I wouldn’t call myself a supporter of women’s football, which might be a controversial thing to admit in today’s world. In fact, I wouldn’t even say I’m a supporter of football. But that doesn’t mean the sport isn’t a huge part of who I am.
I played football from the age of four until I was 17, and some of my most treasured childhood memories are tied to the game. The best of them are the weekends I spent with my dad at Old Trafford, season tickets in hand, watching the likes of Wayne Rooney and Paul Scholes in their prime.
We held those tickets for 13 years, right up until Sir Alex Ferguson retired. Looking back, it was probably the perfect time to let them go.
I was raised to support one team and one team only: Manchester United. Football was a religion and not just a sport. Our trips to Old Trafford were the equivalent of going to Sunday mass, and Sir Alex was one of the great disciples, preaching the gospel of a club that stood for something bigger than just results.
Today, I find myself disliking much of how the game has evolved over the last few years. But these days, when I see something that doesn’t sit right with me, I usually just roll my eyes and move on.
And so it surprised me this week when a football story I was covering forced me to pause as my heart rate shot up (completely unrelated to Manchester United). And no, I promise it wasn’t the Lucozade I had just downed to push me through the day.
For those who may have missed it, Aston Villa agreed to sell its women’s team on June 30 for around $75.2m (£55m). Nothing wrong with that, right? Wrong, they sold it to V Sports, the club’s own parent company.
Background on the deal
Aston Villa’s financial situation heading into the 2025/26 season has become a talking point across both new-age podcasts and traditional media. The club has enjoyed a remarkable resurgence in recent years.
A major highlight was qualifying for the UEFA Champions League last season, its first campaign in the competition since winning it back in 1982. While I wouldn’t label Villa as one of the smaller clubs in the Premier League, reaching that level of success usually comes at a cost and requires, shall we say, creative accounting skills.
This cost doesn’t sit well with the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR), which favour the established top six and often leave ambitious clubs in a financial bind as they try to match the elite.
According to Villa’s recent financial records, the club posted losses of ($163.1m) £119.6m in 2022/23 and $116.4m (£85.4m) in 2023/24. This places them well over the $143.1m (£105m) threshold allowed over three years, a clear PSR breach.
To avoid a points deduction last season, Villa sold Douglas Luiz to Juventus just before the June 30 deadline. And now, facing the same pressure once again, they’ve turned to an even more controversial solution of selling their women’s team.
Now, before I make myself very unpopular around Villa Park, I will caveat that they are not the first club to explore this route.
Chelsea did it first
The club’s majority owners, BlueCo, confirmed earlier this year that they had acquired full ownership of Chelsea FC Women. On paper, the acquisition was a flawless lesson in expert accounting and M&A. What started as a pre-tax loss of $122.7m (£90m) for the 2023/24 financial year was flipped into a pre-tax profit of $175.1m (£128.4m), according to the club’s own financial release.
In a statement, Chelsea FC said the women’s team now has “dedicated resources, management and commercial leadership solely focused on the growth and success of the women’s team.” That sounds noble, but the timing and the numbers tell a different story.
Total revenue for the year came in at $638.8m (£468.5m), a slight drop, blamed on the men’s team missing out on Champions League qualification. But Chelsea still reported an operating loss of $290.5m (£213m), the highest in the Premier League.
Additionally, staff costs alone stood at $723m (£530m), meaning wages exceeded revenue by more than 60%.
And yet, thanks to the sale of the women’s team and the offloading of two hotels near Stamford Bridge for $104.3m (£76.5m) – another creative effort to trim losses and stay PSR-compliant, but we’ll practice the eye roll and move on, as promised – the club managed to post a final pre-tax profit of $94.9m (£129.6m).
It might all appear above board on paper, but it’s hard to ignore what’s really going on here: increasingly elaborate attempts to bend financial rules that were designed to promote long-term sustainability, not clever accounting.
A legitimate valuation?
The reported $75m (£55m) valuation Aston Villa placed on their women’s team is arguably generous. And that’s putting it politely.
Villa reportedly sold 10% of the women’s team to external investors for $7.5m (£5.5m), which implies a full valuation of $75m (£55m). This external stake helps establish what Premier League rules call “fair market value”, a key piece in meeting PSR compliance. However, when you look closer, that number doesn’t quite add up.
Villa Women finished sixth in the Women’s Super League (WSL) last season, a solid performance, but hardly elite. Their matchday revenue, sponsorship deals and media rights income are nowhere near the scale of top-tier men’s teams.
On top of that, the women’s side lacks a standalone stadium or dedicated training ground, limiting the tangible assets backing that valuation.
Taken together, the $75m (£55m) price tag feels more like a convenient accounting tool than a true reflection of the women’s team’s worth and potential. It’s another example of how financial engineering is being used to tick regulatory boxes, but at what cost to the integrity and genuine growth of the women’s game?
A bad deal for everyone
Now that we have run through the numbers and the excuses, let us talk about why this matters and why it is a problem for more than just accounting purists.
First, the obvious. Optimists could argue this is just a strategy, but in reality is a financial workaround: selling off a women’s team to the club’s own parent company cannot be sugar-coated as growth or development. It’s creative accounting, plain and simple.
For the men’s game, this sets a dangerous precedent. Paddy Power, if you are reading, I would like to request odds on Manchester United selling Carrington next year or Arsenal buying 40 burger vans on June 29, just to sell them for a profit the next day.
Because honestly, what is the point of having these rules at all? The PSR was designed to promote sustainability, not to encourage a form of financial theatre where clubs move their own assets around like poker chips depending on the hand they are holding each June.
To make matters worse, Premier League clubs had the chance to close this loophole. A vote was held during the Annual General Meeting in June 2024, but only 11 clubs supported closing, falling short of the two-thirds majority required for a rule change. You would think that when the stakes involve sporting integrity, more than half the league would get on board, but apparently not.
I said I would not call myself a supporter of women’s football. I do not follow a specific team. I have never bought any merchandise and I have not been to a match in person.
But I am just a fan. I have watched games, enjoyed them, and through my work at Insider Sport, I have had conversations with people who live and breathe the women’s game. To me, that is the difference: supporters live it while fans simply consume it.
That said, watching clubs treat their women’s sides like throwaway assets hits differently. It pulls at my supporter mindset because I know there are people in the sport who care deeply about growing the game and, most importantly, about growing communities around it.
So, when a men’s side sells its women’s team just to make a quick buck, what message does that send to young girls and boys? It also raises the question whether this is the only reason many men’s clubs keep their women’s sides. After all, most, like Manchester United, do not seem too interested (remember when certain executives didn’t turn up to the FA Cup final?)
At the end of the day, football is more than numbers on a balance sheet. It is passion, progress and the communities that rally behind their clubs.
When clubs treat women’s teams as mere accounting tools, they undermine the very values which make the sport worth supporting. If we want football to grow sustainably and inclusively, it’s time for clubs and supporters to demand more from the regulators.
Now more than ever, an independent regulator is needed to enforce the rules fairly and protect the integrity of the game for future generations.
