Football’s wealth league puts Chelsea far behind Manchester United and Arsenal
Forbes business magazine has placed Manchester United at the top of the wealthy clubs pile (740m), with Arsenal (466m) in 3rd spot and Chelsea (274m) way back in 8th place.
This is current for the season ending 2005-2006.
25 most valuable clubs (Europe)
1 Man Utd £740m
2 Real Madrid £528m
3 Arsenal £466m
4 Bayern Munich £427m
5 AC Milan £420m
6 Juventus £289m
7 Inter Milan £282m
8 Chelsea £274m
9 Barcelona £273m
10 Schalke 04 £240m
11 Liverpool £231m
12 Lyon £175m
13 Newcastle £132m
14 Tottenham £124m
15 Roma £114m
16 Hamburg £112m
17 Man City £106m
18 B Dortmund £101m
19 Ajax £100m
20 Celtic £94m
21 Everton £84m
22 Marseille £80m
23 West Ham £79m
24 Rangers £75m
25 Aston Villa £71m
Highest-Paid Players (Europe)
Note that Beckham’s move to MLS side LA Galaxy has not been taken into account.
1 Ronaldinho (Barcelona) £15.2m
2 David Beckham (Real Madrid) £14.8m
3 Ronaldo (AC Milan) £11.7m
4 Wayne Rooney (Man Utd) £8.7m
5 Michael Ballack (Chelsea) £8.7m
6 Thierry Henry (Arsenal) £8.2m
7 Zinedine Zidane (ex-Real Madrid) £8.2m
8 Fabio Cannavaro (Real Madrid) £7.6m
9 John Terry (Chelsea) £7.1m
10 Steven Gerrard (Liverpool) £7.1m
(Source: Forbes.com – thanks to Ed Harrison for the link)
Topics: General Football News
Football News 24/7
One interesting piece of information on the Forbes report
was the listing in terms of revenue earned (turnover).
In that list Real Madrid are first and Barcelona are second.
For their yearly listing of the top comapnies that’s the ranking Forbes uses rather than the market capitalization.
Here’s the revenue list in $M :
1. Real Madrid Spain 374
2. Barcelona Spain 331
3. Juventus Italy 321
4. Manchester United England 310
5. AC Milan Italy 305
6. Chelsea England 283
7. Internazionale Milan Italy 264
8. Bayern Munich Germany 262
9. Arsenal England 246
10. Liverpool England 225
11. Olympique Lyonnais France 163
12. AS Roma Italy 162
13. Newcastle United England 159
14. Schalke 04 Germany 157
15. Tottenham Hotspur England 243
Also – here’s the url of the actual Forbes report which contains more information:
http://www.forbes.com/business/2007/03/29/soccer-valuations-beckham-biz-services-cx_pm_07soccer_0329soccer_land.html
March 30th, 2007 @ 20:15United is always on the top
March 30th, 2007 @ 20:28There are probably three common ways to value a business, but first, is football a business? Yes, it is, though it has not always been so. Some clubs, like Chelsea, do not look, behave or seem like businesses, in fact Chelsea is probably technically insolvent. The article is in fact the most accurate on the value of football clubs because the three valuation methods, net asset value, earnings and cash flow, support it. Critical to this are value of players, managers and stadia, annual profits and cash flows. On the first, Arsenal beat all of them on player values. Of the top 25 Arsenal players, there probably isn’t one who who would fetch less than GBP1m on the transfer market, which also points to the value of the manager and board. Arsenal and Man U are usually profitable and Arsenal’s wages are probably the most manageble amongst the top teams. Bottom line, American investors must be salivating over Arsenal!!!!!!!!! Interestingly, my valuation of Arsenal was pretty close to the GBP466m Forbes came up with. If I had the money, I would buy the club, provided Wenger stayed for 10 more years. That of course is why the views of fans and management are almost never in sync. One word: value.
March 30th, 2007 @ 21:41Ed, thanks for the link.
March 30th, 2007 @ 23:23LB – right on – whether we like it or not football is a business and it’s growing phenomenaly fast. You just have to see that Americans are buying into football (soccer) clubs (rather than their own sports) because that’s where sports growth will be in the future – and its global.
March 30th, 2007 @ 23:33There’s a lot of soccer games on over here now – most of it the Premier league – so most of the young kids over here are watching the games – cannot be bad for the future.
LB – I’d disagree on player value for a number of reasons, but mainly because you’ve automatically assumed that Arsenal players will fetch that much and players from other clubs (Chelsea, for example) won’t.
And player value isn’t just measure with the minimum price set, it’s measured by overall market value, and in that Chelsea and Manchester United are ahead of Arsenal (at the moment).
Having said that, Arsenal is still a tremendous investment opportunity, although I don’t think it should be tied in to Wenger’s stay.
March 31st, 2007 @ 15:52ho ho, this is what manutd is. ALWAYS ON THE LEAD !
April 3rd, 2007 @ 10:20