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Revealed: How Manchester United will lose £140m through Covid-19, more than any other club

Ed Woodward, Executive Vice-Chairman of Manchester United looks on from the stands during the Premier League match between Manchester United and Crystal Palace at Old Trafford on September 19, 2020 in Manchester, England. - GETTY IMAGES
Ed Woodward, Executive Vice-Chairman of Manchester United looks on from the stands during the Premier League match between Manchester United and Crystal Palace at Old Trafford on September 19, 2020 in Manchester, England. - GETTY IMAGES

Football clubs in the Premier League and Championship are facing a combined hole in their accounts of more than £1 billion if crowds do not return before the end of the season.

Prime minister Boris Johnson announced on Tuesday that plans for the possible return of sports fans from Oct 1 had been shelved as part of new measures to stem the rising spread of Covid-19.

Numerous clubs from League One down through the non-league and semi-professional game are not financially viable without fans but, even allowing for their broadcast income, the financial impact on clubs in the top two tiers is still also considerable.

Although Manchester United face the biggest projected lost income, of £139.39 million, the club that is proportionately most impacted is Arsenal. This is because they derive significantly less income than United from commercial revenue streams but would still have expected to make £122.27 million from fans on matchdays. According to Arsenal’s most recent accounts for 2018-19, that matchday section of income amounted to almost a quarter of all revenue.

Arsenal’s £122.27 million projected loss is around £40 million more than Chelsea and almost £50 million more than Manchester City. Even Liverpool and Tottenham, with their respectively upgraded homes, would be forecast to lose between £18 million and £16 million less.

The overall projected loss across the Premier League is put at £911.66 million.

In the Championship, Sheffield Wednesday, whose Hillsborough ground has a capacity of almost 40,000, are projected to be hardest hit and can expect lost income of almost £23 million.

Taken together, the Championship clubs will be around £180 million short in matchday income.

The English Football League has so far estimated its bailout needs across the Championship, League one and League two at £200 million for a season without fans.

The projections have been made by financial analysts Vysyble, who calculated expected revenues in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons according to the published 2018-19 balance sheets. They then factored in the number of games already played by each club prior to lockdown during the 2019-20 season, average attendances and how clubs were progressing so far this season in cup competitions.

With much smaller broadcast deals, the Championship clubs are proportionately much more reliant on matchday income than those in the Premier League - it averages at around 35 per cent of total income - a figure that further rises as you go down the pyramid.