Crystal Palace Made an £8m Profit the Same Year They Won Their First Ever Trophy
No club had gone longer without a major honour. Then Crystal Palace beat Manchester City at Wembley, and somehow turned a profit doing it.
In the 2024-25 season covered by these accounts, Crystal Palace finished 12th in the Premier League under Oliver Glasner, but the league table tells only half the story. Palace won the FA Cup for the first time in the club's history, beating Manchester City 1-0 at Wembley through an Eberechi Eze first-half volley and a crucial Dean Henderson penalty save.
That cup run did more than deliver a trophy. Prize money and a spike in matchday and broadcast income from a run that took in wins over Millwall, Fulham and Aston Villa on the way to Wembley helped turnover grow by around 3% to close to £200m, and Palace posted a pre-tax profit of roughly £8m, a rare positive figure for a club of their size.
Net assets remain in deficit at around £40m, a reminder that a historic cup win doesn't erase years of accumulated financial pressure overnight, and staff costs of roughly £150m show a club still operating on a budget well below most of the sides above them in the table.
The direction of travel, on the pitch and in the accounts, was unmistakably positive, and it came under a manager who arrived mid-season the year before with little fanfare and quickly became one of the most sought-after in the league.
For a club whose fans had waited generations for a major trophy, the FA Cup win was priceless. That it came in a profitable year made it sweeter still.
Palace's approach under chairman Steve Parish has long been to run a tight financial ship relative to their Premier League peers, prioritising smart recruitment over marquee spending. This season is arguably the clearest vindication yet of that patience, delivering the club's first trophy without abandoning the financial discipline that has kept it competitive for over a decade in the top flight.
The FA Cup win also secured European football for the following season, a further revenue stream that should help offset the deficit still sitting on the balance sheet, giving Glasner's project fresh financial fuel to build on a genuinely historic year for the club.
Crystal Palace proved silverware and sound finances can arrive in the same envelope, even for a club that had waited its entire history for either.