Manchester City top Deloitte Football Money League for first time

Manchester City have topped the Deloitte Football Money League for the first time.

The reigning Premier League champions became just the fourth club ever to come top of the Deloitte list, which examines the top-performing football clubs in terms of revenue every year.

City’s revenue of £571.1million (€644.9m) over 2020-21 saw them climb from sixth to first for 2022. Their annual figure has grown by nearly 45 times since the first year of the Money League covering the 1996-97 season.

Real Madrid (€640.7m) came second and Bayern Munich (€611.4m) were third and were the only two clubs to generate more than €600m of revenue in both the 2019-20 and 2020-21 financial years.

Barcelona (€582.1m) fell to fourth, with Manchester United (€558m) in fifth, the lowest position they have ever occupied. Paris Saint-Germain (€556.2m), Liverpool (€550.4m), Chelsea (€493.1m), Juventus (€433.5m) and Tottenham (€406.2m) completed the top 10.

Premier League clubs dominate the higher rankings, with 11 teams from England’s top flight in the top 20, including Wolves for the first time.

Matchday revenues across the leagues fell to an all-time low of €111m, or one per cent of the clubs’ total revenue, due to the impact of playing behind-closed-door matches during the heigh of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe.

Broadcast revenue increased by €1.4billion from 2019-20, but that was largely put down to the distribution of funds being deferred after domestic competitions were put on hold and then completed later in the year.

In total, the clubs in the Money League generated €8.2bn in revenue, an increase of less than one per cent on 2019-20 and more than €1bn lower than in 2018-19.

“Money League clubs have missed out on well over €2bn of revenue over the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons as a result of COVID-19,” Deloitte said.