This is one outlet's own report from Yahoo Sports — the article as it was filed.
AIPROPX ReportYahoo Sports · 1h ago
Real Madrid Are Spending Again. Here’s What the Numbers Actually Say
A giant banner depicting a portrait of Real Madrid's re-elected president Florentino Perez and the signatures of the most famous players he has signed for Real Madrid during his presidency, hangs on a building facade, on June 10, 2026 in Madrid. Real Madrid's emblematic president Florentino Perez, challenged at the ballot box for the first time since 2009 by businessman Enrique Riquelme, was re-elected on the evening of June 7, 2026 to serve an eighth term, lasting until 2030. (Photo by Thomas COEX / AFP via Getty Images) | AFP via Getty Images
Twelve months ago, we argued that the media driven doom-and-gloom around Real Madrid’s finances, like the discussion around the billion-euro stadium, the concert-noise fiasco, the supposedly suffocating transfer policy, it simply wasn’t reality. The club had built one of the sturdiest financial structures seen across any sport and had the headroom to invest whenever the board chose to pull the trigger.
Call this article Part II to last season’s piece.
Given Madrid is about to spend €120 million on a teenager, another potential €65M on an 30-year-old superstar, €60M on Cucurella, €23M on Dumfries, some loftier wages/bonus structures for high-profile free agents—the question is fair to ask: is this a one-time aggressive summer pushing Madrid past their own financial guardrails or is this type of transfer outlay the new normal? The club spent nearly €200M last summer and look set to pay €275M this summer. Does this mean a big sale is coming? Is the Vini renewal off the table?
Those questions will all be answered. The best way to answer those questions is to run the same three-metric health check we ran last summer in Part I— salary-to-revenue, amortization-to-revenue, and cash flow versus debt — but this time against audited 2024/25 numbers rather than projections, and with some assumptions going into the new season. Long story short, the club is in a great position even after the potential Diomande+Rodri deals, and even including a Vinicius renewal. Despite a projected quarter-of-a-billion-euro outlay, every core ratio still lands inside the club’s own guardrails.
The 2025/2026 approved budget called for approximately €1.25 billion of revenue. The underlying business is now firmly operating in the €1.2–1.3 billion annual revenue range and growing each year. In 2021, the club generated approximately €640 million in revenue. Madrid have essentially doubled that revenue base in four years. An insane feat that deserves greater recognition.
That means a €200 million transfer window or a 16% increase in wages does not carry the same relative financial weight that it would have carried before the stadium redevelopment and commercial expansion.
Player Salaries as a Percentage of Revenue This has always been the number that best captures Madrid’s discipline, and 2024/25 is the cleanest reading yet. Total wages rose only €9M (2%) to €514M while revenue jumped €112M . The wage bill actually fell as a share of income, landing at roughly 43%. For context, this is a club that during the COVID seasons was pinned above 70%, well beyond the 50% ceiling the European Club Association treats as the gold standard. Mbappe is on the books, and the ratio still improved.
So what happens when you drop this summer’s business on top?
Even after potentially adding six major contracts, Madrid would still be operating below the 50% threshold that the club has spent years working to restore. Model it out on a projected ~€1.30B of 2026/27 revenue and the wage bill lands around 44%, still comfortably inside the 50% line. The Mbappe-era question (“can they keep paying elite wages and stay disciplined and add RM level talent to the squad in subsequent years?”) now has two years of answers: yes.
Amortization as a Percentage of Revenue The headline transfer expenditure will inevitably attract attention.
Assuming Madrid pay approximately: €120–130 million for Diomande €65–75 million for Rodri €83-100 million for Cucurella, Dumfries, Konate, Bernardo (*incl bonuses)
The combined transfer commitment would be approximately €275–300 million. But clubs do not typically recognize the full cost of a transfer in the year the player is purchased. The fee is capitalized and spread across the contractual term. A €125M signing on a six-year deal isn’t a €125M expense; it’s roughly €21M a year.
Even at the upper end of the proposed fees, the two transactions (Rodri, Diomande) would probably add €37–41 million of annual amortization.
A €275M gross outlay this summer adds only about €50M to the annual amortization line, assuming five-to-six-year contracts. That’s the magic of the mechanism, and it’s exactly the point we made last year about a “war chest” not being spent all at once.
Stack that on the 2024/25 base of €116M, annualize last summer’s signings (Huijsen, Carreras, Mastantuono, Alexander-Arnold), and net off the fully-amortized players leaving, and 2026/27 player amortization projects to roughly €180M — about 14% of revenue. After the club spent 2024/25 sitting at a remarkably low ~10%, it climbs back toward the top end of their guardrails but still lands under the 15% prudence line. The club remains well below the 23% level seen during COVID (ECA qualifies 25% as the max threshold and dangerous if above that metric) following the purchases of Eden Hazard, Luka Jovic, Eder Militao, Ferland Mendy and Reinier.
Metric 3 — The thing that makes it all work: Revenue None of the above is possible without the denominator doing the heavy lifting, which is revenue that continues to grow. What concerned me about Enrique Riquelme’s presidential campaign was his focus on cutting costs rather than growing revenue. Florentino and his board have done a tremendous job in growing the club’s revenue streams, which is the ultimate driver in allowing the club to flex it’s muscle in the transfer market. Every stream inside the club’s control grew again in 2024/25: marketing/commerc...
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