United’s books for 2025/26 look like a triumph until you break them down. What can Newcastle learn from it.

Manchester United finished third, earned a record £677.6 million and lost £43 million doing it.

The loss came out on Wednesday, inside a results release that led with the record. Chief executive Omar Berrada said the numbers showed a club “on the right trajectory”, and on the operating lines he had a point. Adjusted EBITDA reached £216.4 million, up 18.4 per cent. The club made an operating profit of £22.6 million, against a loss of £18.4 million the year before.

The story lies inside the headline.

The bill for yesterday

Take a fan’s view of it. Put £10 of United’s income in a drawer and watch where it goes.

£6.81 leaves at once to run the club, £4.46 of it in wages. That leaves £3.19.

Then the past arrives. £3.13 goes on players already in the squad. It isn’t cash out of the door this year. It is the yearly slice of their transfer fees, spread across the length of their contracts, and it lands on the books whether or not a penny changes hands. Just over £1 goes to lenders: £69.6 million in net finance costs across the year, more than the £63.5 million the club spent buying land for a new stadium. Thirty pence covers depreciation on buildings and equipment. Player sales hand back 69p. The last of the restructuring bills take 12p, and a small tax credit gives back 6p.

The drawer ends 63p short.

Some of that interest bill is currency. £10 million was an unrealised loss on dollar-denominated debt, against a gain of nearly £23 million the year before. Strip that out and the underlying interest cost is still higher, by roughly £18 million. In June United also replaced some of its bonds, the notes it sold to investors, with a larger issue that added $125 million to its dollar borrowings.

So the club got better at the parts a fan can see. Third place, Champions League football, a bigger television cheque for finishing twelve places higher. And the same £10 still arrives with claims on it before the head coach sees a penny.

The ceiling

Every supporter has asked why a club doesn’t simply spend more. Moreso when your owner is the richest in the world, like the PIF.

A squad budget is not set by how rich the owner is. It is set by how much the club earns. The Premier League’s squad-cost rules tie what a club can commit to its players, meaning wages, agents’ fees and those yearly slices of transfer fees, to what comes in at the other end. Raise the income and the ceiling rises. Trim the other bills and there is more room beneath it.

United did both this year, in a season without a single European night.

Commercial income came to £317.3 million, and the release announces a training-kit partner in Betway and a sleeve partner in SumUp on top of adidas on the shirt and Snapdragon across the front. The club is selling every square inch of the kit.

The climb from fifteenth to third lifted broadcasting income by £33.9 million, even after the European money vanished. Matchday income held at £153.5 million from just 20 home games, ten fewer than the year before, which the club credits to “strong demand for our general admission and hospitality offerings”. That works out at roughly £7.7 million a home game. Old Trafford holds 74,244 people, and United make them count.

On the other side of the ledger, wages fell 3.6 per cent to £302.0 million, after two years of headcount cuts. The bill for getting there was £36.6 million and then £8.2 million in restructuring, head-coach exits and a pension top-up.

Now the warning label. United expect £740 million to £760 million of revenue next season and £205 million to £225 million of adjusted EBITDA. Subtract one from the other and both ends of the range imply about £535 million of running costs, roughly £74 million more than this year. In the fourth quarter alone, wages already ran at 52.3 per cent of revenue, up from 48.3.

The Champions League money hasn’t arrived, and it has been spent.

What Newcastle should take from it

Every club in the Premier League works under the same arithmetic. So the useful question isn’t what United got wrong. It is which of their moves a club in a different position can copy, and which of their habits it should avoid.

Four things worth copying

Treat league position as income. The climb from fifteenth to third added £33.9 million to United’s broadcasting revenue, and that is after losing their European money. A place in the table needs no new partner and no new stand. For Newcastle, every decision that protects league position, from the depth of the squad to the stability around it, is a financial decision as well as a sporting one.

Sell every surface. United’s commercial income was £317.3 million, 46.8 per cent of their revenue, in a year with no European football and after losing a training-kit sponsor. The club has since filled that space with Betway and added a sleeve partner in SumUp. The lesson is that inventory is a choice: the shirt, the sleeve and the training kit are three sales, not one. For Newcastle the lesson is breadth. The more of the club’s commercial income comes from partners with no link to the owner, the less of it ever faces a fair-market-value question.

Make every seat earn more. The release credits strong demand for hospitality and general admission with holding matchday income up while the number of home games fell by a third. That is yield, not capacity. Old Trafford’s 74,244 seats are about 22,000 more than St James’ Park’s 52,264, so the gap in seats is real. But pricing and hospitality are levers a club can pull before it pours a foundation.

Build in the right order. United finished the Carrington training-ground rebuild in August 2025 and then bought the land for a new stadium. The cheaper, quicker project went first. It is a sequence any club weighing a stadium can borrow.

Five things to fear

Spending money before it lands. United’s guidance shows how fast a Champions League uplift is absorbed by wages. The safer way to treat European income is as a bonus. Where a contract pays more for a European season, the extra should be triggered only when the money arrives.

Interest. More than £1 of every £10 at United goes to lenders, and none of it puts a player on the pitch. When a stadium needs financing, the question for Newcastle is how to keep that cost out of the football budget altogether.

The transfer credit card. Amortisation rose £15.4 million to £211.8 million, and £452.3 million of unamortised fees still sits on the balance sheet. United’s net cash spend on players fell to £143.7 million from £230.0 million, partly by selling future transfer receivables, which brings cash forward and takes it from later years. At June 2025 they owed other clubs £447.1 million in fees. The better measure of a signing is its yearly write-down, not the fee on the headline.

Currency. A £10.0 million loss on dollar debt, after a £22.9 million gain the year before, turned a manageable year into a bigger loss. A club should borrow in the currency it earns.

Slow stadium decisions and churn. United have bought the land for a new ground and the release discloses no cost or funding plan for it. Meanwhile the £44.8 million spent over two years on restructuring and exits shows what changing course costs. For Newcastle, in transition under Matthias Jaissle, the lesson is to settle the big structural questions early, the stadium route above all, and to keep the structure around the team steady while it does.

What happens next

Newcastle’s latest accounts, when they arrive by March year, are the place to test these lessons: are we still on the right path. Until then the ceiling is the fixed point around which every club plans.

The finances of a Big 6 team is quite different from Newcastle’s – how are we charting our own path? Join the conversation on X @mytoonarmy #NUFC