Why football clubs never make money

The audience is the largest in sport and it is not close. The Premier League is broadcast to over 200 countries and watched by more than 3 billion people — level with the World Cup, except it happens every year rather than every four. The Super Bowl peaks around 100 million.

Manchester United is the best-case demonstration of the model, and it has been run for investors rather than fans for over a decade — paying owners tens of millions in dividends while the team underperformed. Critics call it a commercial club rather than a football club, which is why it shows the ceiling so clearly.

It worked on the top line: revenue tripled from £280M in 2009 to nearly £600M by 2022.

Matchday income has quietly stopped mattering. Tickets, food and drink were 41% of revenue in 2009 and are now under 20% — never exceeding £114M or falling below £90M in a year, despite Old Trafford being England's second-largest stadium at 70,000 seats. There is a hard ceiling on how many people you can physically sell to.

Broadcast money doubled from £100M to £250M, holding around 34% of revenue — and it is negotiated by the league, not the club. Sky paid £2.3 billion in 2013 for 116 of 380 games, then £3.75 billion in 2021 for 128. Every club's share is guaranteed by simply not being relegated.

Commercial revenue is where United genuinely outperformed everyone, quadrupling from £65M to £260M and going from 24% to 44% of revenue. Sponsors pay to be associated with the club regardless of industry — airlines, drinks, cars, watches.

The jersey alone shows the escalation: Vodafone at £8M a year, then AIG at £14M, then Aon at £90M over four years, then General Motors at $70M in year one rising 2.1% annually for eight, and now TeamViewer at £235M over five years. United popularized selling the sleeve separately in 2009.

Supplier deals escalated the same way. When Arsenal signed a record £150M over five years with Puma, United answered months later with £750M over ten years from Adidas — and the club's real skill is manufacturing the bidding war that produces those numbers.

The same logo space is sold more than once. Sponsors are segmented by geography, so Saudi Telecom, Smirnoff, Honda and Telekom Malaysia could appear in Eastern markets while different brands ran in the West. United went from 12 global sponsors in 2009 to over 20 plus dozens of regional deals by 2022, in categories as unlikely as bathroom fixtures and crackers.

Commercial money is the good revenue precisely because it ignores results. Deals are large, guaranteed, locked in for years, and carry almost no variable cost once signed — unlike matchday or broadcast income, which move with performance.

The proof is what happened when the team collapsed. United finished outside the top four five times in ten years. In 2013 it finished 7th, its worst ever — and commercial revenue rose from £120M to £152M. Across the 5th and 6th place seasons of 2015 and 2016 it leapt from £195M to £268M on the Adidas deal. TeamViewer's stock has since crashed and it cannot exit.

And none of it covers the wages. Player and staff salaries are the largest expense at every club, and while commercial revenue grew 12% a year, salaries grew in line and from a higher base — so the Adidas deal, the TeamViewer deal and a £24M-a-year training kit sponsor together still do not pay the squad.

Barcelona ran the same playbook without the discipline. Chasing marquee signings to satisfy a fanbase produced bloated contracts, above-market salaries and enormous transfer fees; player compensation went from €400M in 2014 to nearly €700M by 2021, consuming 80 to 90% of all revenue for eight consecutive seasons and forcing the club into debt to operate.

So it sold the future. Barcelona liquidated 25 years of broadcast rights and other businesses for cash, then became the first club to pass €1 billion in sales in 2021 — a figure largely produced by that liquidation rather than by the business working.

The fanbase is not the constraint, which is the uncomfortable part. At a Champions League match, VIP seats went for €1,950, home jerseys had been sold out for months at €90-120, and the ground was full at €100-plus a seat — and Barcelona still lost 3-0 to Bayern Munich with zero shots on goal. There is no plausible number of €25 scarves that covers half a billion in wages.

Juventus shows where the pressure goes. It lost €250 million in 2021, the largest loss in the history of Italian football, and is under criminal investigation for false accounting — prosecutors allege under-the-table payments to suppress reported salaries and inflated valuations on player sales. Manchester United does not face that particular temptation because it does not book player sales as revenue.