Aston Villa need to ramp up their revenue after Francesco Calvo’s ‘orchestra’ pledge. Here’s how they could do it.

The financial requirements of the Premier League and UEFA have come to define everything Aston Villa are doing as a football club.

Villa are trying to compete. That’s the bottom line and it’s the only way a club of their stature should be operating, but it means they’re necessarily poking around at the outer edges of profit and sustainability rules (PSR) and squad cost ratio (SCR) requirements.

The narrative around PSR and SCR frames them as matters of destruction: Villa need to sell this player and that, cut these costs and corners, trim the wage bill. The lived reality of PSR for clubs keen on improving their first team squads is that it’s artificially limiting in a way that seems to actively discourage sustainability.

That’s a problem in my opinion. But it’s also true that getting the other side of both equations right is the healthiest way to unlock the ability to spend money in the transfer market.

Revenue is the key. Bringing in more money moves the target in terms of both PSR allowable losses and the UEFA calculation. It’s the advantage enjoyed by the clubs who are spending big, whether it’s Chelsea cashing in on their Club World Cup win or Manchester United enjoying the fruits of lucrative former glories.

The maligned Chris Heck left the club at the end of last season and was replaced by Francesco Calvo, Villa’s new president of business operations. His job is to develop the revenue side of the calculations.

46-year-old Calvo cut his teeth in sports sponsorship at one of the global tobacco giants before leading commercial operations at Juventus, Roma and Barcelona.

Francesco Calvo’s first Aston Villa interview

In his first interview as one of Villa’s most important figures, Calvo was quick to point out that he won’t be taking on his new challenge alone.

“I try to be open and transparent [as a leader] because that, I think, is key to being able to work properly with people,” he said.

“It’s not going to be a one-man show with me but I’m kind of a director of an orchestra. My ultimate responsibility is to put everybody in the best possible position to deliver.”

Calvo is a compelling character. He spoke about the need to understand the culture of the football club, the city and the region, and he came across as being mindful that having supporters onside is going to be crucial.

Villa’s new president of business operations is the front office equivalent of Monchi, with whom he worked at Roma. The club’s owners have installed them as connected heads of the two pillars of Villa and Calvo, despite his individual commercial focus, knows that his remit is not isolated.

“There is not a leading department at the club,” he said. “We need to work together, helping one another. That’s very important that we work as one club because Aston Villa is more important than any of us.

“My focus will be to support [Unai Emery, Monchi and Damian Vidagany] and to support the football department of Aston Villa in order to make it an even more successful club.”

How Aston Villa generate revenue

Calvo is stepping into a club that turns over a ton of money. Broadcast revenue is the biggest contributor to that, followed by other commercial efforts, followed by matchday income including ticket sales and in-stadium purchases.

Villa make money from merchandise – primarily replica shirts – as well as stadium-based hospitality and additional football revenue streams such as VillaTV.

As we’ve seen this summer in particular, Villa can also attract income as the owners of a stadium capable of holding the region’s biggest concerts.

Football plays a huge part in revenue generation, of course. In 2024/25, sixth-placed Villa made £159.3 million from UK and international broadcast deals, individual match broadcast facility fees and Premier League prize money.

Player trading isn’t intended to be the be all and end all of club revenue but it has become the core of the discussion when it comes to PSR and it’s an obvious way to make money. Most clubs sell players and doing so for a profit is a perfectly cromulent way to evolve if it’s done properly.

Then, of course, there’s the possibility of selling assets the club doesn’t really want to sell, not least Aston Villa Women.

Aston Villa’s opportunities for revenue growth

Calvo’s role isn’t just about increasing the revenue streams already in place, nor about simply attracting sponsors and partners for every club asset under the sun.

Villa are working on The Warehouse, a multi-use venue outside the North Stand as part of the club’s redevelopment of Villa Park, and the matchday benefits of such a facility will be bolstered by non-football opportunities.

With the club’s existing spaces and The Warehouse fully operational, Villa should be ramping up the offering of meeting and conference rooms as well as looking into opportunities for co-working offices.

Getting the music side right is important too. For the venue to work for year-round gigs, Villa need to understand what they’re getting into with music.

One way to expand on that challenge is to be the promoter, or at least to acquire one.

Owning the gigs as well as the venue would be a big shift into a new business area but the club should be looking into it – and an annual festival in both the stadium and The Warehouse to make the most of it.

The Warehouse should be considered a concept, not just a building.

Footballers and former footballers are involved in a multitude of business opportunities – the days of packing it in at 34 and buying a pub are long gone – and a club-backed business incubator would allow Villa to take a small stake in any number of player or even supporter start-ups with profitable potential.

Villa would also benefit from increasing the tangible value of club memberships beyond VillaTV and advantages when it comes to ticketing.

Would more supporters commit to memberships if it offered access to a discount programme with businesses in Birmingham? Would Villa be able to benefit twice by doing affiliate deals with those businesses? Why not suck it and see?

The club is known to have explored the possibility of selling Villa Park’s stadium naming rights. It’s difficult to see how the juice can be worth the squeeze on that one, given the likely numbers involved are rather lower than the true value of the stadium’s name, but it’s a lever that might well be pulled eventually.

Football itself offers revenue growth opportunities, from the long established potential of developing players and selling for profit to more ambitious thinking like investing more seriously in assets like overseas football academies.

But if we’re talking football, there’s one goal that should be Villa’s biggest focus not only from a sporting perspective but a commercial one, and it’s the club’s biggest opportunity of all.

Villa need to get back into the Champions League.

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