LONDON: Reigning Premier League champions Manchester City FC have topped the Deloitte Football Money League for the first time.
Abu Dhabi-owned City have become just the fourth club ever to top the Deloitte list, which examines the top-performing football clubs in terms of revenue every year.
City’s revenue of €644.9 million (£571.1m) over 2020-21 saw them climb from sixth to first for 2022.
Their annual figure has grown by nearly 45 times since the first year of the Money League covering the 1996-97 season.
In total, the clubs in the Money League generated €8.2bn in revenue, an increase of less than one per cent on 2019-20 and more than €1bn lower than in 2018-19.
“Money League clubs have missed out on well over €2bn of revenue over the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons as a result of COVID-19,” Deloitte’s specialist Sports Business Group, which oversees the production and release of the annual report, stated.
Real Madrid (€640.7m) came second and Bayern Munich (€611.4m) were third and were the only two clubs to generate more than €600m of revenue in both the 2019-20 and 2020-21 financial years.
Barcelona (€582.1m) fell to fourth, with Manchester United (€558m) in fifth, the lowest position they have ever occupied. Paris Saint-Germain (€556.2m), Liverpool (€550.4m), Chelsea (€493.1m), Juventus (€433.5m) and Tottenham (€406.2m) completed the top 10.
Premier League clubs dominate the higher rankings, with 11 teams from England’s top flight in the top 20, including Wolverhampton Wanderers for the first time.
Matchday revenues across the leagues fell to an all-time low of €111m, or 1% of the clubs’ total revenue, due to the impact of playing behind-closed-door matches during the heigh of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe.
Broadcast revenue increased by €1.4 billion from 2019-20, but that was largely put down to the distribution of funds being deferred after domestic competitions were put on hold and then completed later in the year.
DFML in numbers
1 – number of times Manchester City (€644.9m, ranked first in 2022) has topped the Money League, becoming only the fourth club ever to do so
2 – number of clubs to generate in excess of €600m revenue in each of the 2019/20 and 2020/21 financial years (Real Madrid, €640.7m and second in 2022, and Bayern Munich, €611.4m in third place)
5 – ranking of Manchester United (€558m, fifth) in this year’s Money League (its lowest position in Money League history)
7 – in the 25 years that the Sports Business Group has been compiling the Football Money League, the total revenue generated by the highest earning football clubs has grown over seven-fold (from €1.1 billion in the 1996/97 season to €8.2 billion in 2020/21)
9 – number of clubs to have appeared in the top 20 in every edition of the Money League (Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, FC Barcelona, Manchester United, Liverpool, Juventus, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal and FC Internazionale Milano)
11 & 15 – on average, women and ethnic minority individuals fill 11% and 15% respectively of a top 20 clubs’ board of directors
14 – despite an ever-changing economic environment, the composition of the top 14 clubs in this year’s Money League remains the same as it has been in each of the past four editions
17 – Wolverhampton Wanderers (€219.2m) enter the Money League for the first time, in 17th position
20 – For the first time in its 25-year history, all 20 Money League clubs have a women’s football team
45 – Number of clubs (45) that have featured in the Money League since its inception (from 11 nations)
55 – Percentage of Money League clubs (11) from the Premier League, the highest proportion ever
This year’s edition continues to be powered by the Deloitte Football Intelligence Tool, created using over a decade’s worth of research and which provides access and insights into the financial and non-financial performance of over 100 European football clubs.
