As they continue on their quest to lift the title for the second year in a row, it seems that there have also been other knock-on effects thanks to the success of the once Manchester underdogs, Man City, it appears that now Manchester United has also lost their most valuable financial Premier League Club crown and it has passed to the worst team possible for them, local rivals Manchester City as BonusBets.com reports.
A new study into football finance has made some shocking revelations that upend the perceived placement of the Premier League teams and now rank Manchester City at the top. Climbing by £385m the team is currently valued at £2.364bn which easily leaves them in the highest spot. Manchester United has taken a hit of £376m and now has a value of £2.087bn, but leaves the comfortably in second. The loss is thought to be lower profits and a higher wage bill. It is also interesting to note that the top six ranking clubs make up for nearly three-quarters of the total value of the whole league. The other four clubs in the top six are Spurs, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal which ironically are the six teams ranking first on the table, although not quite in that order.
The study used figures from 2017/2018, and while the numbers might change by the end of this season, the placings are not predicted to change all that much. Only the two Manchester clubs have a value over two billion; every other club comes below this. The next three clubs all saw a jump in value, it was just Arsenal that dropped, and this is down to the fact they were not in the Champions League that season. They have values of Spurs (£1.837bn), Liverpool (£1.615bn), Chelsea (£1.615bn) and Arsenal (£1.368bn). Which to be fair are still some pretty vast numbers. Interestingly it is Burnley that sits in seventh and have a value of £398m some considerable way behind the top six, but they were not to be the “most sensibly run club in the Premier League financially”. Overall looking at the cumulative value of all the clubs in the league there was a 1.6% fall which equates to £14.7bn.
Speaking about Manchester City the notes from the study state that the reason they are at the top is due to higher revenue and lower wages, a profit of £39m from selling players, and the fact that this then removed some of the highest earners from the wage bill. “The ownership model of Sheikh Mansour, which effectively means that the club is debt free, means that there are no loan interest costs and no dividends are paid to shareholders either,”
The study, which was carried out by the University of Liverpool’s Centre for Sports Business Group also notes that calculations were based on data with the factors of “Account revenue, profits, non-recurring costs, average profits on player sales over a three-year period, net assets, wage control and proportion of seats sold.”