How the Premier League revenue compares to other leagues: LaLiga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1
The English top flight has, once again, increased its income across the 2020-21 season as the gap between the other major leagues grows.
The Premier League continues to be an unstoppable financial beast. Accounting guru Deloitte has presented its annual report on the economic health of football, analyzing what they call ‘the new dawn’ of said industry after the huge impact of covid-19. According to this study, European football grew by 10% in revenue in the 2020-21 season, reaching €27.6 billion, of which €15.6 billion belonged to the five major leagues on the continent.
No let up in Premier League spending power
Among those, the English Premier League not only maintains its place as leader, but also widens the gap, recording €5,492 million in revenue. Behind that sits the German Bundesliga with €3,005M and Spain’s LaLiga, third, with €2,948M, then Italy’s Serie A (€2,527M) and France’s Ligue 1 (€1,614M) next in the ranking. Despite the fact that the five major leagues have grown by 3% compared to the 2019-20 season, their income is still significantly lower than that observed before the pandemic (€17,000 million).
The report highlights that “European football has always been polarized, but it has been accentuated by covid.” and stated that the Premier League is ahead of its competition more than ever.” In addition, the consultancy predicts that English clubs will exceed six billion in revenue for the season that has just started thanks to new TV and sponsorship deals.
This difference in income is also translated when looking at the salary market, with the Premier League having a wage bill of €3,902M, almost double that of Germany (€1,952M).
Spain, despite being the third in income in the 2020-21 season, is the second with the highest spending capacity on salaries (€2,186M), followed by Italy (€2,082M). France, even with the likes of Messi, Neymar and Mbappé pulling in huge sums from PSG, is the league with the least (€1,586M).
Another conclusion from the report surrounds transfer payments.
“With the Premier League accounting for almost 50% of spending across Europe’s ‘big five’ leagues in the January 2022 transfer window, it’s perhaps unsurprising that its clubs made up half (50%) of the Money League in the previous season (2020/21), the joint highest proportion (with the 2016/17 season) in DFML history.”
You can check out this and much more from the Deloitte website.