Spain’s Real Madrid retained the title of the world’s richest soccer club in the past year, thanks to sponsorship and TV deals robust enough to endure a season without a major trophy, a study showed yesterday.
Real’s revenue of 519 million euros (US$704 million) put the club ahead of domestic rivals Barcelona for the past fiscal year, with European champions Bayern Munich edging into third ahead of Manchester United in the annual Football Money League compiled by accountants Deloitte.
Qatari-owned Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) underlined their emergence as a soccer power with an 81 percent rise in revenue to almost 400 million euros to claim fifth spot.
Revenue for the top 20 teams rose by 8 percent to 5.4 billion euros, Deloitte said, underlining the appeal of soccer to broadcasters and sponsors targeting mass consumer markets.
Real Madrid and Barcelona are two of the most consistently successful teams in Europe, fielding top players such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi respectively.
The two clubs enjoy the financial advantage of being able to negotiate their own TV deals, rather than pooling TV-rights income as teams in other major leagues have to do.
Yet Spain’s TV-rights model and the country’s economic crisis have left many of its smaller clubs facing a struggle to survive and demanding a bigger share of cash from broadcasters.
Barcelona vice president Carles Vilarrubi said this week that only the bigger teams could deliver the kind of viewing figures TV companies demand.
“It’s a question of balance because people want to watch Barca and Real Madrid and PSG and Bayern Munich games,” Vilarrubi said. “We should equalize a little bit the income of the clubs, but at the same time we should consider that the TV channels need to offer the games that people want to watch.”
Manchester United won the English Premier League for a record 20th time last year, but the team has struggled on the pitch this season and risks missing out on qualification for the lucrative UEFA Champions League.
Despite their poor form, United are set for a big rise in turnover as benefits roll in from improved English Premier League TV contracts and new sponsorship deals. The club is forecasting revenue for the current season of between £420 million (US$692 million) and £430 million, up from £363 million last season.
PSG have used their new-found riches to sign players such as Sweden international Zlatan Ibrahimovic and in May last year won the French league for the first time since 1994.
“PSG are the fastest climber in this year’s Money League, claiming the highest-ever position for a French club,” Houlihan said.
The largest part of PSG’s income last season came from commercial deals that yielded 255 million euros.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier