Spain giants, Real Madrid have taken over Manchester United to be named most valuable European football club, with worth of about €3.22bn (£2.91bn), according to a report released by KPMG.
The report, based on the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons, studied profitability, broadcasting rights, popularity, sporting potential and stadium value. In the just-ended EPL season, Liverpool topped in the Broadcasting rights while Manchester came third after League winners, Manchester City.
Champions League finalists Liverpool and Spurs are in seventh and ninth places in the popularity rankings while Europa League finalists Chelsea and Arsenal are in sixth and eighth spots.
Premier League winners, Manchester City is in fifth place, meaning there are a total of six English clubs in the top 10 spots according to the KPMG report a show that the Premier League is one of the most followed League in the globe.
Real Madrid won the Champions League during the two seasons which the data covers, increasing its enterprise value by 10%.
Scottish treble winner Celtic are included in the list of 32 major clubs, the first team from the country to be so.
Andrea Sartori, KPMG’s global head of sports and the report’s author, said the overall value of the football industry had grown by 9% over the past year.
“The overall enterprise value of the top 32 clubs is driven primarily by an aggregate 5% increase in total operating revenues,” he said.
“On the other hand, staff costs continued to grow too, with the average staff costs-to-revenue ratio of the top clubs increasing by four percentage points, up to 63%.”
Manchester United’s poor results in the recent past could be the reason the side has dropped in its popularity but the current restructuring and possible overhaul could see the club reclaim it’s long and slowly lost glory.
Manchester has not won any major title since the exit of Sir Alex Ferguson less for the Europa League that they won in the 2016-2017 season with Jose Mourinho.