The Football Money League

For the past 14 years Deloitte have compiled and published the so-called "Football Money League", and this week they published the 15th edition showing the results for the 2010/11 season.

The report itself has a fairly simple aim; to determine which of the football clubs from around the world generates the most revenue.  They look at 3 major sources of revenue for the modern club; match day revenue, commercial revenue and broadcasting revenue.  Importantly, fees gained through player sales are not taken into account and neither is club debt or total outgoings...if they were, I suspect the report would make very different reading.

Extract from Deloitte Football Money League report 2012

Unsurprisingly the top 20 clubs (see above) are all from the traditional 'big five' European leagues, the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga.  The revenue generated by these top 20 clubs is a whopping €4.4bn (or approx. 4.4% of Britain's national debt).  This represents over 25% of the total revenue for all of the European market.  It is also no surprise to see Real Madrid and Barcelona are situated at numbers one and two respectively.  The two Spanish giants have benefitted from having some of the biggest stars in world football within their ranks and have fully capitalised on this with the commercial awareness (Real Madrid take a certain percentage of player sponsorship deals varying on player) and by holding the rest of La Liga to ransom via the use of their independent broadcasting negotiation rights.  The breakdown of the revenue source reflects this, with Real Madrid and Barcelona both having approximately 40% of their revenue coming from broadcasting rights, the average Premier League team has a fairly even spilt between the three revenue streams.  Interestingly, the match day revenue of the top Italian clubs sits at around 16% of total revenue.

San Siro - too big for two clubs?

The gap between the two Spanish clubs is approximately €30m, however this was before Barcelona agreed to end their self imposed decision to abstain from lucrative shirt sponsorship by signing a deal with the Qatari Foundation for a reported €30m per season...top spot next season may very well be decided by Champions League success, adding spice to the already intense rivalry.

Elsewhere on the list, the effect of playing in European competition is obvious.  Schalke's run to the semi-final of the Champions League has moved them into the top 10, and Bundesliga counterparts Dortmund's recent on-pitch renaissance and Champions League qualification has boosted them into the top 20.  Dortmund along with Valencia and Napoli are the new faces in the top 20, entering the list at the expense of Aston Villa, Stuttgart and Atletico Madrid.

Despite their new found wealth the Schalke team bus still

left a little to be desired.

All in all the top 20 is pretty much as you'd expect, however delving into positions 21-30 makes interesting reading for supporters of a few more Premier League (and one Championship) clubs.  Benfica are at 21 and are the highest ranked team outside the 'big five' leagues, their presence is almost entirely attributed to their fantastic facilities and Estadio da Luz.  Also in this "chasing pack" are West Ham who managed to generate a hugely impressive amount of revenue (€89.1m) for a club who were relegated.  Elsewhere, Everton appeared in this "chasing pack" despite it being widely reported that they don't have two pennies to rub together, the Toffees managed to generate revenue of €90.8m, surely with Bill Kenwright desperate to sell the club investor can see what an opportunity a club like Everton presents...hopefully someone takes a punt on them soon.  North-East rivals Newcastle and Sunderland also make an appearance high in the list, proving that having a strong fan base in the local area can achieve...last time I checked I'm pretty sure they couldn't call on the international fan base of Man.Utd, Chelsea or Liverpool.

Whilst the report makes an interesting read I think it does somewhat miss the point.  With the same teams qualifying for European competition year on year, the gulf is going to get bigger between the elite and the rest, even the new "fair play" financial rules will do little to fix the problem...the rich will get richer and the rest will be playing catch up.  Unfortunately I think somewhere along the lone football lost and money won...but when the investors realise football is not a profitable business more than a few teams could be in trouble.