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

From £15.3m to £21.5m

The scale of Arsenal Women's growth is easy to see. Turnover increased by more than £6m in a single year, while operating expenditure rose from approximately £15.4m to £21.6m. The company finished almost exactly at break-even, recording a £22,000 post-tax profit and a £100,000 profit from the disposal of player registrations.

That happened during an exceptional sporting season. Arsenal finished second in the WSL and reached the Women's Champions League final after overturning a first-leg deficit against Lyon in the semi-final, then beat Barcelona 1-0 in Lisbon on 24 May 2025, Stina Blackstenius scoring the winner, to become European champions for the first time since 2007.

The European run had a direct financial effect. Approximately £1.4m of Arsenal's broadcast income came from the Champions League campaign, helping total broadcasting revenue rise from £956,000 to more than £2m. Yet broadcasting remained smaller than matchday income.

The Emirates is becoming a revenue engine

Arsenal generated £5.90m from matchdays in 2024/25, up from £4.35m a year earlier. Nine of the club's 11 WSL home matches were played at Emirates Stadium, with an average attendance of 34,110 across those fixtures. Deloitte subsequently calculated Arsenal's matchday revenue at €7m under its own methodology, the highest of any of the 15 women's clubs in its 2026 Money League.

The comparison that puts it in proportion is with the rest of the league. Deloitte calculates that the entire WSL generated around £14m of matchday revenue in 2024/25, and that Arsenal alone accounted for more than 40% of it. One club took two fifths of the gate income of the whole competition.

Matchday revenue is one of the clearest examples of the women's operation creating income directly from its own audience. Arsenal have effectively spent several seasons testing whether women's football can move from smaller traditional venues into a major men's stadium without losing demand once the novelty of individual showcase matches fades. The financial evidence increasingly suggests it can.

For 2026/27 the transition has gone considerably further, with all 13 WSL home matches included in Arsenal Women's Emirates Stadium season ticket. That matters financially. Moving from occasional major fixtures to an entire league programme at a 60,000-seat stadium gives Arsenal significantly more matchday inventory to sell — not simply additional seats, but differentiated pricing, hospitality and premium products, and the club has already introduced tiered pricing and different seating products as part of that development.

League football has therefore left Meadow Park, but the ground remains central to how Arsenal Women reached this point. The Borehamwood venue was Arsenal Women's longstanding permanent home and continued to host European and domestic cup football through the transition towards the Emirates. It is also the home of Boreham Wood Football Club.

That creates a direct connection with The Pyramid. In August 2026, The Pyramid became an official commercial partner of Boreham Wood for the 2026/27 season, taking our football-finance coverage from the screen to the side of the pitch.

Read Boreham Wood's partnership announcement →

The relationship is relevant here because Meadow Park illustrates one of the less obvious pieces of infrastructure behind Arsenal Women's commercial growth. Before the Emirates became the principal league venue, Boreham Wood provided the smaller permanent home from which Arsenal could build an audience capable of eventually filling much larger sections of a Premier League stadium.

The £11.9m question

The wider Arsenal organisation is also responsible for the largest number in Arsenal Women's revenue. The accounts record £11.9m of group income from Arsenal Football Club Limited, up from approximately £9.3m the previous year, accounting for about 55% of the women's company's £21.54m turnover.

The figure needs some care in interpretation. Arsenal operates a one-club model with resources and commercial arrangements shared across the men's, women's and academy operations. The women's accounts separately record commercial income directly attributable to the women's company, while group income reflects the financial relationship with the wider Arsenal business. It should therefore not simply be read as an £11.9m subsidy or a cheque written to cover losses.

The accounts themselves are more precise. They state that, at this stage in the development of the women's game, the company remains reliant on Arsenal Football Club Limited contributing a support fee to supplement its own revenues. That support has allowed Arsenal to invest heavily in the women's operation while the market around it develops.

The more interesting question for the long term is therefore what is happening elsewhere in the revenue account. Subtracting the £11.9m group-income line leaves roughly £9.6m of other turnover. That is not a clean measure of Arsenal Women's standalone economic value, because shared sponsorship, services and resources complicate the boundary between the two businesses. But it does show the scale of the revenues being recorded outside the group-income line — and those revenues are growing quickly.

£5.9m through the turnstiles

Matchday income is already approaching £6m. Commercial revenue directly recorded by the women's company has nearly trebled. Broadcasting has more than doubled. That is a more significant development than the £22,000 profit.

Arsenal could have reported a larger accounting profit if the wider club had chosen a different level of investment. Instead, expenditure grew alongside revenue as Arsenal built and operated a squad capable of winning the Champions League. Wages were approximately £9.9m before social security and pension costs, up around 22% year on year; including those costs, the wage figure was approximately £11.3m.

