Barnet Won the National League Title on One of the Smallest Budgets in Professional Football

In the 2024-25 season covered by these accounts, Barnet won the National League title, securing automatic promotion back to League Two after a decade outside the Football League, edging out York City on the final day of a tight title race.

The accounts don't disclose a turnover figure for the period, but a pre-tax loss of only around £0.5m is a remarkably small deficit for a title-winning campaign, run with only around 30 employees, one of the smallest staff counts of any club covered in this entire series.

Net assets in deficit by around £2m are modest by the standards of clubs even one division higher, a reflection of the lean, non-league-scale operation Barnet ran even as they secured the biggest promotion in the club's recent history.

The size of the operation behind this title win is a reminder of how different the National League's economics are from the divisions above it, where even a small club typically employs several times Barnet's headcount.

Barnet's return to the Football League was won on a shoestring by professional football's standards, a title that will demand a significant step up in scale to sustain League Two status.