All summer one phrase has hung over Lokomotiv: there's no money.
Didn't sign the player you needed? No money. Trouble extending Karpukas? No money. Sold Vorobyov — so things must be really tight. Montes is next in line, and fans are already glancing nervously at Batrakov.
A convenient phrase, but an inaccurate one. A club with 7.4 billion roubles in revenue cannot literally have no money. Almost 10 billion passed through Lokomotiv's accounts in 2025.
The problem lies elsewhere. Lokomotiv hasn't run out of money. It has almost run out of free money.
The difference is roughly that of a person on a 200,000-rouble salary who watches 190,000 of it go out every month on the mortgage, a loan and mandatory payments. Formally, he earns a lot. He can't buy a new car.
How can you be in the red on 7.4 billion of revenue?
Lokomotiv's revenue for 2025 came to 7.425 billion roubles. That is all income from the club's core activity: sponsorship, television, tickets, merchandise and other commercial receipts.
Now for how much it spent.
Cost of sales was 8.377 billion. That covers the main expenses of running the team and the club's entire football structure. The largest and most precisely confirmed part, payments to players, coaches and staff, is 5.292 billion. At this step alone, costs already exceed the entire revenue by almost a billion: a gross loss of 952 million.
Then came office and selling expenses, another 636 million. In the end the club's core activity produced a loss of 1.588 billion. In the accounts that line is called "loss from sales".
A quick caveat about the name, because it's misleading. "Loss from sales" in Russian accounting isn't about selling players or flogging scarves. It's the result of the core activity as a whole: everything the club earned in its line of business, minus everything it spent on the team, infrastructure, office and promotion. Transfers and one-off operations sit lower down, under other income and expenses.
After that comes everything that has no direct connection to matches. Other income of 1.325 billion, part of it linked to transfer operations and other one-off receipts. Set against that, other expenses of 939 million. Interest separately: 305 million received, 197 paid. In total this block added roughly 494 million and cut the loss to 1.094 billion.
And only at the very last step does deferred tax appear, plus 235 million. That is an accounting entry about future tax deductions; it brings in no live cash. The bottom line: a net loss of 859 million.
In short, the whole staircase looks like this. Revenue 7,425. Minus cost of sales 8,377. Minus office and selling 636. Loss from sales 1,588. Plus 494 from interest and other operations, already net of other expenses. Loss before tax 1,094. Plus 235 of deferred tax. Net loss 859 million.
Put simply: the football itself is something Lokomotiv produces at a loss. The acceptable final figure is assembled outside the club's core work.
That isn't poverty. That's an expensive lifestyle.
71 kopecks of every rouble earned
The heaviest line of expenditure is obvious: people.
In 2025 Lokomotiv paid players, coaches and staff 5.292 billion roubles. A year earlier it was 4.446 billion.
To grasp the scale, compare it with revenue. Wages eat up 71% of everything the club takes in. Of every rouble, 71 kopecks go to people and only 29 kopecks are left for everything else: the stadium, the training base, flights, the academy, taxes, transfers.
There's an even uglier number. Over the year, revenue grew by 10.5% while wage payments grew by 19%. Costs are accelerating almost twice as fast as income.
The club explained the growth by the new contracts for Batrakov, Pinyaev, Lantratov, Morozov, Nenakhov, Pogostnov and Silyanov, plus the arrivals of Montes, Komlichenko, Ramirez, Bakaev, Prutsev and Rudenko (FC Lokomotiv).
From a football point of view it all makes sense. You can't keep young leaders on the contracts they signed when they broke into the first team. A good player doesn't turn up at the railway station with a packed lunch and a desire to play for the cause, either.
But the construction ends up rigid. A sponsorship contribution can be cut in a single day. A wage bill cannot. Contracts are signed years ahead, agents keep calling, and footballers for some reason won't volunteer to earn a third less.
The key figure isn't the loss but 34 kopecks
At year end Lokomotiv had 296 million roubles left in its accounts. Sounds fine. Until you look at how much the club owes.
Here are three numbers from the balance sheet:
- current assets, i.e. everything that can be turned into cash relatively quickly, 1.456 billion;
- short-term liabilities, i.e. everything that has to be paid within a year, 4.300 billion;
- of which debts to suppliers, partners and other clubs, 3.970 billion.
Let's do the sums. For every rouble of imminent debt, Lokomotiv has 34 kopecks of current assets. Economists call this the current ratio. A value below one means there are fewer current assets than liabilities falling due within the year.
It's too early to panic, though. This isn't a bank loan with a single red-letter repayment date: the deadlines and arrangements are all different, and nobody is coming tomorrow for four billion at once. What's more, 2.1 billion of that sum is an advance from Russian Railways under advertising contracts. Money like that usually doesn't have to be returned by bank transfer; the club has to fulfil its advertising obligations.
