Real Madrid has overtaken Manchester United as the named most valuable European football club, being worth about €3.224 billion, according to the globally renowned audit and tax firm, KPMG.
The Spanish club tops KPMG’s study of top sides’ “enterprise value”.
The report, based on the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons, studied profitability, broadcasting rights, popularity, sporting potential and stadium value.
Real Madrid won the Champions League during the two seasons which the data covers. increasing its enterprise value by 10 per cent.
German league champions, Bayern Munich, is third with an estimated €2.696 billion, while La Liga winners, Barcelona, occupy fourth spot with an estimated €2.676 billion.
Newly crowned Premier League champions, Manchester City, is in fifth place with an estimated €2.460 billion, meaning there are a total of six English clubs in the top 10.
Chelsea and Arsenal, who clash on Wednesday (today) in the UEFA Europa League final, are in sixth and eighth spots with an estimated €2.227 billion and €2.008 billion respectively.
This season’s UEFA Champions League finalists, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur, are in seventh and ninth places in the rankings.
Italian league champions, Juventus, complete the top ten list with an estimated €1.548 billion.
Scottish treble winner Celtic is 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%.”
The other three English clubs to make the list outside of the top ten, were West Ham United, Leicester City and Everton.
Meanwhile, Inter Milan (15th) leapt up five places became the second most valuable club in Italy, thanks to a 41% increase in its enterprise value.
This year, 13 clubs were valued in excess of €1bn, one more than in 2018.
And eight clubs reported an enterprise value above €2bn: five from the English Premier League, two from Spain, and one from Germany.
As well as Celtic entering the top 32 for the first time, so do Spanish club Villarreal, with La Liga rivals Valencia and Turkey’s Fenerbahce dropping out.
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