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Ramon Vega exclusive: Bournemouth bigger than Milan and Juve? It won't be long...
Yahoo's Sport Business Correspondent Ramon Vega charts the incredible progress of Premier League clubs up the money ladder
This week saw the release of Deloitte’s annual Football Money League and once again, for the eleventh year in a row, it was topped by Real Madrid.
They were followed in second place by their El Clasico rivals Barcelona.
However, aside from the Spanish presence at the summit, the most salient point to come out of it was the relentless and seemingly inexorable rise of Premier League teams.
Nine out of the top 20 clubs were English, with Manchester United highest placed in third with a 2014/15 revenue of £395.2 million.
They were followed by PSG and Bayern Munich before the English cavalry charge of Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool dominated the latter rungs of the top 10.
If you open up the table even further to include the top 30 richest clubs, the pattern continues with over half of the top 30 clubs residing in the Premier League.
Interestingly, West Ham are back in the top 20 after a decade-long absence, having posted a £5.9 million rise in revenue.
As I mentioned last week, the move to their new stadium should help consolidate their position in the coming years.
On that stadium issue, a key stat that jumps out is the amount of money generated on a match-day.
Arsenal are top of this particular ‘league within a league’, having made more than £100 million during the season.
That puts them narrowly ahead of both Barcelona and Real Madrid, who have much larger stadia, and is testament to the fantastic work done on the commercial and corporate side by Arsenal since they left Highbury.
This propelled the Gunners above their city rivals Chelsea and made them London’s richest club for the first time in six years.
Again, if ever there was an incentive for the likes of Chelsea and Tottenham, who rose one place to twelfth overall, to speed up their new stadium plans then this is it.
No wonder Arsene Wenger is reluctant to leave the Emirates! If Arsenal can marry the off-pitch results with more Premier League trophies- and ideally a Champions League win too – they have the makings of a hugely successful and enduring formula.
As for Manchester United, all eyes will be on how strongly they finish the season as the table shows once again that they are one of the true football finance behemoths.
With their lucrative global appeal and some strong new commercial partnerships formed, if they can get things right again on the pitch they should be able to sneak ahead of Real Madrid and Barcelona next year.
Once the latest Premier League TV deal money kicks in, I’d expect to see the position of the English clubs in the business table strengthened further.
That’s the easy part- now the top teams need to replicate that kind of performance in the latter stages of the Champions League and bring home the bounty that their fans covet most!
Ramon Vega is a versatile high-flying executive with a comprehensive track record of driving commercial success in finance, property and football with national, international and World Cup experience as captain of the Swiss National Team in 1994. Proven experience in managing $billion funds in the asset management industry as well as a turnaround specialist who combines financial and business acumen, Ramon has a flair for inspiring others to exceed their own expectations. Follow him on Twitter here @Ramon_Vega71 (http://frompitchtoboardroom.com)
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