Every single Premier Division player in the League of Ireland will be full-time next season
League of Ireland revolution set to happen with all top flight teams going full-time for 2025.
The League of Ireland will become fully professional next season for the first time in its 124-year history.
All ten Premier Division clubs are set to ditch part-time players and line out with squads of exclusively full-time pros, financed by a mixture of UEFA solidarity money, increased gate receipts and private investment.
It is a quarter of a century since the first League of Ireland club converted from part-time to full-time status. In 2024, there was only one team - Drogheda United - who operated off a part-time basis.
Now they, along with every top-flight club, are set to go full-time.
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The news comes as Mirror Sport can reveal -
Between five and ten players in the League earn €150,000-a-year
The lowest earner in the Premier Division will be on around €400–a-week but the overwhelming majority of players will be earning at least twice that amount
St Pat’s employed 33 full-time players last season - the most in the League
Sligo Rovers had 20 full-timers, the lowest in the top flight, with the exception of part-timers, Drogheda
All ten clubs will operate with squads of between 20 and 33 full-time players this season
Eight of the ten top-flight clubs are backed by private investors
Nine top flight clubs are set to receive €350,000 each from UEFA’s new distribution model
That rise in solidarity payments from UEFA is a significant one as the League of Ireland’s top flight clubs received around €70,000 each from European football’s governing body up until last year.
However, pressure from the European Clubs Association - the body who wanted to form a breakaway Super League - has led to a significant increase in the redistribution of excess cash throughout Europe’s leagues.
The biggest benefactors will be the nine Irish clubs who did not make European group stage football this season - in other words every Irish club bar Shamrock Rovers, who pocketed over €5m from their European exploits in 2024.
Nonetheless, €300,000 is scarcely enough to fund the wages of an entire squad throughout the season, especially as between five and ten of the League’s best players can command half that figure in their annual salary.
What has made the transition possible from a part time to full time model are two things.
The first of those is the increase in crowds, which have improved significantly since the start of the decade.
Last season, Shamrock Rovers’ average attendance was 6,071 with three other clubs, Shelbourne, Bohemians and St Pat’s, topping 4,000 for their home games.
In addition to this, eight of the ten top flight clubs are at least partly funded by businessmen with deep pockets.
Sligo and Bohs are the exceptions yet Bohs’ commercial activities outstrips the rest of the league clubs quite comfortably.
The League, in general, has become a more stable working environment for players with Dundalk’s cash crisis towards the end of the 2024 season being the first crisis the players’ union (PFAI) had to deal with in six years.
Another major change is the switch from 40-week contracts to multi-year deals. Only a small minority of players are on three-year deals, mainly younger players in the 18-22 age bracket, as clubs seek to increase the value of those players by securing them on longer term contracts.
At least two players in the League are believed to have signed four-year contracts.
The First Division remains a backwater, however, with much lower attendances, approximately 50 per cent of the players on amateur contracts.
After the end of last season, 110 players from the two divisions were placed on the transfer list but the PFAI’s old practice of training those out of season players in Abbotstown, and bringing them to a close-season tournament in Norway, was no longer needed, as 90 per cent of the transfer listed players felt confident about getting a new club.
One area that could potentially lead to conflict is the drive from the PFAI to ensure three academy trained players are included in match day squads for the first-team.
While first-team managers are likely to oppose this practice - on the back of how vulnerable their positions are - the PFAI are determined to press on with their drive for change.
Their thinking is based on a long-term strategy of developing the League’s young talent by giving them match-day experience.
And they will be lobbying the government to secure €10m in academy funding, and by extension, lobbying the FAI to introduce this rule change to enable more academy players are given the opportunity to play first-team football.
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