Sale Lost Roughly 80p for Every £1 They Earned

In the 2024-25 season covered by these accounts, Sale Sharks finished 3rd in the Premiership with 58 points, reaching the play-off semi-finals before losing a tight, physical contest 21-16 away at Leicester. Their Champions Cup campaign ended in the round of 16, beaten 38-15 away at Toulouse, a heavy defeat against a side that would go on to reach the semi-finals.

The financial picture is starker than the on-field one. Turnover for the year was around £10m, one of the smaller revenue bases in the Premiership, while the pre-tax loss came in at close to £8m. Put simply, Sale's loss for the year was nearly as large as their entire turnover, one of the most stretched loss-to-income ratios of any club in this dataset.

Staff costs of roughly £13m, funding a squad built around veteran England fly-half George Ford and a competitive forward pack, comfortably exceeded turnover on their own, let alone once other costs are added. Net assets sit at around minus £17m, and cash in the bank was modest at close to £1m.

Sale's story this year is a familiar Premiership pattern taken to something of an extreme: a competitive, well-run squad on the pitch, funded by spending that simply outstrips what the club takes in, leaving the accounts looking far more precarious than the league table would suggest.

Turnover vs staff costs, FY2024-25