For 13 seasons, the Citizens became the best club in the world in terms of cash receipts
On May 17, Manchester City will play one of the main matches of the season – the second leg of the 1/2 finals of the Champions League against Real Madrid. If successful at home, the Citizens will reach the Champions League final for the second time in their history. If luck smiles at Real Madrid, then the Royal Club will play for the 18th time in the decisive match of the European club tournament.
Manchester City have never won the Cup/Champions League, Real Madrid have taken the trophy 14 times. Five victories happened in the last nine years. The Madrid club is the most titled team in the world. But there is one indicator that Manchester City has already surpassed Real Madrid. And he is quite offensive to the Spaniards.
We are talking about the seasonal revenue of the clubs. Last year, Manchester City had 731 million euros, compared to 714 for Real Madrid. These are the data from KPMG Football Benchmark, which ranked the ten most financially successful clubs.
The company’s specialists analyzed the clubs’ performance in terms of revenue in the 2008/2009 and 2021/2022 seasons. If everything is clear with the latter, then the choice of the former is not accidental: in September 2008, Arab sheikhs bought Manchester City, starting the transformation of a modest English club into one of the strongest football business empires in the world.
At the end of the 2008/2009 season, according to KPMG Football Benchmark, Manchester City was not even close to the top 10 in terms of revenue, and the rating was headed by Real Madrid, which collected 401 million euros for the season and was 40 million ahead of Barcelona.
13 years ago, there were four English clubs in the top 10: Manchester United were third, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool, in that order, from fifth to seventh. It is noteworthy that Bayern had the fourth place, and the last three positions in the TOP-10 remained with the Italian giants: Juventus, Inter and Milan.
With the advent of the sheikhs, according to experts, Manchester City’s revenue grew annually. This was facilitated by the invitation of the stars, and the results and solid and worked investments in the marketing component – excellent sponsorship contracts. According to experts, for more than seven years in a row the club has been gaining profit in its operations. Of course, the UEFA fiscal authorities have questions about the formation of this reporting, but the fact remains.
If we talk about the revenue of the leading clubs last season, we note that not a single Italian club remained in the top ten, Barcelona and Bayern fell out of the top 5, Liverpool outperformed not only Chelsea with Arsenal, but also Manchester United, PSG and Tottenham entered in the TOP 10.
Source: Sportarena
I’m Scott Moore, a professional writer and journalist based in the US. I’ve been writing for various publications for over 8 years now, and have been working as an author at athletistic for the past five years. My work has been featured by some of the leading sports websites and magazines across Europe.
