For the 10th year running, European champions, Real Madrid, is the world’s richest club in the annual Football Money League published by accountants Deloitte, with a revenue of $639 million.
Money clearly talks in European football, with the combined revenues of the top 20 clubs in the rich list rising by a staggering 14 per cent over the last year to $7 billion.
All of the top five clubs for the 2013-14 financial year saw their revenue surpass the $500 million mark for the first time on a list dominated by the English Premier League, home to five of this year’s top 10 and eight of the 20-strong list.
As a result of the latest Premier League broadcast rights deal, all of its teams have made it into the world’s top 40 highest-earning clubs.
This year is the 18th running of Deloitte’s Money League, which has been dominated by Real for a decade, although Manchester United catapulted past both Barcelona ($563.5 million) and Bayern Munich ($566.8 million) to move into second place with revenues of $602.3 million, a hike in revenue of some $110 million.