Premier League clubs fall behind in Deloitte ‘rich list’; Real Madrid and Barcelona on top
Real Madrid and Barcelona were football’s top-earning superpowers last season, according to Deloitte’s latest Football Money League report.
Madrid topped the annual listing of club revenues for the third year running and 15th time in 21 seasons, generating £975million ($1.309bn) in 2024-25, leading second-placed Barcelona by more than £150m.
Liverpool became the second English club to book more than £700million in revenue during their charge to the Premier League title, yet their income last term was only enough to rank them fifth worldwide. It is the first time in the report’s 29-year history that no English side has featured in the top four.
The clubs on Deloitte’s yearly list are routinely labelled football’s ‘richest’, though that is a debatable description.
High revenues don’t automatically equal profits. Chunky costs can easily gobble up the resources of even the biggest earners. Of the 10 clubs on this year’s 20-team list to have published full accounts for the 2024-25 season, four posted a pre-tax loss.
Barcelona, up from sixth spot in 2023-24 to second, are a timely example. Despite soaring revenues, they turned £819million of income into a £7m pre-tax deficit. As detailed by The Athletic in November, Spain’s reigning champions are far from free of financial quandaries, even as they boast one of the highest income figures in football history. Their number also included £60m in one-off sales of 30-year personal seat licences (PSLs) at the refurbished Camp Nou — transactions, in short, that can’t be repeated for three decades.
Deloitte’s document is, by design, limited in scope, primarily focusing on revenues. Wage bills can be extrapolated — as The Athletic has done further in this piece — but the report does not deal with the many costs of running a modern football club. An appearance on the list does not necessarily mean the side concerned are in good financial health.
A further caveat is that Deloitte can only include the teams who provide its staff with data. Most relevant clubs do, but not all. The full report runs to 30 teams but makes no mention of Nottingham Forest or Fulham, who would both be expected to feature. Their names were omitted as neither provided Deloitte with the required data; Forest were notable absentees from last year’s list, too.
Yet there is still much new detail to be analysed.
For one, in a mirroring of findings from the women’s football version of the report published this week, commercial income leads the way among the highest-earning clubs. That has not always been the case in men’s football, as TV money has generally propelled earnings for much of this century, but the 2024-25 season was the third in succession where commercial income comprised the highest revenue segment.
The top 20 clubs generated £4.46billion in commercial revenues last season, up from £4.2bn a year earlier. Growth was especially prevalent among the already wealthy — of the £261m increase in this sector between this year’s top 20 and those in the report’s prior edition, £226m came from sides in the current top 10.
Commercial income drove the ascent of Spain’s big two. Clubs categorise ‘income’ in different ways, but using Deloitte’s definition of commercial income saw Madrid generate an enormous £499million last season. Barcelona, at £438m, were some way back, but also the only other side to top £400m commercially.
Behind them, Bayern Munich (£388million), Manchester City (£343m), Manchester United (£333m), Paris Saint-Germain (£308m) and Liverpool (£307m) each topped £300m. These figures highlight the gulf in commercial revenue even among football’s richest: four clubs in the top 20 generated less than £100m from commercial dealings.
Broadcast revenues might have been eclipsed, but at £3.95billion they still comprised a mammoth source of income across the game.
Real Madrid again led the way (£281m), trailed by Manchester City (£278m), Arsenal (£269m) and Liverpool (£269m). Healthy domestic TV contracts are still important, even as last year marked the first season of a bumper new Champions League deal. PSG took in a record prize-money haul from winning that competition but low domestic payouts in France limited their broadcast take overall to £246m.
Tim Bridge, lead partner in the Deloitte Sports Business Group, which produces the report, highlighted the ongoing importance of broadcast revenues, which are generally correlated with a team’s match results. Bridge says: “On-pitch performance remains a primary driver for clubs to progress to the upper echelons of the ranking, with many clubs benefitting from new and expanded European and international club tournaments.”
FIFA’s greatly expanded Club World Cup helped several sides, especially the winner. Chelsea’s annual revenue would have fallen without the bounty from last summer’s competition, which was held in the United States.
Four clubs — Aston Villa, West Ham United, Benfica and Inter — relied on broadcast income for more than 50 per cent of their 2024-25 revenue, which naturally marks them out as financially vulnerable if on-field performances wane. In Villa’s case, TV money accounted for 63.7 per cent of total revenues, so a sizeable fall can be expected in 2025-26, when there will be no repeat of last season’s venture to the Champions League quarter-finals as they are in the less lucrative Europa League this time.
Villa were one of three Premier League teams to improve across each of the three main revenue streams last season, along with Liverpool and Arsenal. Villa’s club-record £378million revenue represented a 42 per cent increase, the second-biggest proportional change among the top 20, behind Stuttgart (79 per cent). Both owed much to the revamped, expanded Champions League format brought in for last season.
Four English clubs — Villa, Arsenal, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur — enjoyed £20million-plus rises in matchday income. United still lead the way in England but Arsenal’s £154m means they’ve increased takings from the Emirates Stadium by over £50m in just two seasons.
