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Premier League Champions Manchester City beat Barcelona, Real Madrid to top the Deloitte Money League ranking making them the most profitable club by revenue for the first time in their history.
Manchester City controlled by Abu Dhabi owners is the fourth club to make the top of the rankings after Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester United.
The Premier League champions were top of the Deloitte Money League for the 2020-21 season with total annual revenue of £571.1million (€644.9million), just ahead of Real Madrid’s £537.7million.
Read Also: Premier League race gets hotter, Liverpool 3 points behind Manchester City
Man City’s revenue in the 2020/21 season up 17 per cent propelled them from the sixth position to the top on the list of the 20 highest revenue-generating clubs in world football.
Thanks to City’s commercial deals which account for nearly half of revenue with several key partners such as shirt and stadium sponsor Etihad having links to the club’s owners.
The meteoric rise from a financial standpoint has followed the transformation of the club’s fortunes on the pitch, with City going from long-standing strugglers to English football behemoth following the Abu Dhabi takeover back in 2008.
Manchester City’s revenue has grown from £12.7million to £571.1million in the last 25 years since the Deloitte Money League was introduced following the 1996-97 season,
The Premier League leaders are joined in the top-10 by another five English clubs, with Manchester United in fifth place, Liverpool and Chelsea seventh and eighth respectively and Tottenham in 10th place.
Bayern Munich finished third ahead of Barcelona, with Paris Saint-Germain in sixth and Juventus in ninth.
The impact of the coronavirus pandemic altered 2020 revenues, with Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur losing a spot and Liverpool dropping down two positions.
Of the top-10 clubs, only Man City, PSG, Chelsea and Juventus recorded an increase in revenue from the previous year.
Barcelona, however, were the biggest loser on the Deloitte Money League, sliding from first place to fourth – their lowest ranking since 2014 – following a summer in which their financial problems forced them to part ways with Lionel Messi.
Overall, Deloitte estimated that Money League clubs have missed out on well over €1.7billion of revenue over the past two seasons as a result of Covid-19.
Yet football has proved more resilient than other industries and while lockdowns contributed to the lowest matchday revenue in the 25 years of the publication, broadcast revenue hit a record high of £3.7billion across Europe’s top leagues.
Despite the challenges posed by Covid-19, the Premier League remained as strong as ever from a financial standpoint, providing 11 of the top 20 clubs on Deloitte’s list – the highest proportion ever.
The Premier League remains by far the richest league in the world, contributing 11 clubs to the top-20 of Deloitte’s list – the highest proportion ever
And new broadcasting rights are set to grow the gap between the Premier League and its European counterparts even more from the 2022-23 season
And new broadcasting rights are set to grow the gap between the Premier League and its European counterparts even more from the 2022-23 season.
Dan Jones, Head of the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, expects the gap between the Premier League and its European counterparts to grow even wider soon.
“Premier League broadcast rights values are set to pull further away from the other “big five” European leagues from the 2022-23 season,” he said.
“With the rollover of existing domestic arrangements on the same terms and the total value of international rights reportedly set to increase by 30 per cent and exceed the value of domestic rights for the first time.”
A total of 11 English clubs were in the top 20, with Wolves making their first-ever appearance as the Premier League continued to flex its financial muscle.
The average revenue of the 20 clubs on the list was €409 million, a marginal increase on the 2019/20 season thanks to broadcast deferrals due to Covid-19 disruption, but a 12 per cent decrease on the 2018/19 season due to the absence of fans.
The clubs in the Money League have missed out on over €2billion of revenue over the 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons as a result of the pandemic.