Is Brighton & Hove Albion compliant with UEFA's squad cost rule?

On this site's estimates, Brighton & Hove Albion's squad cost is 73.7% of adjusted revenue of £318.6m. UEFA's squad cost rule caps that at 70%, which for Brighton is £223m, leaving a shortfall of £11.7m. That puts them above UEFA's limit. This is the club's domestic-basis squad cost estimate read against UEFA's lines; UEFA's own cost definition and calendar-year measurement period differ, so the figure UEFA calculates will not match exactly.

How does Brighton & Hove Albion's UEFA position differ from their Premier League SCR position?

The same 73.7% is measured against two different lines. The Premier League's Green Threshold is 85% (£270.8m for Brighton), which leaves them inside it domestically. UEFA's limit is 70% (£223m), which leaves them above it in Europe. The two regulators therefore reach different conclusions about the same spending. UEFA measures to the calendar year and the Premier League to the season, and the two count costs slightly differently.

What happens if Brighton & Hove Albion breach UEFA's squad cost rule?

UEFA sanctions a squad cost breach with fines, conditional or suspended fines, and restrictions on registering new players for its competitions - never points deductions, which are the Premier League's remedy alone. In June 2026 the CFCB fined Aston Villa EUR 22.5m (EUR 7.5m payable, EUR 15m suspended for three years) and restricted their registration of new players for the 2026/27 Champions League; Chelsea were fined EUR 3m. A UEFA penalty has no effect on Brighton's Premier League position, and vice versa.

Brighton & Hove Albion · UEFA Conference League 2026/27

Brighton & Hove Albion under UEFA's squad cost rule

Because Brighton & Hove Albion are in the UEFA Conference League, they answer to two regulators at once. Their estimated squad cost is 73.7% of adjusted revenue of £318.6m. Against UEFA's 70% limit of £223m that leaves −£11.7m — UEFA: Over the 70% limit Against the Premier League's 85% Green Threshold of £270.8m it leaves +£36.1m — Premier League: High spending power

Brighton: the figures behind both rules

Estimated revenue (football) reported £222.4m
+ Player trading profit/loss (3-yr average) +£96.2m
Latest single season was +£57m not used alone
= Adjusted revenue (SCR basis) £318.6m
85% SCR limit £270.8m
Estimated squad cost estimated £234.7m
Headroom vs 85% limit +£36.1m
Red Threshold (115% of adjusted revenue) £366.4m
Headroom vs Red Threshold +£131.7m

UEFA squad cost rule (UEFA Conference League) — a separate regulator's rule, running alongside the domestic one

UEFA limit (70% of adjusted revenue) £223m
Headroom vs UEFA limit −£11.7m

UEFA: Balanced

High spending power - squad cost is 73.7% of adjusted revenue

For reference, Transfermarkt's current squad market value is £530.9m (source) — a transfer-market valuation, not the same thing as squad cost. It's shown purely as a sanity-check on the scale of the composed wage/amortisation figure above, not as an input to the SCR calculation itself.

Premier League SCR vs UEFA squad cost rule, side by side

Both rules cap squad cost as a share of revenue, and both start from broadly the same family of costs. Everything else about them differs — who enforces them, over what period, and what happens when a club goes over.

Premier League SCR	UEFA squad cost rule
Regulator: the Premier League Assessed at the Accounts Confirmation Test	Regulator: UEFA's Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) Applies only while the club is in a UEFA competition
Green limit: 85% of adjusted revenue = £270.8m	Limit: 70% of relevant income = £223m
Upper limit: 115% Red Threshold = £366.4m Green threshold plus the club's own allowance, which ratchets	Upper limit: 100% A fixed line — UEFA's allowance does not ratchet with past breaches
Brighton's figure: 73.7% High spending power	Brighton's figure: 73.7% Over the 70% limit
Headroom: +£36.1m vs the 85% limit	Headroom: −£11.7m vs the 70% limit
Accounting period: the season Confirmed at the Accounts Confirmation Test after the accounts are filed	Accounting period: the calendar year The current period ends 31 December 2026; CFCB decisions expected late June 2027
Sanction: a levy in the 85%–115% band from 2027/28, then points deductions beyond the Red Threshold Six points plus one for every £6.5m over	Sanction: fines, suspended fines and squad-registration restrictions Never points — UEFA cannot touch a domestic league table

Why the two figures differ

The two rules are close cousins, not the same rule at two thresholds. The cost definition differs. UEFA counts all player and head-coach employee costs, amortisation and impairment of player registrations, and agent fees. The Premier League counts player and head-coach wages, amortisation and agents' fees. Same family of costs, but the two bodies draw the boundary in slightly different places.

