Premier League clubs paid their players and other staff a record £1.8bn in 2012-13, up 11% on the previous year, according to the Guardian's review of all the club's annual accounts.
Players earning multi-million pound salaries were again football's clear financial winners, in a year when the clubs made a record £2.7bn combined income, yet nevertheless made a loss overall, of £291m.
Twelve of the 20 clubs made a loss in 2012-13, with five clubs losing £50m or more: Aston Villa, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Queens Park Rangers.
The figures are for the final year of the Premier League's last, 2010-13 round of television deals, worth £3.5bn, before the current massively increased deals, £5.5bn from 2013-16. They suggest that despite Uefa and the Premier League clubs themselves introducing financial fair play rules to discourage wage inflation, most clubs struggle to restrain spending on players as they compete with each other on the field, to succeed or avoid relegation.
The proportion of the income clubs spent on wages in 2012-13 was the same as in 2011-12, 67%, above the 50-60% threshold commonly recommended as sensible. Because clubs earned more money overall, principally from increased sponsorship secured by the top clubs, that meant the total wage bill rose.
Clubs do not differentiate in their accounts between wages paid to players and to other staff, but the overwhelming majority unquestionably goes in galactic earnings of players. Other staff have historically not been well paid at clubs, where there has been a culture of expecting people to consider it a privilege to work in football. The organisation Citizens UK is campaigning for catering and other workers at Premier League clubs to be paid a living wage rather than the minimum wage, of £6.31 per hour, which its survey found many are on. Only Manchester City, of the 20 current Premier League clubs, had responded by committing to paying a living wage, of £7.65 an hour, or £8.80 in London.
The clear exception to that culture of low pay, besides the players and managers, is in the boardroom, where senior executives are lavishly paid in the Premier League. The highest paid director in 2012-13 was Southampton's executive chairman, Nicola Cortese, who earned £2.129m. Next highest paid was Ivan Gazidis, who as Arsenal's chief executive earned £1.825m.
Salary packages of more than a million pounds went to the highest paid director at nine clubs altogether: Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United, Norwich City (which included a £867,000 bonus for hitting financial targets and remaining in the Premier League), Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur, West Bromwich Albion and West Ham United.
Despite the record income, earned from rights to live matches being sold exclusively to pay-television as they have throughout the Premier League's existence, the sponsorships and historically very expensive ticket prices, clubs' net debt increased in 2012-13, from £2.2bn in 2011-12 to £2.4bn.
A majority of Premier League clubs still rely on money from owners, whether paid in return for shares, like the vast £1bn invested in Manchester City over just five years by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, or loaned, as at Liverpool, Newcastle United, West Ham United and others. Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch, has funded Chelsea with £958m since 2003, loaned to his holding company, Fordstam Limited.
Football's largest bank debt was owed by Manchester United, which is still paying heavily for the Glazer family's 2005 takeover, for which the Glazers borrowed £525m, then making United responsible for paying it off. United still owed £389m in 2012-13, and paid £72m in interest and other finance costs. That pushed the club into a £9m loss, despite record income of £363m.
That loss, however, puts United comfortably within Uefa's £37m permitted figure for financial fair play, and it is Mansour's City, who lost £52m, following £99m in 2011-12, against whom Uefa are understood to be considering sanctions. City have always maintained that Uefa's exemptions, principally excluding salaries of players signed before the rules were introduced in 2010, will mean their finances comply, and that their £35m a year shirt, stadium and training "campus" sponsorship by the Abu Dhabi airline Etihad is fair market value, not a connected sweetheart deal for Mansour. They can be expected to argue strongly against any sanction from Uefa.
QPR, who spent heavily on players for managers Mark Hughes and Harry Redknapp but still went down to the Championship, made a £65m loss and had £177m net debt, much of it loans from owners Tony Fernandes and partners. Rangers' wage bill, £78m, was 128% of the club's entire income, and substantially higher than Champions League finalists Atlético Madrid, whose 2012-13 wage bill was €66m (£54m).
