Manchester United slides down football rich list

LONDON - Manchester United have dropped to third in Deloitte's annual league table of European football clubs by revenue, with Manchester City becoming the seventh English club in the top 20.

Manchester United: slides down football rich list
Manchester United: slides down football rich list

Real Madrid remains the richest club, growing their revenue by €35.6m to €401.4m in 2008/9. This is four times the amount earned by the 20th richest club, Newcastle United.

Real are the first team in any sport to record annual revenues north of €400m, and Deloitte believes football's top clubs have weathered the economic storms so far.

FC Barcelona, who won the Champions League last season, overtook Manchester United to claim second place.

United's revenues rose €2.2m to €327m, which was more than three times the amount of their local rivals Manchester City, who are placed nineteenth.

Dan Jones, partner in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, said: "United slip to third and, like other English clubs, were impacted by the continuing depreciation of the Pound Sterling against the Euro.

"The scale of this is shown by the fact that if exchange rates remained at their June 2007 level, United would be top of the Money League table."

Below United and Bayern Munich, Arsenal leapfrogged Chelsea to become the second highest earning English club, with €263m, as their west London rivals suffered a €26.6m drop in revenues to €242.3m.

Liverpool rose one place to seventh, but Tottenham Hotspur dropped one to fifteenth and Newcastle United dropped three to twentieth.

Newcastle, who were relegated from the Premier League last season, suffered a severe drop in revenues from €125.6m to €101m, but still generated the tenth highest matchday revenues out of the top 20 clubs.

Manchester City, acquired by the Abu Dhabi United Group in 2008, is likely to see a "step change" in revenue due to a shirt sponsorship deal with Etihad and a kit deal with Umbro.

Its revenue in 2008/9 came in at €102.2m, up €4.7m from the year before, helping it break into the top 20.