World’s richest football clubs 2016 revealed: Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal and Chelsea lead way as Premier League tightens its stranglehold on Deloitte’s Football Money League
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All 20 English Premier League clubs could feature among the world’s 30 richest football teams once bumper new television contracts worth £8bn kick in next season.
Read more: Man Utd poised to replace Real Madrid at top of rich list
That forecast, which underlines the financial superiority enjoyed by even modest English sides over all but the very biggest European outfits, is contained in Deloitte’s Football Money League 2016.
The annual ranking of clubs by revenue contains a record nine Premier League clubs in its top 20 and 17 in the top 30 – also an all-time high figure.
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Real Madrid, who earned €577m (£439m) in 2014-15, top the list for an 11th year in a row, with Manchester United third and Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool occupying positions six to nine.
Tottenham are 12th, Newcastle and Everton 17th and 18th respectively, and West Ham 20th. Southampton, Aston Villa, Leicester, Sunderland, Swansea, Stoke, Crystal Palace and West Brom are all in the top 30.
Read more: Arsenal overtake Chelsea to become London’s richest
“With over half of the top 30 already made up of Premier League clubs, and the staggering new Premier League domestic broadcast deal coming into effect in 2016-17, there is an outside chance that the Money League top 30 will feature all 20 Premier League clubs in two years’ time,” the report says.
England’s top-flight teams currently benefit from three-year TV contracts worth around £5.2bn, but a new cycle of deals estimated to be worth £8bn will boost their advantage further still.
Deloitte expects United’s new £75m-a-year Adidas kit deal to see them overtake Real and second-placed Barcelona in the 2017 list and become the world’s richest for the first time since 2005.