"
Created by the poor, stolen by the rich
".
On the outskirts of the legendary Old Trafford stadium on Monday, as everywhere in Europe from Sunday evening, the supporters did not fail to express their opposition to the European Super League football project with a lot of banners.
This "semi-closed" league, which will host Manchester United in particular, but also its rival City, four other English clubs, three Italians and three Spaniards, is notably accused of playing the game of the richest, to the detriment of others.
And if these 12 teams alone weigh 40 successes in the Champions League, they indeed represent a considerable economic weight.
Read also: Why Paris SG remains (for now) away from the Super League project
At the beginning of January, the audit firm Deloitte had indeed unveiled the ranking of the clubs which had generated the most income during the 2019/2020 season, that is to say at the start of the health crisis.
Among the top 15 places, there are 11 of the founding clubs of the Super League.
Only the legendary AC Milan, more in difficulty at the sporting level for a good ten years, is missing.
Transfer market
At the top of this ranking are rival clubs Barcelona and Real Madrid, with annual revenues estimated at 715.1 million and 714.9 million euros respectively. They are followed to 4th, 5th and 6th places by English clubs Manchester United (580.4 million euros), Liverpool (558.6 million euros) and Manchester City (549.2 million euros) . In total, it is estimated that these 12 clubs alone accumulate 5.59 billion euros in revenue for the 2019/2020 season. By way of comparison, the total revenue received by Ligue 1 over the 2017/2018 season amounted to around 2.53 billion euros.
On the transfer market side, over the past 5 years the 12 secessionist clubs have been responsible for a third of the spending in the German, English, German, Italian, French and Spanish leagues, according to the Transfermarkt site.
Since 2016, they have also earned 2.9 billion euros from the sale of their players.
2 billion euros loss
Beyond turnover, in football, the notion of “wealth” is quite relative, given the level of indebtedness of certain clubs. For example, FC Barcelona, first on the list, is in debt to the tune of more than one billion euros. And the Super League should help to pay off some of these debts. Florentino Perez, president of the Super Liguer and Real Madrid, has indeed promised the victorious club a greater reward than that of the UEFA competition. "
Once the money is there, we are united and we distribute. Clubs receive an average of 130 million euros in income through UEFA for the Champions, with the Super League it would be 400 million euros. There would be a better distribution to save football in general which is going through a very serious situation
, ”he told Spanish television.