Pitch&Loss
RulebookFrance

How a French football club dies

Bordeaux were champions of France six times. They now play in the sixth tier. Lyon were relegated to Ligue 2 by a panel of accountants and reinstated fifteen days later. Lille came within weeks of insolvency and were champions eighteen months after that. Three clubs, three outcomes, and one mechanism — which the only regulator in Europe able to relegate a club administratively was not allowed to look at until this summer.

By Anthony Marbler12 November13 min
Club FileManchester City

The Manchester City Case: the largest financial case in the history of football

On 29 September 2026 the Premier League confirmed that an independent commission had found Manchester City in breach on 114 of the 115 charges brought against it in February 2023. No sanction has been imposed, the club denies the findings and has appealed. What the decision describes is not a sporting scandal but an accounting one: money from the owner, booked as commercial revenue.

2 November · 14 min
RulebookFunds in football

Why would anyone buy a football club?

Most football clubs lose money, pay almost no dividends and answer to supporters who would rather their owner did not exist. And yet some of the most disciplined investors in the world — funds whose entire job is to earn a return — are queuing to buy them. The paradox dissolves once you stop looking at the annual accounts and start looking at the exit.

21 September · 11 min

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Club File

The Barcelona Case: How to rebuild a club by selling its future

In 2021, Barcelona could not afford to keep Lionel Messi. Five years later it has won two league titles, crossed a billion euros in revenue for the first time and moved back into a rebuilt Camp Nou. The recovery is real. It was also paid for, in part, with income the club will not see for the next quarter of a century.

19 September · 12 min
Rulebook

Do economies of scale exist in football?

Owning several clubs at once has become the default strategy of institutional money in football, for the same reason groups form in any industry: one scouting network, one data team and one player pipeline cost far less when spread across five balance sheets instead of one. The commercial logic takes about a minute to explain. The regulation takes rather longer — and it now turns on one calendar date that falls months before anybody knows who has qualified for what.

19 September · 11 min
Club File

The Brighton Case: How it became one of the best trading clubs in Europe

Every conversation about smart football ownership arrives at Brighton within about ninety seconds. Two record-breaking profits, players bought for nothing and sold for fortunes, a betting man's edge applied to recruitment, and the accounts confirm all of it.

17 September · 9 min

Rulebook

One concept, four hundred words, no jargon. The series for the mechanisms everyone cites and nobody explains.

See the series
01

How does a football club actually make money?

12 min
02

A transfer does not buy a player

8 min
The Monday letter

What to have read before Monday morning

One analysis, three numbers worth keeping, one file to watch. Nothing else.

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