Player trading isn't a bonus for most Pyramid clubs — it's the business model

Peterborough United do not really make money in the ordinary sense. Take player trading out of their accounts and the football business still loses money — though a good deal less than it used to. Three years of filed accounts show both halves of that story at once: a club whose underlying losses have nearly halved, and one that still can't get near a headline profit without a multi-million-pound trading gain to cover the rest of the gap.

The three-year picture

Look at a single year's accounts and it's easy to conclude Peterborough's 2024/25 profit was entirely a function of selling players well. Look at three years together and a different, more interesting story appears: the underlying football operation, stripped of any trading gains, lost roughly £5.46m in 2022/23, £5.31m in 2023/24, and then only £2.33m in 2024/25. That's a genuine improvement, not an accounting illusion — and it happened for a straightforward reason. Turnover jumped by £5.75m in a single year, from £10.17m to £15.92m, while staff costs rose by only £1.18m, from £7.34m to £8.52m. For the first time in the three years covered here, income grew faster than the wage bill.

None of that changes the fact that the club still needed the full £6,547,788 profit on player disposals to turn that £2.33m underlying loss into a £2.9m headline profit. Player trading remains the difference between profit and loss at Peterborough, exactly as it has been every year in this table. What's changed is the size of the gap it needs to fill.

The wage problem, in context

Staff costs of £8.52m in 2024/25 compare with £7.34m the year before and £7.75m the year before that — not a straight upward line, but a cost base that's grown overall even as it dipped in the middle year. Chairman Darragh MacAnthony has been pushing the EFL to cut League One's wage-to-turnover cap under the Salary Cap Management Protocol from 60% toward 40% (the division settled on a 50% compromise), a campaign aimed squarely at controlling exactly this kind of cost growth across the division, not just at Peterborough. The rules that cap is bolted onto are set out in our guide to football's financial rulebook.

Debt, liabilities, and a tightening cash position

The balance sheet has genuinely improved. Net liabilities fell from £16.6m (2023/24) to £13.5m (2024/25), having actually worsened the year before that (from £15.9m in 2022/23). Borrowings followed a similar pattern: £17.95m (2022/23), up to £19.76m (2023/24), back down to £17.55m (2024/25).

Cash flow tells a consistent improving story too — net cash outflow from operating activities fell from £4.47m (2022/23) to £2.58m (2023/24) to just £879k (2024/25), a dramatic tightening of the club's day-to-day cash burn.

But cash at bank itself actually fell in 2024/25, from £291,652 to £148,906, having risen the year before from £171,549. That's a small number in absolute terms either way, but it's a reminder that improving liabilities and a shrinking operating cash outflow haven't yet translated into the club holding more cash in hand — everything generated appears to be going straight back out, most likely into servicing debt and funding the summer's recruitment.

The going-concern warning

None of the underlying improvement removes the material uncertainty over going concern that the auditors flagged. Peterborough's own directors state that the club will require additional funding within the next 12 months to meet operational cash flow needs and loan repayments, and that this forecast excludes any contingent income from future sell-on fees. Given the balance sheet still shows net liabilities of £13.5m and borrowings of £17.55m against cash at bank of under £150,000, that caution looks entirely reasonable even set against a genuinely better year.

Where the Toney sell-on fits

Ivan Toney's move from Brentford to Al-Ahli, worth around £40m, completed on 30 August 2024 — inside this accounting period. Peterborough hold a sell-on interest in that fee dating back to his 2018 signing from Newcastle, when a 30% sell-on clause was written in Newcastle's favour; that same clause paid out once already when Toney moved to Brentford in 2020, and reports at the time of the Al-Ahli sale put Peterborough's share at around £4m before Newcastle's cut. The filed accounts don't break Toney's sell-on out separately from the £6,547,788 disposal-profit total, so it's not possible to say precisely how much of that figure it represents — but at roughly 60% of the year's entire disposal gain if the reported £4m figure is accurate, it would be the single largest contributor by some distance.

Why it matters beyond Peterborough

Peterborough are an unusually well-documented example of a pattern that runs through most of League One and League Two. League One clubs collectively lost around £230m last season — an average of £9.6m each — and MacAnthony's campaign to force wage-to-turnover caps down is an attempt to reduce how much trading profit clubs need to generate every year just to stay afloat. Peterborough's own trajectory, from a £5.46m underlying loss two years ago to £2.33m now, shows that trajectory can improve — but even at its best, in a strong year with turnover up nearly 60%, the club still needed a seven-figure trading gain to cross into profit.

What to watch

Whether the underlying improvement continues is the question that actually matters here, more than whether another big disposal profit turns up. If turnover keeps growing faster than wages, Peterborough's dependence on player trading should keep shrinking. If the 2024/25 turnover jump proves to be a one-off — tied to this particular squad's cup run and the size of this year's sales — the gap could open back up just as quickly.