How much can Sunderland spend under SCR?

Sunderland has a guaranteed SCR spending limit of £187m — 85% of adjusted football revenue of £220m. The Red Threshold, beyond which points deductions apply, is £253m (115%).

What is Sunderland's SCR headroom?

Sunderland's estimated SCR headroom is £26.4m — the difference between their 85% limit of £187m and their estimated £160.6m squad cost. Squad cost is 73% of adjusted revenue, which is High spending power.

Are Sunderland at risk under UEFA's squad cost rule?

Sunderland also play in the UEFA Europa League in 2026/27, so UEFA's separate squad cost rule applies: a 70% limit of £154m against the same adjusted revenue, leaving −£6.6m of headroom. Their UEFA status is amber. UEFA assesses to the calendar year and sanctions with fines and squad-registration limits, not points.

Did Sunderland spend beyond their SCR headroom in the summer 2026 window?

Sunderland recorded a net spend of £31.4m in the summer 2026 window against a pre-window effective SCR headroom of £26.4m (the 85% limit plus any owner top-up or allowance, minus estimated squad cost). That is £5m beyond their calculated effective headroom. Spending beyond headroom is not automatically a breach: transfer fees are amortised over the length of the contract, sales offset signings, and none of it reaches SCR squad cost until the next accounts are filed.

Premier League SCR

How much can Sunderland spend?

Under the Premier League's Squad Cost Ratio rules, Sunderland have a guaranteed spending limit of £187m — 85% of adjusted football revenue of £220m. Against their estimated squad cost that leaves £26.4m of headroom. Their Red Threshold — the 115% ceiling beyond which points deductions apply — is £253m.

£220m is adjusted revenue: headline turnover of £213m plus a three-season average of £7m profit on player sales, which is the denominator SCR actually uses.

Sunderland: the SCR breakdown

Estimated revenue (football) estimated £213m
+ Player trading profit/loss (3-yr average) +£7m
= Adjusted revenue (SCR basis) £220m
85% SCR limit £187m
Estimated squad cost estimated £160.6m
Components not itemised — squad cost is anchored to a published analyst estimate rather than composed from wages, amortisation and agents' fees.
Headroom vs 85% limit +£26.4m
Red Threshold (115% of adjusted revenue) £253m
Headroom vs Red Threshold +£92.4m

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

UEFA limit (70% of adjusted revenue) £154m
Headroom vs UEFA limit −£6.6m

UEFA: Balanced

High spending power - squad cost is 73% of adjusted revenue

For reference, Transfermarkt's current squad market value is £337.2m (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, Sunderland sit comfortably inside the 85% Green Threshold. They have room to invest in the squad without straining the rules.

UEFA's rule is separate. Because Sunderland are in the UEFA Europa League, UEFA's 70%/100% squad cost rule applies alongside the Premier League's. On the same adjusted revenue the 70% line is £154m, leaving −£6.6m — UEFA status amber. A club can be green with the Premier League and amber with UEFA at the same time; UEFA fines and restricts squad registration rather than deducting points. Sunderland's UEFA squad cost position in full → · How the two rules differ →

Summer 2026 window vs SCR headroom

Window spend (gross) £58.3m
Window sales £26.9m
Net spend estimated £31.4m
Pre-window effective SCR headroom (85% limit plus any top-up or allowance) £26.4m

Spent beyond headroom

A net spend of £31.4m is £5m beyond the £26.4m of effective headroom Sunderland 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.

Sports Mole's summer 2026 window tracker: Total Spend £58.3m / Total Income £26.9m / Net Spend -£31.4m. Incoming fees include Dayann Methalie (£24m), Jules Ahoka (£8.6m); outgoing fees include Eliezer Mayenda to Rennes (~£18.9-22m) and Anthony Patterson to Wrexham (£8m). Broadly corroborated by a Sunderland Echo/OneFootball report (~£27m banked from sales) and a StatiSense tracker (~£31.7m net spend). Individual fees vary by a few million across outlets; no official club-confirmed total exists.
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 Sunderland's position compares under both sets of rules.

