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Welcome to the Deloitte Football Money League 2007 (register to receive your report). This is the tenth year of the publication, profiling the largest clubs in the world’s most popular sport. The Deloitte Football Money League is the most contemporary and reliable analysis of clubs’ relative financial performance and is released less than nine months after the end of last season, as soon as all the clubs’ accounts are available to us.  For the purposes of this publication, we look at the best publicly available measure of ‘financial muscle’: turnover from day to day football business operations. 

• This year Real Madrid retains its place at the top of the Money League, the club’s second season at the top, while Barcelona move up four places to second. 
• Barcelona has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent seasons, doubling their revenue since 2002/03 (when they were placed 13th in the Money League). 
• Manchester United fall to fourth place this year after an indifferent 2005/06 on the pitch, but we expect them to bounce back strongly in next year’s table with the opening of a new stadium development.

To register for our free copy of the report, please click here 'Football Money league 2007'.

Read our related press release: Real Madrid stays at the top

Coverage in the news
BBC - Man Utd drops down wealth league
Guardian - United slip to fourth in rich list after Champions League failure
Daily Telegraph - Spanish top money league
Times - Why English elite should be right on the money

Our focus this year
In addition to our usual profiles of the top 20 clubs and their revenue sources we provide three additional articles this year.  We outline recent developments in the football broadcast market and some of the recently agreed deals and their implications for club revenues.  Perhaps as a result of these broadcasting deal announcements, and the broadly healthy state of the game, we have seen a wave of interest in football clubs from investors, and a number of takeover deals have been completed.  We profile this trend in a feature article.  Finally, we discuss Barcelona’s impressive increase in revenues, which has resulted in their reappearance in the Money League top two after an 8 year absence. 

The Deloitte Football Money League was compiled by Dan Jones, Rich Parkes, Austin Houlihan, Grant Ingles and Martyn Hawkins of the Sports Business Group at Deloitte. Our thanks go to all those who have assisted us, inside and outside the Deloitte international network.  We hope you enjoy this edition.

Previous Football Money League reports
Read our executive summary and register to review your free copy of last year's Football Money League 2006 report.
Read our executive summary and register to review your free copy of Football Money League 2005 report.