Balance Sheet
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Premier League SCR
How much can Ipswich Town spend?
Under the Premier League's Squad Cost Ratio rules, Ipswich Town have a
guaranteed spending limit of £137.4m
— 85% of adjusted football revenue of £161.7m.
Against their estimated squad cost that leaves £20.1m of headroom.
Their Red Threshold — the 115% ceiling beyond which points deductions apply — is
£186m.
£161.7m is adjusted revenue: headline turnover of
£155.4m plus a three-season average of
£6.3m profit on player sales, which is the
denominator SCR actually uses.
Ipswich Town: the SCR breakdown
-
Estimated revenue (football)
reported
£155.4m
-
+ Player trading profit/loss (3-yr average)
+£6.3m
-
Latest single season was +£15.4m
not used alone
-
= Adjusted revenue (SCR basis)
£161.7m
-
85% SCR limit
£137.4m
-
Estimated squad cost
estimated
£117.3m
-
Player wages
£77.1m
-
Player amortisation
£34m
-
Agents' fees
£6.2m
-
Squad cost = player wages + player amortisation + agents' fees. Composed estimate — no club discloses the SCR split.
-
Headroom vs 85% limit
+£20.1m
-
Red Threshold (115% of adjusted revenue)
£186m
-
Headroom vs Red Threshold
+£68.7m
High spending power
- squad cost is 72.5% of adjusted revenue
For reference, Transfermarkt's current squad market value is
£239.2m
(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.
What this means
On these estimates, Ipswich Town sit comfortably inside the 85% Green
Threshold. They have room to invest in the squad without straining the rules.
Summer 2026 window vs SCR headroom
-
Window spend (gross)
£171m
-
Window sales
£16m
-
Net spend
reported
£155m
-
Pre-window effective SCR headroom (85% limit plus any top-up or allowance)
£20.1m
Spent beyond headroom
A net spend of £155m is
£134.9m beyond the
£20.1m of effective headroom Ipswich had before the
window opened — the 85% limit plus any owner top-up or allowance, minus estimated squad cost, the same basis as the
transfer-window table.
Gross spend ~£171m across 14 permanent signings (broke the record for a newly promoted club), sales income ~£16m, net spend ~£155m (internally consistent: 171-16=155). Sky Sports/StatiSense reporting instead puts Ipswich's net spend at £190.7m (likely a different fee-accounting method, e.g. including add-ons); the £171m/£16m/£155m set used here is arithmetically verifiable.
Source.
Spending beyond calculated headroom is not automatically a breach: transfer fees are
amortised over the contract, sales offset signings, and none of it reaches SCR squad cost
until the next accounts are filed.
Every club's window spend vs headroom →
Old rules vs new: PSR compared to SCR
Under the old PSR system, clubs were judged on total losses over three years,
not on what they spent on the squad as a share of revenue. Here's how Ipswich's
position compares under both sets of rules.
Ipswich's 3-year PSR/FFP window spans League One, Championship and Premier League seasons as they rose through the divisions, so the applicable loss threshold is the blended figure reported by the club/analysts (£61m over 3 years, roughly £20m/season average) rather than a single competition's flat limit. Aggregate 3-year losses of approximately £30.2m leave headroom of about £32m against that £61m threshold, per Swiss Ramble's analysis of the 2024/25 accounts. The 2024/25 single-year result was a £4.0m pre-tax profit (or a £6.2m loss on football operations before player trading, and a £0.4m loss excluding the Delap sale), a swing from a £39.3m loss in 2023/24.
Note on this club's figures. Yo-yo club, no rebasing needed: Ipswich played 2024/25 IN the Premier League (having come up in 2023/24), were relegated back to the Championship at the end of 2024/25, then won automatic promotion back to the PL for 2026/27. Their last filed accounts (year to 30 June 2025) are therefore already on a Premier League revenue and cost basis and require no Championship-to-PL projection, unlike a typical newly-promoted club. Revenue £155.4m (PL TV/distributions £107.6m, commercial £29m, merchandise £7.6m, ticket sales £11.2m) and player trading profit £15.4m (largely Liam Delap's sale to Chelsea) are per Swiss Ramble's analysis of the published accounts, corroborated by EADT/matchdayfinance reporting. squad_cost is composed, not disclosed: player_wages £77.1m (reported 'playing wages' per Swiss Ramble) + player_amortisation £34.0m (£29.8m amortisation + £4.2m impairment per Swiss Ramble) + agents_fees £6.2m (reported lowest in the PL, per EADT) = £117.3m. No named analyst has published a standalone SCR% estimate for Ipswich, so this is a from-components composition (path 2), not an anchored published figure. Total staff costs were reported at 72% of revenue by matchdayfinance, but that figure includes non-playing staff and is not used here.
3-YEAR TRADING PROFIT / TRANSFERMARKT NOTE: player_trading_profit_prior_year (2023/24, Championship basis — the promotion season) = £1,226,000 profit on disposal of player registrations. player_trading_profit_two_years_prior (2022/23, Championship basis) = £2,268,000 profit (proceeds £2,423,000 less sell-on fees £19,000 less net book value £136,000). Both figures sourced directly from the same filed document: Ipswich Town Football Club Company Limited's statutory annual accounts for the year ended 30 June 2024 (Companies House company no. 00315421, filed 31 Mar 2025) — Note 10 'Profit on disposal of player registrations' and the Statement of Comprehensive Income, which show 2024 (=FY2023/24) and the 2023 (=FY2022/23) comparative column side by side. These are audited, filed figures, not estimates. transfermarkt_squad_value: Transfermarkt's Ipswich Town club page shows a current total squad market value of €280.15m for their 31-man squad, 2026/27 season (back in the Premier League following promotion). Converted to GBP at the XE.com spot rate of 1 EUR = 0.853758 GBP (10 Aug 2026): 280,150,000 x 0.853758 ≈ £239,180,304. This is a live market-value estimate for sanity-checking only, not an SCR squad-cost input. Summer 2026 window: spend £211.3m, sales £20.6m, net spend £190.7m (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.
Ipswich Town was the answer to Balance Sheet #18.
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Figures are illustrative estimates from published accounts, named analyst estimates and
public reporting, not official SCR 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.
Last reviewed 2026-09-03.
Full rules explainer →