The cash windfall Blackburn Rovers can make as major Adam Wharton, Crystal Palace exit update revealed | OneFootball

Championship club Blackburn Rovers could be in for a substantial windfall if Crystal Palace sell their star midfielder Adam Wharton.

Blackburn Rovers could be in for a substantial windfall, should Crystal Palace choose to sell star midfielder Adam Wharton at the end of this season.

Sell-on clauses have become an essential part of transfer negotiations, when it comes to selling on players with a lot of potential for the future.

Selling clubs can only trade on the basis of a player's current position, and in this scenario it makes perfect sense for them to demand a cut of any future profit that a buying club could make from selling them on again in the future.

This now seems likely to be what happens in the case of the England midfielder Adam Wharton. Crystal Palace paid Blackburn Rovers £18 million plus add-ons to take the player from Ewood Park to Selhurst Park at the very end of the transfer window in January 2024, and with rumours now circulating that Palace could be ready to cash in the star themselves, Blackburn could also be set to profit.

Crystal Palace's sale of Adam Wharton could net Blackburn Rovers millions

The Lancashire Evening Telegraph confirmed details of the sell-on clause relating to Wharton in October 2025. They stated that "the club will receive 15% of any profit from a future sale."

It had previously been reported that Palace were in no particular rush to sell the 21-year-old midfielder because they had him tied down to a long contract.

However, journalist Alan Nixon reported on Sunday that Palace will sell midfield star Adam Wharton at the end of the season if a multi-million bid comes in, with interest from Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City, as well as from clubs from abroad.

In the event that Wharton were sold by Palace for £70 million, the sale of the player could be worth around £7.5 million to Blackburn Rovers, not an insubstantial amount to add to the £18 million that they've already netted for selling him in the first place. The Lancashire Evening Telegraph also reported in June 2024 that Rovers had also earned a "significant" add-on payment when he made his England debut that month against Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Blackburn Rovers are Adam Wharton's hometown club, and his growth as a player will seriously benefit them

Adam Wharton was a Blackburn-supporting child who was a mascot for one of their matches at the age of just four before joining their academy in 2010. He signed his first professional contract with the club in February 2022, and made his full debut for them the following August, in a 4-0 EFL Cup win against Hartlepool United.

But such was Wharton's promise that he didn't stay at Ewood Park for that long. He made 51 appearances for Blackburn Rovers in full over the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons before Crystal Palace stepped in with a bid that Rovers couldn't ignore.

And his ascent as a player has continued since then. He's already made over 60 appearances for Crystal Palace and will be in serious contention for a place in the England squad for next summer's World Cup finals. As recently as last weekend, he was singled out for special praise by the BBC's Match of the Day for his performance in Palace's 2-1 win at Fulham in the Premier League.

As a player whose connections with Blackburn Rovers go back to his infancy, Wharton himself may well be very pleased to find that his own development as a player is likely to bring in a further cash windfall to the club that he supported as a boy.