For more than 25 years, the consulting firm Deloitte has published an annual report on global football’s (soccer to U.S. fans) richest teams. Deloitte calls the top 20 revenue producers the Money League for a good reason.
The club that generated the most revenue in 2021-2022 was the English Premier League’s Manchester City with €731 million (about $770 million) in ticket sales, merchandise and media rights. The team at the bottom of the Money League table was the Premier League’s Newcastle United with revenue totaling €212.3 million ($224 million). Among NFL teams, only the Dallas Cowboys, with $1.1 billion in 2021-2022 revenue, posted higher revenue than Manchester City. The Detroit Lions posted revenue of $452 million, the least of any of the 32 NFL teams.
Only 10 global football teams posted higher revenue than the Detroit Lions. Six of those 10 are Premier League teams: #1 Manchester City, #3 Liverpool (€701.7 million), #4 Manchester United (€688.6 million), Chelsea (€568.3 million), Tottenham Hotspur (€523 million) and Arsenal (€433.5 million). Of the other 10 teams in Deloitte’s Money League, five are Premier League teams. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund owns #20, Newcastle United.
The English Premier League is the place to be if your goal is to make a splash in the football world.
That is why the bidding war for Manchester United PLC (NYSE: MANU) is such a big deal. Of the two remaining bidders for the team, U.K. chemicals billionaire Jim Ratcliffe is worth about $16.4 billion. His competition is Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad J.J. Al Thani, a member of the Qatar royal family, with the country’s $450 billion sovereign wealth fund to draw from. The fund already owns Paris Saint-Germain, the fifth most valuable football club in the world, with revenue of €654.2 million.
The U.S.-based Glazer family, which bought a controlling stake in the Manchester team for $790 million in 2005, first said it was interested in selling the club last November. The family owns about 4.4% of the Class A stock and 100% of the Class B stock. Each share of Class B stock has 10 times the voting power of a Class A share, giving the family about 67% of the voting power. The minority shareholders have no say in the sale of the team but do have the right to claim that the sales price was too low.
Ratcliffe is seeking only the Glazer family’s controlling stake in the club, while Al Thani has offered around $6 billion to buy out all the investors. Because the Glazer family is divided over the sale and a couple would remain as minority shareholders, Ratcliffe’s reported offer of around £6 billion ($7.85 billion) may win the day. If the Dallas Cowboys were put up for sale, the team might command a price of around $9 billion.
In the eight months since the Glazers first indicated that they were interested in selling the team, the expected purchase price has increased by about 33% to 50%. Man U’s shares jumped from around $13 to more than $27 by mid-February and currently trade at under $24.
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