Chelsea’s squad at the end of the 2024 financial year was the most expensive ever assembled in Europe in terms of transfer fees, a report released by governing body UEFA said.
The European Club Finance and Investment Landscape report said that Chelsea spent 1.656 billion euros (US$1.79 billion) on combined transfer costs.
That comfortably surpassed the value of Manchester United’s squad in 2023, which cost 1.42 billion euros to assemble, and the 1.33 billion euros spent by Real Madrid, which was the highest squad cost in 2020.
Photo: Reuters
Chelsea have signed 41 players since Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital bought the club in 2022, but the west London club’s big-money transfers have not translated to significant on-field success, as Chelsea finished sixth in the Premier League last season and are currently fifth.
Real Madrid (1,073 million euros), Manchester City (854 million euros), Paris Saint-Germain (808 million euros), Manchester United (771 million euros) and Bayern Munich (765 million euros) had the highest revenues in 2023, the report said.
English clubs reported just over 7.1 billion euros of revenue in 2023, but the size of the top clubs meant the mean club revenue (357 million euros) was considerably higher than the median (10th to 11th) club revenue of 245 million euros.
“This ‘typical’ median English club revenue has 60 percent more revenue than the typical German club, and three times the revenue of the typical club in Italy and Spain, principally due to the large TV revenue distributions enjoyed by all top division clubs in England,” the report said.
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