Football, from Manchester City to Milan: here are the marketing champions in Europe

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Sponsors, merchandising and other commercial revenues make clubs increasingly richer soccer Europeans. Even in an increasingly internationalized football industry, the process appears increasingly unbalanced in favor of the most important leagues and within the latter the top clubs.

This is what emerges from the latest study «The European Club Footballing Landscape» by Uefa who photographed the state of the economy of European football between 2022 and 2023, once the crisis caused by the pandemic is over.

As the report explains, “the growth of sponsors and commercial revenues has been uneven over the last decade, with the high concentration of this revenue stream among a dozen clubs with a ‘global profile’, regardless of the relevant league.” In general, sponsors and commercial revenues in 2022 (the last year for which homogeneous data is available) amounted to 6.8 billion, with an increase of 14% in revenues from main sponsors (1.9 billion) and 2% in agreements for the production of kits and merchandising (1.7 billion), which mitigated the 8% drop in revenues linked to minor sponsorships and other revenue items such as events and tours in museums and stadiums (3.2 billion in total) damaged by the closures due to the Covid. In any case, sponsorships and commercial revenues increased by 113% in 2022 compared to the pre-pandemic level reached in 2019.

THE CHAMPIONS OF MARKETING

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Ten-year increase

As for the leagues, between 2012 and 2021 the English Prime Minister recorded an increase in commercial revenues of approximately 900 million euros (equal to just over 10% per year), almost touching 1.8 billion, and then decreasing to 1.6 billion. In this period of time the teams of the top championship across the Channel have grossed a total of 13.3 billion (with an average per club exceeding 80 million per year). There Tedesca Bundesliga it accumulated a positive balance in the same period of 285 million, reaching a level of 1.1 billion, with an average per company of 61 million.

In third place in this ranking is placed Spanish League with a total increase of 386 million which pushed commercial revenues around 850 million for the season and an average per team of 43 million. This is followed by Serie A and Ligue 1 which, once more on the commercial side, obtained overall surpluses of around 270 million each.