Old PSR (loss-based)	New SCR (revenue-based)
3-year losses: £21.5m reported Limit: £39m Headroom: +£17.5m 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25 (Championship, the three seasons preceding PL promotion)	Squad cost: £160.6m 85% limit: £187m Headroom: +£26.4m Based on £220m adjusted revenue

Pre-tax losses of -£8.9m (2022/23), -£8.6m (2023/24), and -£4.0m (2024/25) per Swiss Ramble/matchdayfinance analysis, cumulative -£21.5m against a £39m limit (Sunderland had no Premier League year in this window, so each season is capped at the lower £13m tier rather than the £35m PL-year tier, giving 3x£13m=£39m total). Comfortably within the limit; the 2024/25 loss was cut nearly in half on a £45.9m player-sales profit (mainly promotion-adjacent squad trimming).

Note on this club's figures. PROMOTION ROUTE CORRECTED: Sunderland were promoted via the 2024-25 Championship play-offs (beat Coventry in the semi-final, then Sheffield United 2-1 in the Wembley final on 24 May 2025), securing a place in the 2025/26 Premier League — their first top-flight season since 2016/17. This is NOT a 2026/27 promotion; as of today (2026-08-10) Sunderland are entering their SECOND consecutive PL season (2026/27), having just finished a surprise 7th in 2025/26 and qualified for the Europa League. BASIS USED: (B) — a consistent PL-basis projection for the 2025/26 season (their most recently completed campaign, the best available basis for the 2026/27 dataset), not their last-filed Championship accounts, per matchdayfinance.com's 'Sunderland Financial Update: Season 2025/26' analysis. Revenue (~£213m: ~£168m broadcast/prize money, ~£19m matchday, ~£26m commercial) and player_trading_profit (~£7m) are matchdayfinance's own PL-basis estimates. squad_cost (£160.6m) is back-solved from matchdayfinance's own published SCR estimate of 'approximately 73%' against adjusted revenue (213+7=220m), per the site's priority-order rule to prefer a published analyst SCR estimate over an own composition. Components are stored as null rather than the analyst's disclosed £140-150m wages + ~£50m amortisation, because those sum to ~£190-200m of TOTAL STAFF COSTS (explicitly including non-playing staff per the article) — inconsistent with the narrower SCR-basis squad cost implied by the 73% figure; storing both would be self-contradictory (same treatment as the Brighton row). matchdayfinance itself caveats 'it is too early to assess compliance for next season' and flags this estimate as preliminary/illustrative rather than fully disclosed. UEFA overlay: Sunderland qualified for the Europa League via their 7th-place PL finish, so uefa_competition is set; matchdayfinance explicitly flags their SCR as 'marginally above the UEFA 70% limit' despite being comfortably under the PL's 85% green threshold — a live example of the two-regimes-at-once problem. 3-YEAR TRADING PROFIT / TRANSFERMARKT NOTE: Kept null deliberately, NOT because the figures are unknown. Audited accounts (Companies House, company no. 00049116) give exact 'Profit on disposal of player contracts' figures: FY ended 31 Jul 2025 (2024/25, promotion season) = +£45,843,000 (matches the ~£45.9m figure referenced elsewhere); FY ended 31 Jul 2024 (2023/24) = +£8,818,000; FY ended 31 Jul 2023 (2022/23) = +£306,000. Turnover for those years (£39.4m, £37.5m, £35.1m) is Championship-basis, roughly a fifth of the ~£213m PL-basis 2025/26 revenue this row uses. Same judgment call as Leeds United: do NOT use these for 3-year smoothing against the PL-basis row. Sunderland's 2024/25 trading profit of +£45.8m was the primary financial engine of the club's promotion push (a Championship squad cashed in as the club went up) — not a repeatable feature of a PL-level squad, and blending it into a PL-basis adjusted-revenue denominator would flatter the club with a windfall unrelated to their current, much larger wage bill. The single-year 2025/26 PL-basis figure (+£7m, per matchdayfinance) is retained as-is with this caveat: Sunderland's own most recent Championship season included a far larger one-off trading profit, so how their PL-level trading activity actually behaves going forward is genuinely unresolved, not something this dataset should paper over by blending incompatible bases. Transfermarkt current squad value: €392.08m, converted to GBP at an assumed rate of £0.86/€1 (approximate mid-2026 rate), giving £337,189,000 — a sanity-check figure only, reflecting the current PL-level squad, independent of the basis-mismatch question above. Summer 2026 window: spend £63.7m, sales £32.0m, net spend £31.7m (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.

Compare Sunderland with another club

Leeds vs Sunderland: two promoted clubs on projected PL revenue

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← All Premier League SCR clubs ranked by SCR headroom

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 →