Real Madrid hits money milestone – and US-owned clubs are ...

Real Madrid is the first football club to generate €1 billion of revenue in a season, topping the Deloitte Football Money League for a second year in a row.

What’s more interesting are the teams beneath: four of the five English clubs in the top 10 have American owners. The fifth has a significant US minority shareholding.

It’s no wonder. US franchises are comfortably the world’s most valuable sports teams, which makes European football clubs a relative bargain. “It costs $2 billion to buy an NFL team,” says Theo Ajadi, assistant director of Deloitte’s sports group. “Americans see European sports as under-commercialised.”

More evidence: US owners now control more than half of Premier League clubs, while two decades ago it was just Man United.

Still, owning a football team is a risk. Profits are hard to come by and relegation can always spoil the party.