According to a recent report by Deloitte, a global provider of audit and insurance information, the top 20 richest football clubs in the world have been revealed. For the first time, more than half of the clubs listed are from the Premier League.
- Manchester City – the current Premier League champions, topped the list for the second consecutive year with reported revenues of £619m (approx. $760m USD) from the 2021-22 season.
- Real Madrid – ranked second with reported revenues of approximately $745m USD.
- Liverpool – climbed four places to third, overtaking Manchester United for the first time since the report began 27 years ago. The club’s revenues increased by £106.9m (approx. $130m USD) last season, mainly from additional broadcast income from reaching the Champions League final and from being one of the only clubs to report more than $100m USD match day incomes following the Coronavirus pandemic.
Other Premier League clubs that made the list include Chelsea, Tottenham, and Arsenal who ranked eighth, ninth, and tenth respectively. Leicester, Leeds, Everton, and Newcastle were also among the top 20.
As per The Guardian, Deloitte’s assistant director, Zal Udwadia, stated that if the rankings were expanded to include the top 30, there would be 16 Premier League clubs listed. He added that it’s only a matter of time before all 20 top-flight English teams feature in the top 30.
On the other hand, Spanish giants Barcelona and Real Madrid have yet to recover from their pre-pandemic revenue levels, with the El Clásico rivals reporting revenue losses of £177m (approx. $220 USD) and £38m (approx. $47m USD) respectively from 2018-19.
The report was published soon after the outgoing of Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli, who warned that the dominance of the Premier League was bad for the rest of Europe. As per The Guardian, he said: “I believed and still believe that European soccer needs structural reforms to tackle the future. Otherwise, we are heading for inexorable decline for football in favor of a dominant league, the Premier League, which over a few years will attract all the European talent and marginalize the others.”
