The Covid-19 pandemic continues to inflict severe blows on the european football. The economic recovery seen in 2021 seems to have affected almost none of the main continental football clubs that triumphed in their respective leagues last year. Despite the resources that arrived for the victory and for the qualification for the Cups, 2021 has in fact ended with balance sheets in deep red for almost all the top teams in the standings. But as always, an exception appears in the panorama: Bayern Munich.
These are the main data contained in the report "The European Champions Report 2022" published by KPMG Football Benchmarks, which analyzed the economic trend of the second football season played in the Covid era. The study reviewed the accounts of the winning teams of the eight biggest European leagues in the 2020/21 season: Manchester City (England), Inter Milan (Italy), Lille (France), Bayern Munich (Germany), Atletico Madrid (Spain), Besiktas (Turkey), Ajax (Netherlands) and Sporting Lisbon (Portugal).
The results are merciless: “With total revenues recorded by most of the clubs still lower than the pre-Covid numbers, in a sector characterized by a predominantly rigid cost structure, most of the champions recorded significant losses during the year completed in May/June 2021”, reads the report.
But let's start from the only positive note: the Bavaria Monaco. The German club was the only one of those reviewed to end the season in profit, among other things for the 29th consecutive year: profits amounted to 1,8 million euros, a good result which nevertheless shows a sharp drop from 5,9 million the previous season. Revenues fell by 2%, to 597,5 million euros.
On the other hand, the turnover of the Manchester City (the only club not to have disclosed data on profits or losses), which closed the season with revenues of 664 million euros, a result that surpasses – thanks to the Champions League – the club's record from the last season before the pandemic ( equal to 548 million euros).
Total revenues also increasedInter, which in the 2020/2021 season stood at 347 million euros (+19%). However, the Nerazzurri recorded a net loss of €245,6m (the highest ever recorded by an Italian football club). “The growth in operating costs, the revenues linked to attendance at the stadium for matches and the low revenues from player trading weigh heavily”, explains Kpmg.
Let's move on to Spain, where theAtletico Madrid went from a net loss of 1,8 million euros in the 2019/2020 season to a loss of 111,7 million in the last season. “The main reason for such a severe decline was a notable decrease in profits from the sale of players compared to a year earlier, when the club had collected the money from the sales of Antoine Griezmann and Rodri.
And the other clubs? L'Ajax finished the season with losses of 8,1 million, the Lille and Sporting Lisbon they recorded a loss of 23,2 million and 33 million euros, respectively. 44,4 million net loss for the Besiktas.
“Although there are exceptions, the most common trend observed has been that operating revenues – hard hit by a near-total loss in box office receipts and albeit partially mitigated by stable or rising broadcast and commercial revenues – have failed to offset the generally high personnel costs and the decline in incomes connected to the sale of players' cards”, explains the report which then underlines how the data on revenue growth are mostly related to the revenue of TV rights collected late for postponed matches of the previous 2019/20 season due to Covid.
