Welcome back.

This week, we look at the economics behind the Leicester sale and a tier six club with 6,500 seats, 819 fans and a search for a new owner. We also follow the money down the pyramid until the accounts stop telling you anything — and publish the guide we've been building to explain every level of it.

And there's a burger — at the most expensive ground in the country.

On Friday we launched The Women's Ledger. More on that below.

£35m In, £224m Out? The Actual Economics Behind the Leicester Sale

King Power bought Leicester for £35m in 2010. Citigroup is now marketing the club's physical assets at £224m — which looks like a spectacular return until you add the more than £420m the family has put in since.

The accounts tell another story again: £186.5m of revenue in the last Premier League season, a £71.1m pre-tax loss and £103.6m of bank loans. And on 15 September, while the sale process ran, King Power converted another £8.5m of funding into equity.

Farnborough FC Is Looking for a Buyer. What Would You Actually Be Buying?

An agreed sale has stalled at the tier six club. A new owner would get a 6,500-capacity ground on a new 30-year lease and a set of development options around it — and an average home crowd of 819.

The stadium provides the capacity. The next owner would have to provide the growth.

Where the Money Stops

In 2024/25 Leicester earned £186.5m. At tier seven, Prescot Cables turned over around £303,000 — more than 600 times less. In League One the same season, Wrexham's revenue was more than four and a half times Shrewsbury's.

By tier eight, the accounts stop disclosing revenue at all. The money disappears down the pyramid, and so does the record of it.

The English Football Pyramid Explained

Every tier from the Premier League to tier ten: what each league is, where the EFL and the regulator stop, why a club can win its league and still not go up, and what clubs at each level actually file.

It's the reference we'll link to whenever an article says tier six — a guide to the pyramid built around the money.

Tottenham Hotspur — 8.2/10

The Index's one visit to the Premier League, for an EFL Cup tie against tier two Charlton. The stadium is reported to have cost around £1bn and doesn't sell a beef burger — the only one on the boards was venison.

It scores 8.2, and at £41.90 it's the most expensive afternoon the Index has recorded, on a ticket priced to be cheap.

On Friday we launched The Women's Ledger, a fortnightly newsletter doing the same work for the women's game: ownership, filings, investment and regulation. Edit 1 looked at three very different ways money is arriving.

£22.4m Into London City: Kang's Bet on Independent Women's Football →

Arsenal Women Made £21.5m. More Than Half Still Came From Arsenal FC →

Why Is a Fortune 500 Company Investing in a Sixth-Tier Women's Team? →

Bloodstone Capital Research, our sister publication, covers football finance from the institutional end — and this week's briefing makes the same point as our Leicester and Farnborough pieces at a larger scale. The purchase price is the easiest number to report, and increasingly not the most important one.

Clearlake is taking full control of Chelsea through the reported £950m acquisition of Todd Boehly and Mark Walter's minority interests — money paid to existing shareholders rather than new capital going into the club. Bordeaux has until Tuesday to turn a rescue into a written commitment to the court. QSI has completed its acquisition of KAS Eupen, and Germany has approved a commercially autonomous Frauen-Bundesliga from 2027.

That's the roundup for this week.

If you've got a club whose numbers don't add up, a takeover clause worth unpacking, or a non-league burger that needs investigating, hit reply and let me know.

Arthur Lewis
The Pyramid