The calendar differs. UEFA measures a calendar year and sets its costs against calendar-year "relevant income". The Premier League measures a season and sets squad cost against adjusted football revenue for that season. A club that sells in January lands the profit in a different measurement period under each rule.

The regulator differs, and so does the consequence. One body's pass is routinely the other's breach, and neither decision binds the other. Aston Villa's 2025 fine came from UEFA; the Premier League took no action over the same accounts.

An important caveat on the figures above. This site holds one squad-cost estimate per club and reads it against both sets of lines, which is why Brighton's ratio shows as 73.7% in both columns. UEFA's actual cost definition and calendar-year measurement period differ from the Premier League's, so the number UEFA calculates for Brighton will not be exactly this one. Treat the 73.7% as the club's domestic-basis figure held up against UEFA's threshold — a good guide to which side of the line they sit, not a reproduction of UEFA's own arithmetic.

What a breach would mean for Brighton

This is the common shape for a Premier League club in Europe: compliant at home, over the line in Europe. Brighton sit inside the Premier League's 85% threshold with £36.1m of headroom, so the Premier League has nothing to act on. UEFA's 70% limit is £223m, which their estimated squad cost exceeds by £11.7m. The exposure is a CFCB fine — often part-payable and part-suspended against a commitment to cut the ratio — and potentially a restriction on registering new players for the UEFA Conference League. No points are at risk, because UEFA does not deduct them.

Neither outcome affects the other. A club can settle with UEFA and still face the Accounts Confirmation Test, or pass the Premier League's test and still be fined in Nyon.

The 2025 and 2026 precedents

UEFA has now sanctioned squad cost breaches twice, and both rounds show the shape of the remedy: money and registration limits, structured to reward a club that brings the ratio down.

July 2025. The CFCB settled with a group of clubs over squad cost and football-earnings breaches. Aston Villa were fined €11m, with a further €15m conditional on compliance across a three-year settlement period — a UEFA sanction, not a Premier League one. Chelsea were fined €31m in total across football-earnings and squad-cost breaches, with up to €60m more conditional. Al Jazeera, Sports Illustrated.

30 June 2026. Ruling on calendar-2025, the CFCB fined Aston Villa €22.5m (£19.4m) — €7.5m payable and €15m suspended for three years, conditional on continuing to cut the ratio — and added a restriction on registering new players for the 2026/27 Champions League. Chelsea were fined €3m (€1m payable, €2m suspended). Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest were also fined. Sky Sports.

Note the direction of travel in both cases: a payable fine, a larger suspended one, and a squad-registration limit — never a points deduction. That is the whole of UEFA's toolkit here, and it is why a UEFA breach and a Premier League breach are not interchangeable risks.

Key dates

UEFA's limit fell from 80% for calendar 2024 to 70% from calendar 2025, where it now sits. The current measurement period — calendar 2026 — ends on 31 December 2026, and CFCB decisions on it are expected in late June 2027, matching the timing of the June 2026 round.

The Premier League runs to a different clock. Brighton's SCR position is assessed per season at the Accounts Confirmation Test, once the club's accounts for that season are filed. A breach of the 85% Green Threshold there cuts the following season's allowance by the size of the breach, which lowers the Red Threshold the club is measured against next time.

So Brighton face two assessments, several months apart, on overlapping but non-identical figures — and can be judged compliant by one body and in breach by the other on the same spending.

