Methodology

Beta draft, under legal review. First version, 23 October 2026 (design brief v2). On the lawyer's review list with the privacy notice and the beta terms.

What this is

Club Ledger shows the money, ownership and borrowing of the 92 Premier League and EFL clubs as their companies file them at Companies House, with insolvency notices from The Gazette. It reports what the record says and links every figure to the page it came from. We give no scores, grades or ratings, and we make no predictions.

Where the data comes from

• Companies House: accounts, charges (security) and their deeds, the registers of directors and of people with significant control, insolvency records and filing history. We follow its streaming service all day, so a new filing reaches us within minutes of being published.
• The Gazette: insolvency notices such as winding-up petitions and administrations, matched to a club's company by company number.
• Nothing else: no press, no social media, no estimates. Where a figure is not in the filings, we say it is not disclosed.

Which company is "the club"

A club's football business is often owned through holding companies. For each club and each year we decide which company's accounts describe the club best: usually the group that owns the club's company, unless that group has large businesses unrelated to football. When the company changes from one year to the next, the change is marked as a basis change, so two years are never compared as if they were alike.

How figures are read and checked

• Each set of accounts is read twice, independently, by an AI model (Anthropic's Claude), page by page. Scanned pages are read from their images.
• Every figure keeps the page it was read from. Where the two readings disagree, a person decides from the page.
• Each year then goes through automatic checks: that totals add up; that every borrowing in the notes is counted once; that our net debt agrees with the club's own figure where the accounts print one; and a comparison with the year before.
• A figure that fails a check is held back until a person has reviewed it.
• A golden set of 341 figures across 31 club-years, read by hand from the filed accounts, checks every release of our metrics. The current release matches all 341.

Standard definitions

Clubs present their accounts in different ways. We map every line to one chart of accounts, so that like is compared with like.

• Revenue: turnover as filed, plus parachute and solidarity payments printed outside turnover, less income from selling players' registrations where it sits inside turnover.
• Wages vs revenue: staff costs divided by revenue.
• Net debt: bank loans, loans from owners and shareholders, other loans and lease liabilities, less cash. Shown with how much of it is owed to the owner's group.
• Cash cover: cash at the year end divided by the year's average monthly operating cash outflow. Money moved within the group and payments from owner-linked companies for the club's tax losses are left out, so it shows the club's own position.
• For every £1 earned, spent: running costs before player trading divided by revenue: operating costs without player amortisation or profit on selling players, against revenue without player trading. We derive it exactly from the operating result before player trading: £1 less that result as a share of revenue. Running costs are revenue less that result. Where revenue is not disclosed, it is not shown.
• Owner support: new shares issued, owner loans written off, and payments from owner-linked companies for the club's tax losses. Loans from the owner are shown separately.
• Positions in a division compare a club with the clubs in its division in that season.

How we show it

• Every figure links to the page of the filing it came from.
• Missing data is shown as "not disclosed", never as zero. A figure the filing gives but we have not read yet (a note not yet extracted) is shown as "not yet read". Restated, amended and filleted accounts, and accounts for periods other than 12 months, are labelled, and so is a change of the company whose accounts we use (a basis change).
• We state facts with their source and date, and we do not describe anyone's intentions.
• Owners and directors appear only as the registers record them. We never say that two register entries are the same person. In the text we write (the 30-second story, the events, the cards), a person with significant control is "an individual"; companies are named. Pro members see the names as the register records them in a club's ownership chain.
• A private individual who holds security over a club is never named: we show "a private individual", in whatever role, with a link to the charge on the register.
• Colour marks the kind of event (money in, money owed, ownership, warnings), never good or bad. A figure is highlighted when it is among the three highest or lowest in its division, and the line under it says so.

The 30-second story and the events

• The story on each club page is up to four sentences built from templates and the club's published figures and events: how it is funded, what it owes, its latest material event, and a position in its division only when it is among the three highest or lowest. No sentence is written by an AI model. Every template is checked before any story using it is published.
• Events come from the registers: charges, share issues, changes of people with significant control, accounts filed, overdue accounts, Gazette insolvency notices and insolvency cases. The page shows the last 12 months, each dated by its filing. The first time each kind of event appears for a club, a person checks it against the register before it is shown.

Timing

Pro members can have each new event by email within minutes of the filing. Free visitors see each one 48 hours after it was filed.

Corrections

If something we show is wrong, tell us. We acknowledge within one working day and fix it or reply within five. A flag shown in error is removed while we look into it, and corrections are recorded on the club's page. If the error is in the register itself, we will point you to Companies House: only Companies House can change its register.

The corrections address is published here when the site's own domain is live.