Uefa report lays bare financial dominance of English football over rest of Europe

The ‘club licencing benchmarking report’, released last weekend, shows in new detail how TV revenue has put the Premier League on another level from its European rivals

The financial dominance of English football over the rest of Europe has been laid bare by a new Uefa report.

The ‘club licencing benchmarking report’, released last weekend, shows in new detail how TV revenue has put the Premier League on another level from its European rivals, even after the struggles of the pound against the Euro since the Brexit vote in 2016.

The report, comparing clubs and leagues across the 2017 financial year, painted an optimistic picture of the finances of clubs in Europe’s biggest leagues, even though there is growing inequality between the rich and poor leagues.

Uefa’s report shows that the net debt of European clubs has declined significantly, while the net equity of European clubs has quadrupled in four years, from €1.9billion in 2008 to €7.7bn in 2018.

But more than half of that increase in equity - €3.7bn - is down to English clubs, the strongest example of the expanding financial muscle of the English teams.

That is testament to the growing financial power of the Premier League. On almost every economic indicator, English football was shown to be moving far away from its European counterparts. In terms of the total value of players on the balance sheets of clubs, the Premier League hits a total of €2.692bn (an average of €135m per club) , almost €1bn ahead of Serie A, and over €1.4bn ahead of La Liga.

In terms of total club assets, Uefa’s report found that English clubs own a remarkable 30% of all European club assets. Their total of €9.782bn is more than double the next league, with the Spanish league possessing €4.807bn.

English clubs are richer than ever, and they are more profitable too. The top 20 European clubs by net profit contains 11 English clubs. Referring to an older version of this report, it states that in the 2010 financial year, only four Premier League clubs were profitable. Seven years on, 18 of the 20 were.

Uefa like to put this change down to Financial Fair Play and the Premier League’s short term cost control measures, although the continued growth of TV revenues into the league is as much of the story. Broadcast revenue brought in €2.91bn to English football in 2017, 54% of the Premier League’s revenue, the next biggest league was Spain with €1.25bn.

A list of the top European clubs by TV revenue shows that only Barcelona, Juventus and Real Madrid brought in more than the bottom-ranking Premier League club. For the first time since this list was produced, an English club, Chelsea, topped the European TV revenue ranking.