubt show a considerable fall, its domestic broadcast deal having collapsed.
In short, the Premier League is in a class of its own. It has long enjoyed a lead over the others, and that lead is only growing. LaLiga and the Bundesliga are neck and neck for second place, Serie A is a distant fourth, and Ligue 1 is for now anomalous, dealing with a broadcast problem unique in the sport.
Across the pond, the 29 clubs of Major League Soccer (MLS) generated an estimated $2.2 billion from stadiums, sponsorships and non-MLS events at club-owned or -operated venues in the 2024 season (MLS seasons do not cross calendar years) – with revenue from player trades excluded (Sportico). MLS, for its part, has secured a broadcast deal ($2.5bn over ten years) with Apple that is one of a kind – a single broadcaster (or streamer) covering all territories. It is also enjoying both record attendance and, since 2023, the benefits of Lionel Messi’s presence, but it remains below Europe’s big three in revenue and operates on a different financial structure – the league, not its clubs, owning the player contracts.
