Money alone does not win football matches. However, it helps quite a bit. People know this, and it is why European giants dominate their respective leagues and overwhelm continental competition. Yet the 2024/25 season showed how the link between payroll and performance is more fragile than many assume. The clubs that spent the most per point were not always the most successful. The clubs that managed their wagebills efficiently often punched above their weight. Efficiency, not just wealth, defined the story of the season.
Across Europe’s top five leagues, the average payroll cost per league point ranged from £1.97 million (€2.33 million) in the Premier League to €696,000 in Ligue 1. Those numbers hide enormous disparities. Several clubs landed more than two standard deviations away from their league averages. Some extracted extraordinary value from their wagebills, while others burned through resources without results. These outliers highlight the structural imbalances that shape European football.
The most obvious inefficiencies came from the biggest names. Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, and Inter Milan all delivered high finishes, yet their wage cost per point dwarfed that of their domestic rivals. Bayern spent over three times the Bundesliga average. Real Madrid and PSG were even further adrift from their leagues. These clubs do well not because they spend efficiently but because they can overwhelm inefficiency with sheer scale. Their dominance masks how poorly their wagebills convert into points compared to domestic competition.
That inefficiency, however, is not accidental or the fault of poor management. In reality, what looks bloated at home is really the cost of certainty across two fronts. In their domestic leagues, high-spending giants often pay heavily for what look like marginal gains. Bayern Munich would have likely won the Bundesliga with far less wage cost per point. Real Madrid certainly could have finished second with a leaner payroll. Inter Milan’s second place came at an inflated cost. Yet, these clubs do not construct their squads solely for domestic competition. Their wagebills are inflated to attempt to secure two outcomes at once: top league finishes and genuine competitiveness in the Champions League. This is why they appear inefficient against domestic benchmarks, as the resources required to face PSG or Manchester City create squads that look oversized when deployed against Augsburg or Getafe. The overspending becomes a form of insurance across both fronts, buying depth and certainty until revenues slip. Once commercial income or Champions League money falters, these structures are suddenly exposed.
On the other side are the relegated failures. Southampton stands out as one of the worst examples in modern Premier League history: they spent almost £4.7 million per point, above Manchester United’s already poor £4.3 million, and still finished last. Monza in Serie A matched that showing: their cost per point was more than two standard deviations higher than the league average, and they too went down. In both cases, despite having payrolls well clear of the bottom three in their leagues, inefficiency dragged them into relegation. Their collapse looks even starker when set against the efficiency of some clubs with bottom-three payrolls: Brentford and Wolves in England, and Verona and Lecce in Italy, all operated on the smallest budgets in their leagues yet turned them into safety. What Southampton and Monza squandered, others transformed into survival.
Not every relegated side was inefficient, however. Ipswich, Empoli, Saint-Étienne, and Holstein Kiel all posted payroll efficiency better than their league averages and still went down. Leganés in particular highlight the other extreme: they were the single most efficient club in La Liga, extracting more points per euro than anyone else, yet still finished in the bottom three. Efficiency could not overcome their structural resource gap.
Together these cases show relegation through two lenses. For some, like Southampton and Monza, inefficiency squandered resources that should have been sufficient to stay up, making relegation avoidable but self-inflicted. For others, like Leganés, even the highest efficiency could not offset the structural limits of a small financial base.
Relegation also creates a paradox. Southampton’s £56 million wage bill looked disastrous in the Premier League, where even strong efficiency would still have left them near the bottom. In the Championship, however, even trimmed to £44 million, a budget of that scale makes them a hegemon when the league average is only £15 million. Monza face the same shift: a payroll that collapsed under massive inefficiency in Serie A now places them at the top of Serie B. Relegated clubs rarely remain intact, and wagebills are usually cut, yet relative to their new competition they almost always arrive as heavyweights. This advantage explains the yo-yo dynamic: too weak for the top flight, yet too well-resourced to stay down. In that sense, these clubs often find themselves in the place of PSG or Bayern on a smaller stage: compared to second-tier averages they are almost guaranteed to look inefficient even after cuts, but scale alone insulates them and often ensures a rapid return.
This divide reveals the layered economics of European football. At the top sit the giants, where inefficiency is tolerated as a luxury: PSG can spend more than three standard deviations above Ligue 1’s average because its revenues are so strong, and domestic dominance is almost guaranteed. Below them lies a solid band of midtable clubs with enough resources to be insulated from relegation. For these sides, efficiency determines whether they push for European qualification or drift toward the lower half, but their scale protects them from true collapse. Crystal Palace in England, Nantes in France, Valencia in Spain, Mainz in Germany, and Torino in Italy typify this group. They are rarely in danger of relegation, occasionally break into Europe, but most often hover in midtable. Their stability comes less from efficiency than from the simple fact that their resources comfortably exceed those of the league’s strugglers.
Beneath them are the efficiency-dependent survivors. These clubs live on the edge: they are safe only as long as they outperform their peers in converting wages into points. In 2024/25, Brentford, Toulouse, Wolves, St Pauli, Alavés, Le Havre, Lecce, and Verona all would have been relegated had they performed only at league-average efficiency. Efficiency elevated them from out of the relegation zone and sometimes further, but the margin is thin, and complacency would mean the drop. At this level, clubs viciously compete to wring every last point out of their wagebills, and small differences decide who stays up. Southampton and Monza showed what happens when that battle is lost: with the 16th- and 13th-largest payrolls in their leagues, they had the means to stay up but collapsed through dreadful inefficiency, while peers like Brentford and Lecce survived by spending far more effectively on smaller resource pools. And at the very bottom are the under-resourced, for whom even the highest efficiency is not enough. Leganés, the most efficient club in La Liga, still went down, underlining the hard limit of efficiency without scale.
For investors and executives, the lesson is clear. Wagebills should be measured not only against results but against league averages. Outliers matter. A club that spends more than two standard deviations above its league’s norm is vulnerable, even if successful. A club that sits two standard deviations below average is not just cheap but efficient, proof of strong management and squad-building discipline. Benchmarking in this way forces sharper questions: why does one point cost Bayern three times as much as it costs St Pauli? Why did Southampton pay more per point than any other Premier League club in a relegation season? These questions cut to the heart of governance, recruitment, and sustainability.
The 2024/25 season demonstrated that money still delivers trophies, but efficiency defines survival. Giants that overspend endure only because of their scale. Clubs that overspend without results collapse. Well-managed sides that maximize their wagebills endure — provided they command enough resources to sustain top-flight competition. Leganés proved the exception that sharpens the rule: even as the most efficient club in La Liga, their financial base was too small to prevent relegation. Efficiency protects, but only up to the limits imposed by scale. In an era of UEFA’s squad spending controls, this nuance matters more than ever. Giants will continue to win titles, but they will be pressured to bring payrolls closer in line with output. Midtable teams already accustomed to disciplined spending will be better prepared for the new environment.
Money provides. Efficiency protects. Both are needed to guarantee survival.