Chelsea’s £65m tops list of Premier League fees paid to agents, Wrexham spend up 367 per cent
· Yahoo Sports
Fees paid to agents by men’s teams in England’s top four divisions raced past the half-billion-pound barrier for the first time this season, according to data disclosed by the Football Association (FA) on Wednesday afternoon.
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Amounts paid to intermediaries in the two tiers of the Women’s Super League are over 100 times lower but growing; agent fees there almost doubled from a year ago.
The FA releases an annual report detailing sums paid to agents in a given timeframe, with the latest release covering February 4 2025 to February 3 2026. The sums disclosed can have been paid at any point during that period, though the bulk will have come in the two transfer windows of the ongoing 2025-26 season.
In the Premier League, the division’s current 20 clubs paid a total £460.3million ($613m) over the 12-month period, a 13 per cent increase on the year prior. Across the 10 seasons the FA has been releasing such data, Premier League club payments to agents now total £3.1billion, and after no growth in combined amounts last year, normal service has resumed. This year’s figure is 45 per cent higher than just three seasons ago.
That increase reflects surging transfer fees in England’s top tier and, correspondingly, the biggest spenders reflect the club who have become synonymous with transfer activity in recent seasons.
Chelsea spent £65.1million on agent fees, topping the club list for the third season running under the ownership of BlueCo, a consortium led by Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly. In BlueCo’s other season at the helm, Chelsea were the second-highest spenders on agents. In 2025-26, Chelsea accounted for 12 per cent of the agent spend of the 92 clubs in the football league.
In all, Chelsea have spent £272million on agent fees in four seasons under their current owners, significantly more than anyone else in that period bar Manchester City (£236.7m). The jump to the next highest spender in that time, Manchester United, at £152.6m, is significant. Indeed, only three other clubs have spent more than £100m on agents over the past four years: Liverpool, Arsenal and Aston Villa.
The latter are prominent in this season’s report too: at £38.4million, Villa were the second-highest spenders behind Chelsea. The gulf between first and second is huge but Villa spending so much on agents in a period when their transfer activity was muted — they spent less than anyone else in the division last summer, though did top that up in January — is noteworthy. The period covered does, however, include the loan spells of Marcus Rashford, Marco Asensio and Axel Disasi.
Villa were also the club who witnessed the largest rise in spend between this season and last, paying out £13.4million (53 per cent) more than a year ago.
Liverpool, who signed Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk to new long-term contracts before embarking on a huge transfer spend last summer, saw a similar increase, though the presence of Wolves as the third team on the list of biggest uplifts in agent spending might be a surprise.
The Athletic recently highlighted a disparity in previously reported fees and player sales per the club’s 2024-25 accounts, with agent fees cited as a possible explanation. Wolves have sat bottom of the Premier League since this season’s opening day.
In percentage terms, the biggest increase in agent spending in England this season came at two promoted clubs: Sunderland and Wrexham.
Sunderland’s surprising ascent to the Premier League last May set off a transfer spend which has neared £200million this season, and their £10.6m spend on agents represented a 390 per cent increase on a year ago in the Championship.
At Wrexham, promoted from League One last May and now hopeful of a Championship play-off spot, their £3.7m spend on agents was a 367 per cent increase on 2024-25.
They were not, however, the biggest spenders in the second tier. That accolade fell to Ipswich Town who, like Leeds United a year ago, continued to pay high agent fees following Premier League relegation. Ipswich’s £11.7million spend was roughly one-sixth of the Championship’s £69.7m total. Fees in England’s second division rose 10 per cent overall, even as a majority of Championship clubs continue to report eight-figure annual losses.
Beyond the top two divisions, spending in League One grew substantially, up 85 per cent to £14million, more than the previous two seasons combined. Luton Town, who were in the Premier League just two years ago, accounted for nearly a quarter of the sum. In League Two, fees dropped slightly, down five per cent to £2.6m.
Chelsea also dominated agent spending in the women’s game.
Agent costs among the 12 clubs of the top tier of the Women’s Super League rose from £2.2million to £3.8m, and Chelsea Women accounted for £1.1m (28 per cent) of the latter. They were the biggest spenders last season too, and their expenditure nearly doubled in the year.
Expenditure in the women’s game rose pretty much across the board, with only West Ham of the current WSL1 paying out less this season than last. In WSL2, agent spending across 12 clubs jumped from £285,549 to £528,778, reflecting a transfer market that, while a long way from the sums thrown around the men’s game, is growing steadily.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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