Blame the Champions League.
Revenue for 2025/26 landed at €460.5m. That is a fall of more than sixty million on the season before.
Broadcasters caused nearly all of it. An exit before the last 16 cost the club €58.7m in television money on its own, where a year earlier die Borussen had gone all the way to the quarter-finals.
So Borussia have posted a net loss of €21.7m. Members and shareholders get nothing back this time.
What kept the hole from becoming a crater
Net transfer income came to €59.3m.
Strip that out and the figure at the foot of the page looks a great deal uglier. Selling well isn't a side hustle in Dortmund any more. It's the beam holding the roof up.
Advertising did climb. The wage bill came down by €8.4m. Neither of those covers a missing knockout round.
Look at what Lars Ricken did with the money.
Konstantinos Karetsas is 18. Giannis Konstantelias is 23. Joey Veerman is the grown-up of the three at 27.
Out went Karim Adeyemi to Barcelona and Julian Brandt to Ajax on a free. Yan Couto and Diant Ramaj followed them through the door.
You can call that a youth policy. The accounts call it smart business.
The truth behind Ricken's thinking
Ricken has never hidden the thinking. BVB Buzz set out his youth-focused recruitment plan earlier this summer: hungry young players inside a frame of experienced ones.
Put that next to Friday's filing, though. Philosophy starts to sound an awful lot like necessity.
Every summer transfer window now runs in the same way. Dortmund sell one man at his peak price, then put a fraction of the proceeds into two or three teenagers. The academy and the scouting department are trusted to cover the difference before anybody notices the join.
BVB need something close to €59.3m of transfer income every single year, because the football on its own doesn't pay for the club.
The club's own forecast admits it. Dortmund expect a consolidated profit somewhere between zero and €10m for 2026/27, hedged against transfer business and a bad season.
Ricken has also told the media that the English copied the model. Perhaps they did. The English clubs copying it sit on Premier League television money that nobody in Germany can match.
None of this is a disaster. Kobel's still here. Guirassy's still here.
This squad is younger, quicker and more fun to watch than last year's. A Champions League campaign starts next month, too.
But when the next big bid lands for Felix Nmecha or Jobe Bellingham, don't waste your afternoon being shocked, because the accounts published on Friday told you it was coming months before any agent picked up a phone.
Go and watch Karetsas instead.
Verdict: Losing Adeyemi stung, though a €65.5m revenue drop left Dortmund almost nowhere else to turn.
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