The relationship between those numbers and revenue is revealing. Against total reported turnover, the broader wage bill represents roughly 53%. Against turnover excluding group income, wages exceed the remaining revenue.

Again, that does not make Arsenal Women an economically weak business, nor does the comparison turn the £9.6m into a measure of "real" revenue and the £11.9m into something artificial. The accounts reflect a women's operation deliberately embedded within a much larger football club. What they show is the stage that operation has reached: meaningful revenue growth from women's football activity alongside continued parent-club support for a team competing at the top of Europe. The question is how that balance changes as the market develops.

The world's highest-revenue women's club

Deloitte's 2026 Women's Football Money League placed Arsenal first among the 15 clubs it analysed, reporting €25.6m of revenue, 43% higher than the previous year. Arsenal also led the ranking for matchday revenue. Deloitte's methodology includes group income, so its ranking and the £11.9m line in the accounts describe the same business rather than competing views of it.

That puts the group-income figure into useful context. Parent-club support is not preventing Arsenal from developing its own commercial market. It is happening alongside that development.

The club attracted crowds above 35,000 on five occasions during 2024/25. More league matches have subsequently moved to the Emirates, culminating in the full WSL programme being staged there this season. Commercial income is rising rapidly. European success has increased broadcast receipts and international visibility.

The model is therefore not simply Arsenal Football Club funding a women's team. It is Arsenal Football Club using its existing infrastructure, brand, commercial organisation and capital to accelerate the development of a women's football business whose revenues are becoming increasingly substantial. That becomes particularly important under the WSL's new financial rules.

Revenue now buys spending power

From 1 July 2025, WSL Football's Financial Sustainability Regulations introduced a permitted squad salary framework based on club revenue and owner funding. Broadly, clubs can spend up to 80% of Relevant Revenue on squad salary costs, plus Relevant Cash Funding capped at the higher of 25% of Relevant Revenue or £4m.

The precise regulatory treatment of Arsenal's different revenue streams depends on the definitions within those rules, including how genuinely attributable group commercial revenue is allocated to the women's operation. But the direction is important. Growing women's football revenue does more than improve an accounting statement; it increases the economic base from which a club can fund its squad.

That gives Arsenal's matchday and commercial growth strategic value. Every additional pound generated through genuine women's-team activity can help create greater capacity to compete. The Emirates is therefore not simply an attendance story. It is part of the financial model.

Why it matters

The first three clubs examined by The Women's Ledger illustrate three different ways capital is moving into women's football.

At London City Lionesses, Michele Kang's YMK Holdings contributed £22.4m across two financial years to build an independent women's football club without a men's team attached. At sixth-tier Salford City Lionesses, AIG has agreed in principle to take a specific minority equity interest long before the women's team reaches professional football. Arsenal represents a third model.

The women's operation sits inside one of the largest football clubs in the country and can use infrastructure built over decades: stadiums, commercial teams, marketing, brand reach and parent capital. That gives Arsenal Women advantages a standalone operation has to build or buy for itself, and those advantages are now helping produce substantial revenues around the women's game.

Almost £6m of matchday income is particularly significant — more than 40% of the entire WSL's gate revenue, from supporters who bought tickets to watch Arsenal Women. More than £2m of broadcasting income reflects competitions in which the women's team played. Directly recorded commercial revenue is growing quickly. At the same time, the £11.9m of group income remains fundamental to the current model, just as Arsenal's own accounts acknowledge.

The £22,000 profit therefore tells us less about the strength of the business than it first appears. Arsenal increased turnover by 41%, increased expenditure alongside it, won the Champions League and finished almost precisely at break-even. The money coming into the women's operation is being put back into building it, and what makes the next stage interesting is how much larger the revenue base can become while that investment continues.

What to watch

Group income. At £11.9m it remains Arsenal Women's largest revenue line. Its share of total turnover will help show how the relationship between the women's company and the wider Arsenal business develops.

The Emirates effect. All 13 WSL home matches are now being staged at Emirates Stadium. The next accounts will provide the first financial evidence of what a full league season at the ground can generate.

The rest of the league. Arsenal's share of WSL matchday revenue exceeded 40% in 2024/25. Whether other clubs close that gap, or the concentration increases, is one of the defining questions for the division's economics.

Commercial revenue. The increase from £649,000 to around £1.8m was substantial. Women's-specific sponsorship and other commercial agreements provide one of the clearest routes towards a larger revenue base.

European football. Around £1.4m of 2024/25 broadcasting revenue was linked to Arsenal's Champions League campaign. European performance can therefore create meaningful movement in annual revenue.

Squad costs. Arsenal have demonstrated that revenue can grow rapidly while investment in players rises with it. Under the new WSL regulations, the relationship between attributable revenue and squad spending becomes increasingly important.