The Business of Soccer vs. The Business of Football
The world’s favorite sport may be beloved around the globe, but the value of football teams is off the charts — but at least the world’s best soccer players earn more than the top NFL players. A new report from Forbes clearly shows
According to a new report out from Forbes, the soccer is big business on the international front but pales in comparison the valuations given to American football clubs.
The #1 team with the highest valuation in the world is Spain’s Real Madrid with a revenue of $896 Million and an operating income of $112 Million. Their team value is $4.2 Billion. Plus, noteworthy is Real Madrid’s eight-year kit deal extension with Adidas through June 2028 worth a record $113 million a year, plus 20% of team merchandise sales.
Forbes’ also ranks the world’s
Although they are bitter rivals, they are closely aligned in the financial world and pay their top players the highest salaries. For the second year in a row, Messi takes the top spot in Forbe’s list of theWorld’s Highest-Paid Soccer Players, with earnings of $127 million. Ronaldo earned the #2 spot on that list with Neymar claiming #3.
Here is Forbes’ List of the Top 10 Most Valued Soccer Teams:
| Rank | Team | Team Valuation | Revenue | |
| #1 | Real Madrid | $4.239 B | $896 M | |
| #2 | Barcelona | $4.021 B | $824 M | |
| #3 | Manchester United | $3.808 B | $795 M | |
| #4 | Bayern Munich | $3.024 B | $751 M | |
| #5 | Manchester City | $2.688 B | $678 M | |
| #6 | Chelsea | $2.576 B | $597 M | |
| #7 | Arsenal | $2.268 B | $520 M | |
| #8 | Liverpool | $2.183 B | $613 M | |
| #9 | Tottenham Hotspur | $1.624 B | $511 M | |
| #10 | Juventus | $1.512 B | $480 M |
The #2 team is Barcelona with only a slightly lower valuation of $4.021 Billion. Even Borussia Dortmund valued at $896 Million and Schalke 04 valued at $683 Million according to Forbes is worth more than many American Major League Soccer (MLS) teams combined.
Now, let’s compare that to American Football.
The Dallas Cowboys top Forbes 22ndAnnual NFL Team Valuations, maintaining the title of the
The Cowboys remain the only NFL team to reach a value of $5 billion. The New England Patriots ($4.1 billion), New York Giants ($3.9), Los Angeles Rams ($3.8) and the San Francisco 49ers ($3.5) round out the NFL’s top five most valuable teams.
According to Forbes, the Cowboys have an astounding $950 million in revenue—the most of any U.S. sports team.
Here is Forbes’ List of the Most Valued Teams in the NFL:
| Rank | Team | Owner | Team Valuation | Revenue |
| #1 | Dallas Cowboys | Jerry Jones | $5.50 B | $950 M |
| #2 | New England Patriots | Robert Kraft | $4.10 B | $600 M |
| #3 | New York Giants | John Mara, Steve Tish | $3.90 B | $519 M |
| #4 | LA Rams | Stanley Kroenke | $3.80 B | $401 M |
| #5 | San Francisco 49ers | Denise York John York | $3.50 | $492 M |
The NFL has contracts with Comcast, CBS Corp., Walt Disney, Fox Corp. and AT&T averaging $7.2 billion a season. And football deserves to rake in the big bucks, attracting huge television audience.
According to the stats for the Sports Media Watch‘s Top 50 Sports Audiences of 2018, football is king with the NFL grabbing 40 out of the top 50 spots on the list for U.S. sports audiences in 2018.
In fact, the Eagles-Patriots Super Bowl game brought NBC over 103 million viewers.
If you removed all NFL games from this
The Alabama-Georgia college football national championship scored higher than soccer with a 15.6 rating and 28.44 million viewers on the ESPN family of networks.
In comparison, this year’s Gold Cup final with Mexico vs. USA attracted 8.54 million viewers.
While the FIFA Women’s World Cup had a
But the value of soccer as a sport on TV is increasing. In 2015, the United States/Japan FIFA Women’s World Cup final drew a 12.9 final rating on Fox and a combined Fox/Telemundo viewership of 26 million viewers and the average 30-second commercial spot was reportedly sold for only $40,000.
Unfortunately, the world’s favorite sport still has a long way to go to compete for eyeballs and sponsorship dollars in the USA, but the horizon is brighter than the past. At least soccer players top the Forbes list of the World’s Highest-Paid Athletes.