Only the economic meaning is no softer for it. Lokomotiv has already received part of its future sponsorship revenue and already spent it.
Hence the main conclusion. The club has money. It has almost no room for manoeuvre.
You can't just pull five million euros out of the till for a new signing, because a transfer isn't only the payment to the other club. On top come the salary, agent fees, signing-on money, bonuses, taxes and a long contract that will hang over the budget for several more years. The club is sometimes capable of paying the required sum as a one-off. When it costs the whole package, it turns out it had better not.
So, bankrupt?
No. The club has enough live cash: operating activity brought in a plus of 441 million over the year, Lokomotiv ended the year with 296 million in its accounts, having started with just 69. There are no stories here about the lights being switched off at the training base.
What matters more is this. The accounts are checked by an independent auditor, the firm B1. If the auditor has serious doubts that an organisation will live to see next year, it is obliged to write a separate section: "material uncertainty related to going concern". That is a professional red flag.
Lokomotiv has no such section. It has a different, softer one: "Emphasis of matter". It says the club's net assets are below the minimum share capital, immediately followed by the caveat that the auditor isn't changing its opinion on the accounts because of it. Management explains the calm itself: cash in the accounts, tightened control over spending, the option of selling a player if funds run short, and the support of the ultimate shareholder. The ultimate shareholder is Russian Railways (RZD).
But the safety margin is melting. Equity, i.e. the difference between all the club's assets and all its debts, fell over the year from 1.653 billion to 794 million. The accumulated uncovered loss over all the years has grown to 6.021 billion. At the end of 2023 equity stood at 2.417 billion. In two years less than a third of it is left (see the picture above).
Two-thirds of all the money came from one partner
Lokomotiv's model isn't wrong, exactly. It has become too heavy for the current volume of funding.
How heavy is spelled out in the notes to the accounts in plain text: "Revenue from the general sponsor, OAO RZD, accounts for 85% of total advertising and sponsorship revenue for 2025 (84% for 2024)".
Let's count. The club's entire advertising and sponsorship revenue is 5.982 billion. So Russian Railways gave Lokomotiv 5.084 billion. That is 68.5% of the club's total revenue.
Everything else put together looks modest: television rights 830 million, tickets and merchandise 516 million, other 97 million. Total 2.3 billion.
In itself that's normal for Russian football. Almost every club lives off an owner, a region or a big company. The problem begins when spending is tailored for years to the maximum level of support and that support is treated as eternal.
The 2026 budget hasn't been cut catastrophically. Yuri Nagornykh said it stayed roughly at the previous level, with the RZD contribution reduced only slightly, and the club expects to make up the difference through work with its property (Sport-Express). Russian Railways hasn't shut the till yet or sent the footballers off to lay sleepers.
But even a small cut hurts a club that ended the year with an 859 million loss on full funding. When two-thirds of the money comes from one partner, the club has no second leg to shift its weight onto.
That is the heart of the problem. Lokomotiv needs the huge shareholder contribution not to make a leap forward, but simply to sustain the level of spending it already has.
Which is why selling Vorobyov is logical
The club announced Dmitry Vorobyov's move to Krasnodar officially and didn't disclose the fee (FC Lokomotiv).
The sale in itself proves no catastrophe. Clubs sell players when they get a good offer. But next to the accounts, the deal reads differently. Lokomotiv needs not profit on paper but live money in the account and one salary fewer on the payroll.
How that works is visible in the numbers. In 2025 the club received 1.059 billion under transfer contracts and paid out 890 million. A net plus of 169 million. In other words, the transfer market has long since stopped being an expense line for Lokomotiv and become a closed loop where you first have to sell in order to buy.
Hence the nervousness around Karpukas, Montes and the rest. In February sporting director Dmitry Ulyanov said it straight: the club works within its budget, and several deals fell through precisely because of the financial terms (interview with SE).
Translated from director-speak into human: there is money, but every extra expense has to be clawed out.
And does Baltika have money?
Also no. And again not in the sense usually given to that phrase.
On 31 December 2025 Baltika's accounts held 1,297 thousand roubles. Not billion — roughly 1.3 million. 202 thousand in the cash desk, 993 thousand in current accounts, 102 thousand in transit. Baltika, meanwhile, owes 875 million falling due within the year.
This has to be read carefully, or you end up with a tabloid. The money didn't evaporate. On the same date the club was owed 85.5 million on loans it had issued, and over the year 593 million went out and 507.5 million came back through the purchase and sale of debt securities. That's how you manage temporarily idle cash. But free cash on the reporting date itself the club almost didn't have.
