Are Real Madrid the world’s top club? That’s a contested title, but they are formidable on and off the pitch. Here are a few salient financial considerations. Scour any list of the world’s richest football clubs and you’ll find Real Madrid at its business end. In 14 of the past 20 years, Madrid have registered football’s biggest revenues. Revenue doesn’t equal rich, but Madrid’s bottom line has been healthy for a while, too. Financials for the 2024-25 season, released last month, confirmed another profitable year in the Spanish capital; Madrid have now booked a surplus for 23 consecutive years, a streak that even withstood the Covid-19 pandemic. To the world’s highest turnover and long-run profitability, add a lack of debt. Madrid and their club president Florentino Perez have prided themselves on the latter, with low net debt regularly cited whenever their latest figures are announced. Madrid’s commercial profile is huge, but it’s far from their only growth...
The authoritative Swiss Ramble reviews the 2024/25 accounts of Bristol City. What fokllows is an extract of some of his main points. Despite the improvement on the pitch, Bristol City’s pre-tax loss significantly increased from £3.3m to £18.6m, mainly due to a much lower profit from player sales, which dropped from £21.7m to £6.0m. This was exacerbated by a reduction in revenue, which fell £2.5m (6%) from (restated) £42.8m to £40.3m, though operating expenses were cut £2.5m (4%) from £65.4m to £62.9m and net interest payable decreased £0.4m (16%) to £2.3m. Bristol City’s £40.3m revenue is actually the highest in the Championship – if you exclude clubs that benefit from parachute payments. With the exception of Leeds United, no club without parachute payments has generated more annual revenue in the history of the Championship than Bristol City. City chief executive Tom Rawcliffe observed, “Although the loss is evidently larger than last year, it is ...