FC Barcelona Women’s Team Generate Highest Revenue In Deloitte Money League

Spanish champions, FC Barcelona Femení, are the leading women’s soccer team in Deloitte’s Money League, generating revenue of €7.7 million ($8.3 million) during the 2021/22 season. They finished ahead of Manchester United, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain.

Defending European champions going into the season, FC Barcelona retained their Spanish league title and won the Spanish Cup, Copa de la Reina, and Super Cup. They also reached another UEFA Women’s Champions League final, losing to Olympique Lyonnais, but also significantly drew two world-record crowds of over 90,000 when they played their quarter-final and semi-final matches at the club’s Camp Nou stadium. According to Deloitte, the club generated a significant proportion of its revenue from marketing and advertising.

Deloitte’s report was limited to the 20 men’s teams listed in the 26th edition of their Money League, their annual profile of the highest-revenue generating clubs in world soccer. This is the first year in which the report also analysed the revenue generated by the affiliated women’s teams of these clubs.

In 2023, 17 of those clubs had a women’s team playing in their country’s top tier of which 15 provided financial information to Deloitte. The women’s teams they assessed had an average revenue of €2.4 million ($2.6 million) during the fiscal year ending on 30 June 2022.

This includes revenue from matchday, broadcast and commercial sources attributed to the women’s team and associated activities and excluding any revenue generated by the men’s team. Delottie make it clear that “the women’s football revenue and other information is derived from information provided directly from individual clubs” admitting that they have not performed any verification work or audited any of the information for their publication.

Of the teams in the Barclays Women’s Super League, it is Manchester United, only founded in 2018 and who have yet to qualify for the lucrative UEFA Women’s Champions League, that lead the way, generating revenue of €6 million ($6.5 million), ahead of their cross-town rivals, Manchester City (€5.1 million/$5.5 million). They are followed by North London rivals, Arsenal (€2.2 million/$2.4 million) and Tottenham Hotspur (€2.1 million/$2.3 million), with champions in the last three seasons, Chelsea, surprisingly fifth with revenue of €1.8 million ($1.9 million).

Some of this revenue may have down to income from transfer fees, which Deloitte claims will be “an increasingly important strand of commercial strategies for the women’s game”. Statistics from FIFA on international transfers show that the number of moves which involved a fee has nearly doubled from 696 in 2018 to 1304 in 2021. Both Manchester clubs sold players over the summer for substantial transfer fees.

In total, seven of the 13 clubs in the Deloitte report stated they generated a profit on player sales from the women’s team. This, it is claimed, “will propel a virtuous cycle forward to creating commercial returns that can be reinvested into club infrastructure and players, further improving on-pitch performance and stimulating greater revenue-making opportunities.”

It is claimed that historically more successful clubs are able to extract greater amounts of revenue from commercial sources, and are also able to utilize large club stadia to attract greater crowds and drive interest.” They predict that with women’s soccer still in its development stage, “commercial sponsors are likely to be drawn to high-profile clubs initially”.

The report underlines the gulf at the moment between teams in the same league with Barcelona’s revenue dwarfing that of the previous Spanish champions, Atletico de Madrid who only brought in €0.1m ($108,000) in revenue last season. The dominant Women’s Super League teams are also far ahead of a club like Leicester City, who generated revenue of €0.4 million ($433,000) in the same period.

Deloitte also point out that female representation on club boards disclosed between October 2022 and January 2023, stood at only one in ten, significantly behind the 40% average of the United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 board positions. They argue that improving female board representation at clubs will benefit the women’s game as it brings diversity of thought and visible leadership which should be a key priority for European clubs in the future.