Wealthiest Clubs in Europe Revealed

The Premier League’s financial dominance of European football thanks to multi-billion pound television rights deal is laid bare in a Uefa report published on Friday.
Thirteen English teams feature in the 30 wealthiest clubs across Europe, with Manchester United still topping the ranking despite comparative lack of success domestically or in the Champions League.
United’s projected revenue dipped marginally to around 676million euros (approx £593million at current exchange rate), narrowly ahead of Real Madrid’s 675million euros, according to the figures.
Manchester City were listed as fifth, Arsenal are seventh, Liverpool eighth and Chelsea ninth, according to Uefa’s European Club Footballing Landscape.
“Over the past ten years highlighted in the report, English Premier League clubs have extended their revenue advantage, growing on average by 144million euros per club,” Uefa said.
The figures bring together detailed comparable analysis from 700 sets of audited statements over the last decade, but only include details up to and including the 2017 financial year. Premier League clubs’ aggregate revenue was 5.3bn euros, comfortably more than La Liga (2.9bn euros), Bundesliga (2.8bn), Serie A (2.1bn) and Ligue 1 (1.6bn).
The first year of the current Premier League TV rights cycle fuelled the biggest gain over European rivals, with television revenue increasing by 47 per cent, currently totalling £2.8 billion in global rights pay packets.
The league has already raised £8.3billion alone for 2019 to 2022 and could go as high as £9billion, a 20 per cent uplift on the previous deal.
Overall, the 38 English and German top-division clubs are responsible for 40 per cent of all top-division sponsorship.
The English top flight has the highest aggregate wage bills, but the depreciation of the pound sterling and strong double digit growth in Spain and Germany has reduced the gap.
English clubs paid 2.2 times the wages of La Liga clubs in 2016 but this has dropped to 1.8 times in 2017. Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Crystal Palace, Leicester City and Southampton featured in the top 20 clubs ranked by wages.
Of the 20 highest-paying clubs, only two clubs, Crystal Palace (79 per cent) and AS Roma, recorded a wage bill of more than 70% of total revenue.
Seven Premier League clubs feature in the ranking of the top 20 clubs by operating costs, headed by Manchester City at 156 million euros.
Manchester United’s operating costs absorbed just 22 per cent of revenue, the lowest in the top 20 and considerably less than the average of 30 per cent.
For the first time ever, all 20 Premier League clubs reported operating profits (before transfers and financing) in 2017.
According to the report: “English club results were the most significant factor in the massive improvement in ‘bottom-line’ European club profitability (after transfers and financing), moving from a 186 million euros loss in 2016, in anticipation of the TV increase, to a 549 million profit in 2017 as TV revenues arrived. 18 of the 20 Premier League clubs generated net profits, and UEFA Champions League prize money of 82 million euros drove Leicester City FC to the highest net profit in history of 98 million euros, beating the previous record club profit of 78 million euros of Tottenham Hotspur in 2014.”
Buoyed by transfer profits, Liverpool FC are set to significantly push this profit record further upwards in 2018. Financial fair play has played a significant two-fold role in improving club balance sheets, first by limiting major losses and second by requiring owners to permanently inject capital rather than letting soft loans build up year after year, Uefa said.
telegraph.co.uk