Chelsea’s squad at the end of the 2024 financial year was the most expensive ever assembled in Europe in terms of transfer fees, according to a report released by governing body UEFA.
The “European Club Finance and Investment Landscape” report said Chelsea spent 1.656 billion euros ($1.79 billion) on combined transfer costs.
That comfortably surpassed the value of Manchester United’s squad in 2023, which cost 1.42 billion euros to assemble, and the 1.33 billion euros spent by Real Madrid, which was the highest squad cost in 2020.
Chelsea have signed 41 players since Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital bought the club in 2022, but the west London club’s big-money transfers have not translated to significant on-field success, as Chelsea finished sixth in the Premier League last season and are currently fifth.
According to the report which analyses all of Europe’s top divisions, Real Madrid (1,073 million euros), Manchester City (854 million euros), Paris St Germain (808 million euros), Manchester United (771 million euros) and Bayern Munich (765 million euros) had the highest revenues in 2023.
The Premier League had nine teams among the top-20 earning clubs, with an average revenue of 357 million euros and approximate aggregate revenue of 7.15 billion euros.
Spain’s LaLiga was second with revenues of 3.7 billion euros, with Germany’s Bundesliga (3.6 billion euros), Italy’s Serie A (2.9 billion euros) and France’s Ligue 1 (2.4 billion euros) rounding out the top five.
The top 20 clubs have been relatively stable across the last decade, with all of the current top 20 featuring in the top 25 in 2014.
English clubs reported just over 7.1 billion euros of revenue in 2023, but the size of the top clubs meant the mean club revenue (357 million euros) is considerably higher than the median (10-11th) club revenue of 245 million euros.
“This ‘typical’ median English club revenue has 60% more revenue than the typical German club and three times the revenue of the typical club in Italy and Spain, principally due to the large TV revenue distributions enjoyed by all top division clubs in England,” the report said.
Europe’s 700-plus top-division clubs recorded aggregate revenue of 26.8 billion euros in 2023, with England’s 20 top-flight clubs reporting almost double the revenue (97% more) than either the second and third highest leagues in 2023, Spain and Germany.
England and Germany have by far the largest attendance figures, which is reflected in their median gate revenues of 29.1 million euros and 23.7 million euros, respectively.
Arsenal (153 million), Manchester United (129), Tottenham (123), and Liverpool (108) were among the eight European clubs that reported more than 100 million euros in gate revenue in 2023.
