The enormous financial clout of the English Premier League compared to its continental counterparts has been laid bare in a new report by European football’s governing body UEFA.
A record 13 English clubs feature among Europe’s 30 wealthiest, with Manchester United topping the charts, and all indications suggest the Premier League is growing richer.
Despite failing to make an impression in the Champion’s League recently, United’s projected revenue in their latest set of financial figures was around €676 million (£593m).
It places them narrowly ahead of Real Madrid, who have won the last three Champions League titles, on €675m based on 2017 data.
Manchester City (fifth), Arsenal (seventh), Liverpool (eighth) and Chelsea (ninth) all feature in UEFA’s top 10, reflecting the financial muscle of England’s top-flight.
Combined, the 20 Premier League clubs recorded revenues of €5.3 billion (£4.6bn) in 2017, dwarfing the aggregates from Spain’s La Liga (£2.55bn), Germany’s Bundesliga (£2.46bn), Italy’s Serie A (£1.84bn) and France’s Ligue 1 (£1.4bn).
The report, released on Friday, highlights that this gulf continues to widen thanks to the Premier League’s multi-billion pound television deals.
‘In the last 10 years, Premier League clubs have added €1.9bn (£1.67bn) in TV revenues. This compares to the €1.9bn added by all the rest of Europe’s clubs combined,’ the report states.
In that same decade, the Premier League clubs, boosted by lucrative domestic and international TV deals, have grown their revenue advantage on European rivals by an average of €144m (£126m) per club.
The report takes into account the first year of the current Premier League TV deal but £8.3bn has already been raised from the next cycle, which starts from the beginning of next season.
That promises to keep the Premier League clubs at the top of the charts for some time to come given TV money now contributes 54 per cent of each club’s revenue on average.
English clubs occupy 17 of the top 20 places in the broadcast revenues table, with only Real, Barcelona and Juventus able to break English football’s hold.
Therefore it comes as little surprise that English clubs have comfortably the largest wage bills in Europe.
The combined wage bill for the Premier League was £2.6bn, some 1.8 times that of La Liga though this had reduced because of the depreciation of the pound sterling.
Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Crystal Palace, Leicester City and Southampton all feature in the top 20 wage bills.