Which are the biggest Premier League Clubs?
An insight into the top five English football clubs in terms of revenue and global fanbase, and their vision to build on their success.
5. Chelsea
The west London club underwent a transformation before the 2019–20 season with a commitment to sign the best young homegrown players who, it is hoped, will learn and grow under the new manager and club legend Frank Lampard. After winning the Europa League in May 2019, Chelsea reached the round of 16 in the Champions League last season but did not secure their 2020–21 berth for Europe’s biggest inter-club tournament until the final match of the following season after an inconsistent Premier League run.
Chelsea has an average league attendance in excess of 40,000 at what remains a somewhat cramped Stamford Bridge and performs very well on social media with 14.6m Twitter followers.
4. Tottenham
When Deloitte published its annual Football Money League in January 2020, it was a significant moment for Tottenham Hotspur. For the first time since the mid1990s, they had become the biggest club in London, surpassing both Arsenal and Chelsea. Broadcast revenue growth of £43.2m (up by 22%) was driven by the club’s unexpected progression to the Champions League Final.
Major commercial partners now include AIA and Nike while it also has deals with partners in the automotive, cryptocurrency, and accommodation industries.
The club’s recent growth is expected to continue after enjoying its first full season in its new stadium though 2019–2020 proved disappointing on the pitch. The club went with the expensive but fading genius of manager Jose Mourinho, and the move backfired.
A meager return of 59 points in the Premier League means there’s no Champions League to look forward to in 2020–21.
3. Liverpool
After going so close in 2018–19, last season Liverpool finally ended a 30-year wait for a top-flight title and the first since the arrival of the Premier League.
They secured the honors a record seven games before the end of the season and, retaining all their best players, will have an excellent chance of a repeat in 2021. Liverpool’s ongoing success — in July 2020 they were officially champions of England, Europe and the world — is winning new fans around the world and they are aggressively seeking to monetize their brand with Nike signed up as a lucrative kit sponsor.
On social media, Liverpool’s YouTube channel is closing on five million subscribers with some beautifully edited films, many of which feature the natural charisma and charm of German manager Jurgen Klopp, already a revered figure for the red half of Merseyside.
2. Manchester City
The most important aspect of Manchester City’s 2019–20 season came off the field when, on 13 July, The Court of Arbitration for Sport surprisingly cleared the club of “disguising equity funds as sponsorship contributions”.
This meant the club was able to escape a costly UEFA-imposed two-year ban from European competitions following what it ruled to be “serious breaches” of Financial Fair Play regulations between 2012 and 2016.
In addition, City’s fine was cut from 30m euros (£26.9m) to 10m euros. The CAS ruling repaired City’s crumbling reputation and put a spring in the step of club personnel at a time when it had never seriously threatened to fend off Liverpool in an uncharacteristically weak defense of their Premier League title. After reports emerged in 2018 that Pep Guardiola’s club was considering increasing capacity, the latest figures show they frequently struggle to fill the 55,000 seats available for each home game, and the club’s matchday revenue figures are only the 11th best in Europe.
- Manchester United
Manchester United remains the biggest club in Britain and the third biggest in Europe, behind the Spanish behemoths Barcelona and Real Madrid.
In the first full season of Ole-Gunnar Solskjaer’s managerial tenure, the main goal was to secure a return to the Champions League. And it took a hair-raising last-day-of-the-season win at Leicester to confirm their spot in the big time.
Club-controlled matchday and commercial revenue streams remain strong — the club has no problem at all filling its 75,000-seater stadium — and this shows the immense value of growing its fan base through the Sir Alex Ferguson-inspired years of plenty at Old Trafford. However, in January Deloitte felt United was in a “precarious position” in Money League terms with predicted revenue likely to leave it at severe risk of losing its status as the Premier League’s highest revenue-generating club for the first time in Money League history.
Fascinatingly, at this stage, it is not yet known whether perennial rivals Liverpool or the cross-town menace of Manchester City are most likely to dethrone them.
The reality is United is again unlikely to win the Premier League in 2020–21 and Ferguson’s sign-off triumph of 2013 is beginning to seem a long time ago.
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