Recently, Deloitte released the "2022 Deloitte Football Wealth List", which counts the operating income data of professional clubs in the world football for 20/21 fiscal years, and ranks the top 20 in the list. City jumped to the top of the table, becoming the fourth champion in Deloitte's 25-year history of football wealth list, after Manchester United, Real Madrid and Barca. The top 14 clubs on the list have remained unchanged for four consecutive years, highlighting the established order that is difficult to break in world football today.
Text/ Tachibana Music
CFA CPA
With the 20/21 season almost empty, clubs earned close to zero matchdays. On the other hand, the postponement of the 19/20 season to the end of June 2020 led to a deferral of some revenues to the recognition of the 20/21 fiscal year, so that the revenue of clubs in the previous fiscal year did not fall too badly.
City's rise is no accident, and Blue Moon has never been absent since it was first shortlisted for the Football Fortune List in 2007/08. 2007 was the year of the arrival of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and a year later the Abu Dhabi Consortium took over, and since then there has been a qualitative improvement inside and outside the Golden Moon Stadium, winning five Premier League titles in the past decade.
In the last season when the epidemic was the most serious, the financial advantages of Premier League teams became more and more prominent, and driven by huge broadcast contracts, the top 20 and top 10 Chinese Premier League teams in this year's football wealth list accounted for half of the country. As Premier League champions, Manchester City are naturally the biggest beneficiaries, plus part of the broadcast fees deferred in the 19/20 season, and the blue moon domestic broadcast fees in the 20/21 fiscal year accounted for more than 200 million euros.
Last season's good results from runners-up also allowed City to receive around €120 million in Champions League prize money, second only to champions Chelsea's €121 million. The civil war and the foreign war have made the Blue Moon's broadcast revenue reach an unprecedented 336 million, helping the team to reach the top of the football wealth list.
20/21 Premier League teams Champions League prize money estimates
The 21/22 European season entered a new three-year cycle, with the UEFA total prize money package up about 8%. The cake is bigger, but the cake is more divided, and the Champions League prize package has increased by only 3% due to the need to distribute prize money to the participating teams in the new European Association Cup, while the Europa League prize package has even fallen by 17%.
As a result of this adjustment, the total prize package of the Champions League in the new cycle is 3.6 times that of the Europa League and 5.5 times that of the European Cup. The newly released Europa League basic prize money is only 2.94 million euros, with a prize money of 500,000 yuan per win, and a maximum of 15.5 million record prizes for successful cups. This is a chicken rib for the five major league teams, but it is still worth a fight for small teams, which is also the original intention of UEFA.
In any case, this season has given people more room for reverie, and as the audience returns to the regular level of game day income, coupled with the rise in Champions League prize money, it has given the top giants a great opportunity to repair their income-generating ability and even create a new record high in revenue.
Comparison of Champions League results in the old and new cycles
This year's Football Fortune List for the first time counts the proportion of salary expenditure to revenue of most of the listed clubs, which can indirectly estimate the salary expenditure data of each team.
Barca remain the highest-paid team, with a €489 million salary expense resulting in a salary-to-revenue ratio of 84 percent, second only to Leicester City's 85 percent. The lowest wage expenditure among the teams on the list is West Ham United (146 million euros), while the lowest wage-to-revenue ratio is tottenham Hotspur (57%).
It is worth mentioning that UEFA is currently considering replacing the existing Fiscal Fairness Act (FFP) with a new Fiscal Sustainability Rule (FSR), the core idea of which is that football-related expenses (salary, transfer fee amortization, etc.) must not exceed 70% of income. In this year's football wealth list, there are as many as 9 teams with salary expenses exceeding 70% of revenue alone.
The report also counts the average earnings of teams in the 19/20 and 20/21 financial years. As noted above, due to the fact that part of the revenue of the 19/20 season is recognized into the 20/21 fiscal year, the true financial performance is distorted to some extent, and the accounting policies of the clubs for income sharing between the two financial years are different.
After the average of the two fiscal years, Real Madrid, the most stable performance, became the top of the list, while the "skinny camel" Barca took the second place, once again reflecting the strong dominance of the "Western Super League". Bayern is in the top three, and Schalke of the "Bundesweet" has also been able to return to the list, but if he does not return to the Bundesliga as soon as possible, there will only be two German teams in the top 20 of the fortune list.
Last year, City only ranked sixth, and the average revenue of the two years can still surpass that of Manchester United in the same city, especially in the commercial income field that the sworn enemy is most proud of. Will this be a watershed for the two clubs on the fortune list? The Red Devils need to cheer up on the pitch.
The average revenue of the top 20 clubs in the 19/20 and 20/21 financial years of the 19/20 and 20/21 years was 406 million euros, down 12.5% from the peak 18/19 fiscal year before the epidemic, which seems worrying. However, in terms of dismantling, in addition to the fact that the income of the match day has only reached half of the level of previous years due to the epidemic, the broadcast and commercial income have increased.
This gives us reason to be optimistic, and it seems that the football business has not fallen into too much regression due to the epidemic. Fans have mostly returned to the stadium this season, and there is a recovery at the commercial level, and the theme of this year's Deloitte Fortune List is also set for "rebirth".
It is always a good thing to have a new king on the throne, and what football fears most is the same.