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Note on this club's figures. 2024/25 filed-accounts basis: revenue £222.4m (Brighton FY2024/25 annual accounts, reported via matchdayfinance/wearebrighton), player trading profit £57.0m (down from £110m the prior year). No analyst publishes an exact 2024/25 SCR percentage for Brighton (unlike 2023/24, where theesk.org computed an explicit 62% green-zone figure). The anchored squad_cost here (~£234.7m, ~84%) follows analyst Greg Cordell (gregcordell.substack.com), who states Brighton's 'very rough estimates for 2021/22 through 2024/25 indicate the club consistently remain within the green threshold limit of 85.0%' — taken as just-under-85%. Independently composing from filed-accounts components (wages £164.6m + amortisation £82m, both widely reported via matchdayfinance/Swiss Ramble-sourced coverage of the 2024/25 accounts) gives £246.6m, i.e. ~88.3% of the £279.4m adjusted-revenue denominator (£222.4m + £57.0m) — matching the expected ~89% composed figure. The ~£12m gap between anchor and components likely reflects non-playing staff/administrative costs folded into the £164.6m 'total wages' line that the analyst anchor implicitly excludes, plus agents' fees not being separately disclosed. Per data convention, the anchored figure is stored as squad_cost and the three components are set to null rather than storing a set that would sum to a contradictory total. Separately, matchdayfinance's PL-wide 2024/25 review notes Brighton sat below UEFA's stricter 70% threshold on a THREE-SEASON-AVERAGE basis, 'boosted by two years of very high player trading profits (2022/23, 2023/24)' that 'will roll out of the calculation by 2026/27' — a caveat that the single-year figures stored here do not capture, and which implies Brighton's true multi-year-smoothed ratio is more favourable than the single-year composed figure suggests, but will likely rise as those exceptional years drop out. Brighton finished 8th in the Premier League in 2025/26 and qualified for the UEFA Conference League play-off round for 2026/27, hence uefa_competition is set to conference_league. 3-YEAR TRADING PROFIT / TRANSFERMARKT NOTE: 2023/24 player trading profit corrected to £110.3m (not the £110.0m/£110m round figure previously assumed) — sourced via Greg Cordell's Substack analysis of Brighton's 2023/24 accounts (gregcordell.substack.com/p/brighton-and-hove-albion-202324-financial), itself drawing on Swiss Ramble's published breakdown; corroborated by wearebrighton.com's accounts coverage. Driven mainly by Moises Caicedo's British-record sale to Chelsea. 2022/23 figure of £121.4m (not £110m's prior comparator of exactly £122.8m — that £122.8m is the club's overall post-tax PROFIT figure, not the player-trading line) sourced from the same Greg Cordell article, which states a £11.1m year-on-year decrease from 2022/23 to 2023/24 (£121.4m minus £110.3m ≈ £11.1m), and cross-checked against wearebrighton.com's 2022-23 accounts article citing '£121.4 million profit... from outgoing transfers' driven by Cucurella, Trossard and Maupay sales. Three-year picture: £121.4m (2022/23) -> £110.3m (2023/24) -> £57.0m (2024/25, per existing dataset) — a real, sustained decline, not a single-year anomaly, so smoothing materially lowers the multi-year average versus using 2024/25 alone. Transfermarkt squad value: current total squad market value shown as €619.50m on the Transfermarkt squad page (fetched via transfermarkt.us mirror since transfermarkt.com was unreachable); converted to GBP at an EUR/GBP rate of 0.857 (approximate spot rate as of August 2026) giving ~£530.9m. This is a sanity-check figure only, not squad cost — Transfermarkt market value is an independent crowd-sourced estimate of player worth, unrelated to SCR's wage+amortisation+agents'-fees definition. Summer 2026 window: spend £133.0m, sales £173.0m, net sales £40.0m (Sky Sports/GiveMeSport, transfer fees not accounting profit — the P&L profit on disposal is fee less remaining book value, so this is an upper bound on the player-trading profit that will land in FY2026/27). The stored player_trading_profit remains the filed figure and is NOT adjusted for this window.
Source.

Figures are illustrative estimates from published accounts, named analyst estimates and public reporting, not official SCR or UEFA submissions. Premier League squad cost is composed from wage, amortisation and agents' fee components or anchored to a published analyst estimate, because no club discloses the SCR split — which is why it is always flagged estimated. The same estimate is read against both the 85% and 70% lines; UEFA's own cost definition differs, so its calculated figure will not match exactly. Last reviewed 2026-09-03. Methodology →