In Ligue 1, a club’s budget is not just a single figure announced at a press conference. It reflects a combination of revenues (TV rights, ticketing, sponsors, transfers) and expenses, with the distribution varying significantly from one club to another. For the 2025-2026 season, the disparities are widening even further, particularly because traditional revenue sources are changing in relative weight.
Wage Bill in Ligue 1: The Item that Absorbs Almost Everything
Before looking at where the money comes from, it is essential to understand where it goes. The wage bill constitutes the primary expense item for all professional French clubs. According to an analysis by Foot-Unis regarding the 2024-2025 revenues of the European “Big 5,” Ligue 1 clubs now allocate about 80% of their operating income to staff remuneration.
Last season, this ratio was around 73%. UEFA recommends staying below 70%. French clubs therefore significantly exceed this threshold, limiting their ability to invest in infrastructure, recruitment, or commercial development.
This imbalance is not new, but it is worsening. When revenues stagnate or decline (which is the case for several sources, such as TV rights), the wage bill does not follow the same downward trend. Player contracts are multi-year, often tied to sporting objectives. Scaling back takes time and incurs significant severance costs.
Analyzing the budget of Ligue 1 clubs allows us to measure how much this wage ratio weighs on the sporting and financial maneuverability of each squad.
Domestic TV Rights: What Clubs Actually Receive
The gross amount of TV rights often makes headlines, but the net figure distributed to clubs tells a different story. For the 2025-2026 season, the gross revenues from TV rights for the LFP (Ligue 1, Ligue 2, including international) reach €334.6 million according to La Tribune.
From this amount, several deductions must be made before distribution:
- The Buffet tax, levied on sports broadcasting rights for the benefit of amateur sports.
- Contributions to player and coach unions, as well as repayment of the mortgage loan taken out by the LFP.
- The fee owed to the CVC fund, which amounts to €54.5 million per season, in return for the investment made by the fund in the league in 2022.
The result: only €80.5 million net remains to be distributed among the 18 Ligue 1 clubs. On average, this represents less than €4.5 million per club. For teams at the bottom of the table, this amount barely covers a few months of salaries.
The early termination of the DAZN/LFP contract has further exacerbated this erosion. Clubs that had built their forecasts on higher TV rights now face a structural shortfall.
Ticketing and Stadium Revenues: The Turnaround of the Economic Model
In this context of declining TV rights, some clubs are seeing their ticketing become a source of revenue exceeding domestic TV rights. The example of Olympique Lyonnais illustrates this shift: for the 2025-2026 season, the club’s ticketing reaches €45 million (up 5%), while LFP/FFF TV rights drop to €16.4 million, a decrease of 28%.
OL now earns almost three times more from ticketing than from national TV rights. This reversal of hierarchy would have seemed unthinkable ten years ago when TV rights represented the financial backbone of French football.
However, this model is not replicable everywhere. Lyon has the Groupama Stadium, a modern venue with a large capacity and hospitality areas generating premium revenue. Clubs playing in aging municipal stadiums or with modest capacities cannot compensate for the loss of TV rights through ticketing.
What the Lyon Case Reveals About the Rest of Ligue 1
Despite this performance in ticketing, OL’s overall revenue has decreased by 18% for the 2025-2026 fiscal year. Stadium revenues are not enough to compensate for the collapse of other lines. A club can excel in one revenue stream and see its overall budget decrease.
For clubs without recent infrastructure or a strong international brand, dependence on TV rights remains total. The gap between clubs that own their stadium and those that rent is mechanically widening each season.
Budget of Ligue 1 Clubs and the Gap Between the Top and the Bottom
The budgetary gap between PSG and the clubs at the bottom of the table has reached proportions that raise questions about the competitiveness of the league. The title of an article from L’Équipe for the 2025-2026 season summarizes the situation: “PSG 34 times richer than Le Havre.”
This disproportion is not limited to PSG. Ligue 1 operates on several distinct economic layers:
- A state club whose budget exceeds that of all others combined in certain revenue lines.
- An intermediate group (Lyon, Marseille, Monaco, Lille) whose budgets allow them to aim for Europe but remain fragile in the face of sporting or commercial uncertainties.
- A majority of clubs whose budget depends more than half on TV rights and subsidies, and which operate with almost zero margins.
This stratification makes promotions and relegations particularly financially risky. A promoted club must absorb a sudden increase in the wage bill without any guarantee of remaining in Ligue 1 for more than one season.
The question of the distribution of TV rights (fixed share versus share linked to sporting results and media exposure) remains the main lever to mitigate or exacerbate these gaps. As long as Ligue 1 does not stabilize its broadcasting contracts in the long term, the budgets of clubs will remain built on fragile assumptions, season after season.