And that same current ratio for Baltika is 0.23. That is, 23 kopecks per rouble of imminent debt, worse than Lokomotiv's 34 kopecks. The club gives this figure in its own accounts and honestly notes that it is below generally accepted values.
The dependence on other people's money hasn't gone anywhere either. In 2025 the region gave Baltika a 350 million subsidy, with 400 million planned for 2026 (RIA Novosti). Nobody should be holding the club up as a model of self-sufficient business.
The red flag was raised over the wrong club
Now for the most unexpected part of the whole story.
Remember that section about the auditor's doubts that Lokomotiv doesn't have? Baltika has it. The club's accounts were checked by the firm GLOBALS AUDIT, and the opinion was signed in March 2026. The auditor pointed directly to a "material uncertainty" that may cast significant doubt on the club's ability to continue as a going concern.
There are no qualifications on the figures themselves; the accounts are reliable. But the flag is up.
The reason is named right there. Baltika's net assets are 121.6 million against share capital of 773.7 million. In 2024 they were actually negative, minus 184.4 million. Under the law on joint-stock companies, a company in that position is obliged to reduce its share capital, and the club states plainly that it will do so in 2026. It is precisely the net assets below share capital and the plans to reduce it that the auditor refers to.
So we get a paradox. The formal warning hangs over the profitable club, and there is none over the loss-making one. Behind Lokomotiv stands the financial might of Russian Railways. Baltika has the region's support too, but the auditor didn't consider it sufficient to remove the formal uncertainty.
So the "some are poor, others are rich" scheme doesn't work here. Baltika has a healthy income statement and a sick balance sheet. Lokomotiv is the exact opposite.
But in its day-to-day work, Baltika lives within its means
On revenue of 2.602 billion, Baltika made a net profit of 309.8 million. A year earlier there was a loss of 274.9 million.
The proof lies in the same proportion that is choking Lokomotiv. Baltika spent 1.461 billion on wages, that is 56% of revenue. Lokomotiv: 71%. Fifteen percentage points of difference is exactly the room for manoeuvre this whole text is about.
And Baltika didn't earn it on transfers. In 2025 transfer income was just 22.9 million, with expenses of 244.2 million. The balance is negative. The profit was assembled from ordinary work: sponsors, tickets, television, prize money.
The region's money doesn't fall into a void
The region gave 350 million. The club used it to play the season and ended the year in profit.
Then 2026 begins, and this is important to state: the sales we're about to discuss aren't included in the accounts analysed here and have nothing to do with the 2025 profit.
Vladislav Saus went to Spartak. Officially the sum wasn't named, the media mentioned 350 million, and general director Ravil Izmailov confirmed it was the biggest sale in the club's history at that point (Championat). Kevin Andrade moved to Zenit, with a public valuation of around 3.5 million euros. CSKA bought out Maksim Borisko for 180 million (Sport-Express).
The sums aren't officially confirmed; these are media figures. But even on those, three sales bring in around 850 million before interest, commissions, agent fees and taxes. That's more than two years of the region's subsidy, although money like that usually arrives in the account in instalments and not in full.
And Baltika bought incomparably cheaper. Moufi and Shnaptsev were said to cost roughly 500 thousand euros each, and Anderson's buyout was estimated at 250 thousand. Around 1.25 million euros in total (Sports.ru).
And here is the main difference. Lokomotiv sells to free up the budget and keep its balance. Baltika sells after sporting growth and builds a reserve on top of an already profitable year. From the outside the action is the same: a footballer left for a richer club. The meaning is different.
But it's too early to call Baltika rich
Three important players have to be replaced by someone, and the share capital has to be put in order. Ordinary income will also grow in 2026: the 2025 accounts captured only the autumn half of the RPL season, while in spring the team was playing in the First League. A full calendar year in the top flight will bring more money from television, tickets and commerce, but we'll only see the exact figure in the next set of accounts.
For now, one thing can be said. Baltika's position has become noticeably more comfortable. Not "now we can buy anyone we like", but "now we don't need to sell the next player to pay for the previous one". For a Russian club that is almost a luxury.
So who actually has the money?
Lokomotiv has many times more of it. More revenue, wages, squad value, infrastructure. Comparing in absolute numbers is even a little comical: the Muscovites' wages alone are double Baltika's entire annual revenue.
But stability isn't a contest for the biggest budget.
Lokomotiv is still far richer. But almost every one of its roubles already has a destination.
Baltika is poorer, more dependent on the region, and formally even received the more alarming audit opinion. Yet its current model leaves money over after the season, rather than demanding new money to finish it.
So what Lokomotiv lacks isn't money. It's the right to make a mistake. Baltika has that right for the first time.
Which would you choose: a loss under the guarantee of a powerful shareholder, or a profit with an auditor's warning?My Telegramhttps://t.me/BalticaB