However, it was those who enjoyed smaller, or even negative growth, at the turnstiles who stood out.
Manchester City, Newcastle United and West Ham all generated less in 2024-25 than a year earlier, while Chelsea’s £7million improvement still left them only 10th overall for gate receipts. Stadium concerns dominate the agenda at those four clubs: City are expanding the Etihad Stadium, Newcastle remain in limbo over St James’ Park, empty seats and boycotts are a hot topic at West Ham, and Chelsea’s future at Stamford Bridge is uncertain.
Should English clubs be concerned about tumbling out of the top four for the first time?
One key reason behind that, and Liverpool’s debut on top of the domestic pile, is what’s been going on at Manchester United. They announced record revenues last autumn but growth has been glacial in recent years, allowing peers to overtake them. From never having been out of the top five since Deloitte introduced the report in the mid-1990s, United fell to eighth — as projected by The Athletic when their latest accounts were published.
Liverpool trailed PSG in fourth by less than £1million, while Manchester City and Arsenal were both within £10m of the £700m mark. PSG’s lofty position looks less secure, too. They booked a notable fall in commercial income and fell from third to fourth overall; the drop would have been further without their Champions League triumph.
The French champions were overtaken by both Barcelona and Bayern, and the income-generating capabilities of Barca and Real Madrid look more robust challenges to the financial might of the Premier League. Madrid are a revenue-making juggernaut; their arch-rivals, even with the one-off income from those PSLs, hope to soon reap the rewards of their improved and reopened Camp Nou.
Bayern, meanwhile, have long been commercially astute and are closing in on £400million annually from that stream. But it is worth noting they also benefited from the Club World Cup, and the lower amount of TV money in Germany — as in France, though to a much lesser extent — is a limiting factor. Without their income from FIFA’s new summer showpiece, it’s likely Bayern would have again been in the fifth spot they occupied in 2023-24, and perhaps further back.
James Savage, a director in Deloitte’s Sport Business Group, said the sight of no English clubs in the top four “reemphasises the importance of on-pitch performance, but observed that Premier League clubs occupying spots five to 10 on the list despite only one reaching the Champions League quarterfinals or further was a signal of their strength”.
While not the headline figures, Deloitte’s report also details signs of better cost control among football’s elite.
Of the 18 clubs to appear in both this list and the previous year’s edition, 13 reduced their wage bills as a proportion of revenues. Of the five who didn’t — two remained consistent with 2023-24, three paid out a higher percentage of income on salaries — there was one clear theme: they were all in the Premier League.
In all, the combined wages-to-revenue ratio of the 19 clubs in the list to provide Deloitte with salaries data for 2024-25 (Stuttgart didn’t) was 55.5 per cent, five per cent lower than a year earlier, when there was also one team that didn’t provide this same information. That ratio reduction was driven by combined revenues improving from £9.4billion to £10.2bn across the relevant 19 sides, while wages remained static at £5.7bn. In general terms, UEFA’s squad cost rules look to be having an impact on reining in player-related expenses.
A definitive list of the highest wage payers last season can’t be gleaned from Deloitte’s work — lower-earning clubs may have spent proportionately more on salaries than ones who generated higher revenues — but the salary bills which can be extrapolated are instructive.
PSG’s first Champions League title was achieved with the most handsomely-paid squad in European football, even as they knocked roughly £120million off their wage bill in 2024-25. It is the fourth time in five seasons they have been the highest payers in Europe.
Liverpool’s own trophy-winning season in the Premier League saw them top £400million in wages for the first time, becoming only the third English club behind Manchester City (each of the last three seasons) and Chelsea (2022-23, but that included some sizeable termination payments) to go beyond that mark. At roughly £421m, wages comprised 60 per cent of revenue at Anfield, though income growth was so large (£87m) that their wages to revenue ratio actually dropped from the 63 per cent of 2023-24.
Deloitte included termination payments in Manchester United’s wages figure, without which they would have dropped to the fifth-highest payers domestically. If we take the wage figure per the club’s accounts of £313million, it would make 2024-25 the first time since the dawn of the Premier League era in 1992 that United were not among the four highest wage payers in English football.
There are myriad other strands to be tugged — Villa outspending Tottenham on wages, for one — but, as outlined earlier, Deloitte’s focus is squarely on the top line rather than a full accounting of what revenues are used for.
Those revenues continue to hit new records. More than £10billion was generated by the 20 listed clubs for the first time. Among those teams, combined wages were static, suggesting an easing of the pressure brought by a continuous rise in player salaries.
Yet there are caveats, too.
Half of Deloitte’s top 20 participated in the Club World Cup last summer, generating income that will not be replicated for at least another four seasons, when the competition will next be played. Several on the list made a loss in 2024-25, and more may follow.
High revenues grab the headlines, and growing income will not be sniffed at. But, as in any sector, it remains only part of the tale.
