Manchester United have edged out Real Madrid as the highest-earning football club in the world.
United generated £581 million in total revenue, according to Deloitte’s 2018 Football Money League.
Valuable Prem television rights pushed the Red Devils to the top of the table, after the first year of the record £8.4bn TV deal for 2016-2019.
The Premier League makes so much money from its multibillion-pound sales of television rights, tickets and commercial income that 14 of its clubs are in the highest-earning 30 in the world.
Real Madrid leapfrogged Barcelona and Bayern Munich rounded out the top four – but from there on the rankings are decidedly English.
Alexis Sanchez will become the best paid Premier League player when he moves to a £600k weekly salary at Manchester United (Credit: Michael Steele)
The Premiership clubs’ dominance reflects their significantly increased broadcast earnings which are vastly greater than those of competing European leagues.
Germany’s Bundesliga is the nearest financial competitor, whose clubs’ average attendances were significantly higher in the 2016/17 season but makes far less from TV rights sales.
The new four-year Bundesliga TV deals from this season amount to €4.64bn, an 85 per cent increase on the previous deal but far below those of the Premier League.
Crackdown
Player salaries in the Premier League are also increasing at a rate beyond their counterparts in the other Big Five leagues.
Uefa President Aleksander Ceferin announced today plans to curb the financial excesses of Europe’s super clubs.
Rules discussed will include a “luxury tax” to prevent the world’s richest clubs from monopolising the best players, clubs would be fined for exceeding a salary cap.
Ceferin has cited PSG’s activity last summer, signing Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, and an inflated Premier League January window in efforts to restore the “competitive balance” of European football.
He told the Daily Telegraph: “I’m fed up of politicians saying ‘Do something for competitive balance,’ and then, when you speak to Brussels, they say ‘Ah, everything is forbidden by the EU law.’
“We have some sporting measures we can establish without politicians. We can do luxury tax, we can limit the loans, we can limit the number of registered players.”
The full rankings are below.
2016-17 revenue in £m
1) Manchester United 581.2
2) Real Madrid 579.7
3) Barcelona 557.1
4) Bayern Munich 505.1
5) Manchester City 453.5
6) Arsenal 419
7) PSG 417.8
8) Chelsea 367.8
9) Liverpool 364.5
10) Juventus 348.6
11) Tottenham 305.6
12) Borussia Dortmund 285.8
13) Atlético Madrid 234.2
14) Leicester City 233
15) Internazionale 225.2
16) Schalke 197.8
17) West Ham 183.3
18) Southampton 182.3
19) Napoli 172.5
20) Everton 171.2
