Background

Welcome to the 13th edition of the Deloitte Football Money League (http://tinyurl.com/y9zrv5w), in which we profile the highest earning clubs in the world's most popular sport (register to download your report). Coming nine months after the end of the 2008/09 season, it is the most contemporary and reliable analysis of clubs' relative financial performance. We compare clubs using revenue from day to day football operations which we believe is the best publicly available financial comparison.

Key Findings

Congratulations to Real Madrid who top the Money League for the fifth consecutive year and become the first team in any sport to record revenues in excess of €400m. FC Barcelona's exceptional season on the pitch, winning the domestic double and the UEFA Champions League, helped drive the largest year on year absolute revenue growth of any Money League club with a €57m increase to €366m resulting in the club returning to second place in the list and completing a Spanish one-two.

All of this year's top 20 clubs are from the 'big five' European leagues. The sustained depreciation of the Pound Sterling against the Euro continues to impair English clubs' positions in the list. However, England retains seven clubs in this year's top 20, the largest representation of any single country, with Germany contributing five clubs, Italy four, and France and Spain represented by two clubs.

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