By Paul Nicholson
June 14 – Big spending Paris St. Germain have passed UEFA’s financial fair play (FFP) investigation for 2015, 2016 and 2017 but the club remains under the microscope for 2018 and could be forced to raise to €60 million through player sales to meet the regulations to avoid further scrutiny.
June 12 – Manchester United are turning pre-season team-building into a money making art form, confirming they will play Bayern Munich as the sixth and final match of the team’s pre-season preparations for the 2018-19 campaign. Man Utd will also face AC Milan, Liverpool and Real Madrid in the US in July.
June 11 – The CIES Football Observatory has ranked teams participating in the Russia 2018 World Cup by their transfer values. Top of the table are France with a total squad value of €1.41 billion.
June 7 – The European football market in 2016/17 was worth a record €25.5 billion with the Big 5 leagues accounting for €14.7 billion.
June 7 – Neymar may hold the record as the most expensive transfer in football history, but he isn’t the most valuable player in the world. Tottenham’s Harry Kane holds that position, valued €3.7 million higher than the Brazilian money machine, according to a new ranking of the Top 100 players in Europe’s Big 5 leagues.
June 6 – UEFA will give a record €2.04 billion to clubs playing in the Champions League and Europa League next season, a more than €800 million increase on last season.
June 5 – Tony Xia (pictured), Aston Villa’s Chinese owner who bought the club from American Randy Lerner for £62 million in 2016, is looking for new funding for the club after failure to win the Championship play-off against Fulham that would have returned the club to the monied land of the Premier League.
June 5 – The financial crisis that has hit Yonghong Li’s ownership of AC Milan has seen the Chinese owner reportedly in secret emergency meetings in Italy attempting to refinance the club’s debt and potentially bring in new ownership partners.
June 1 – Roman Abramovich, Chelsea’s Russian billionaire owner, has decided to put on hold a new 60,000-seater stadium following delays over the renewal of his UK visa.
May 30 – The chief executive of the English Football Association says the potential sale of the national stadium at Wembley will not be a “betrayal” but makes sound economic sense.
May 25 – Leeds United owner Andrea Radrizzani has sold a minority stake in the club to 49ers Enterprises, an investment entity affiliated with the San Francisco 49ers NFL team.
By Paul Nicholson
May 24 – The top end of European football’s club financial pyramid is growing faster than Europe’s leading market-quoted businesses, according to KPMG global head of sports Andrea Sartori (pictured), speaking at the official unveiling of the third edition of the firm’s football club valuation report.
By Paul Nicholson
May 23 – Manchester United is the most valuable club in Europe at €3.255 billion, an increase of 5% on last year. They are followed by Real Madrid who dropped in value by 2% and dipped below the €3 billion mark to €2.92 billion, and Barcelona at €2.735 billion.
May 23 – AC Milan look to have lost their battle to stay within UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations and have been referred to the Adjudicatory Chamber of the UEFA Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) by its investigatory chamber.
May 22 – The winner of Saturday’s Champions League final, the most prestigious club competition in Europe, will walk away with €15.5 million in prize money. The winner of the EFL Championship play-off for the Premier League – that takes place earlier in the afternoon between Aston Villa and Fulham – will win the biggest cash prize in world football with a whopping revenue of boost of at least £160 million over three seasons, rising to more than £280 million if they avoid relegation in their first season in the Premier League.