LONDON, 20 Mar. (dpa / EP) –
Manchester City, current champion of the Premier League, leads the Deloitte Football Money League for the first time, the classification of clubs with the highest income in the world prepared by Deloitte, ahead of Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.
Citizens became the fourth entity to reach the top of Deloitte’s list, which examines the best-performing football clubs in terms of revenue each year.
City’s revenue was 571.1 million pounds sterling – more than 680 million euros – during the 2020-21 season, in which they rose from sixth to first place in the ranking. Its annual number has grown almost 45 times since the first year of the Money League, in the 1996-97 academic year.
For its part, Real Madrid, with 640.7 million euros, which holds second place, and Bayern Munich (611.4 million euros), third, were the only two clubs that generated more than 600 million euros revenue in financial years 2019-20 and 2020-21.
FC Barcelona (582.1 million euros) falls to fourth place, with Manchester United (558 million euros) fifth, the lowest position they have ever occupied. Paris Saint-Germain (556.2 million euros), Liverpool (550.4 million euros), Chelsea (493.1 million euros), Juventus (433.5 million euros) and Tottenham ( 406.2 million euros) completed the ‘Top 10’.
Premier League clubs dominate the top rankings, with 11 teams from England’s top flight in the top 20, including Wolves for the first time.
Matchday revenue in the leagues fell to an all-time low of €111m, or one per cent of total club revenue, due to the impact of playing games behind closed doors during the height of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe. .
Broadcast revenue rose by €1.4bn between 2019 and 2020, but that was largely due to the distribution of funds being deferred after domestic competitions were put on hold and later completed.
In total, Money League clubs generated €8.2bn in revenue, an increase of less than one per cent on 2019-20 and more than €1bn less than in 2018-19. “Money League clubs have lost more than €2 billion in revenue during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons as a result of COVID-19,” Deloitte said.