By Paul Nicholson
May 23 – Manchester United is the most valuable club in Europe at €3.255 billion, an increase of 5% on last year. They are followed by Real Madrid who dropped in value by 2% and dipped below the €3 billion mark to €2.92 billion, and Barcelona at €2.735 billion.
May 23 – AC Milan look to have lost their battle to stay within UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations and have been referred to the Adjudicatory Chamber of the UEFA Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) by its investigatory chamber.
May 22 – The winner of Saturday’s Champions League final, the most prestigious club competition in Europe, will walk away with €15.5 million in prize money. The winner of the EFL Championship play-off for the Premier League – that takes place earlier in the afternoon between Aston Villa and Fulham – will win the biggest cash prize in world football with a whopping revenue of boost of at least £160 million over three seasons, rising to more than £280 million if they avoid relegation in their first season in the Premier League.
By David Owen
May 20 – Unlike, say, FIFA, FEMS is not an acronym that many football fans will be familiar with. But it is a term that more switched-on supporters may soon come to recognise as global investment continues to flood into the game.
By Paul Nicholson
May 18 – English Football League club Blackpool who had a brief and colourful season in the Premier League in 2010-11 but have since dropped to third tier League 1, could have new owners in the shape of a Singaporean consortium – vSport – that has Wesley Sneijder on it board.
May18 – On the eve of their record-equalling 20th FA Cup final appearance, Manchester United have reported third quarter revenue up 8% on the same period last year to £137.5 million, putting them on course for a year end revenue figure of £578 – 585 million.
May 17 – US investment fund PEAK6, a minority owner of Serie A’s Roma that also holds a 25% stake in Premier League Bournemouth, is taking aim at another of Europe’s Big 5 leagues having entered into exclusive takeover talks with French Ligue 1 club Saint-Etienne.
By Paul Nicholson
May 15 – It has been a quiet week so far in terms of news regarding FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s frantic lobbying to get backers for his $25 billion sell off plan for new FIFA endorsed Club World Cup and Nations League competitions. But he has received support from one area.
By David Owen
May 14 – The Football Association is budgeting £16 million of capital expenditure on Wembley – the world famous stadium which might soon be sold to Shahid Khan, owner of Fulham and the Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League (NFL) – in 2018.
May 10 – With the summer transfer window merry-go-round already starting its first revolutions, the CIES Football Observatory has produced a report on the average transfer values of Big 5 league squads.
By David Owen
May 8 – Sunderland, condemned to play next season in the third tier of English football after consecutive relegations, managed to trim their losses in their last year as a Premier League club.
May 2 – In a move that seems likely to fuel increasingly fraught relations between FIFA and UEFA, Europe’s leading federations have reportedly been offered up to $75 million every two years under plans by Gianni Infantino for a new global league, part of his ambitious proposed $25 billion overhaul of world football.
“What will be the future of Wembley Stadium?” This might have been a headline last week, as news emerged of a possible deal to sell Europe’s best jumbo-sized football venue to Shahid Khan, owner of tier-two Fulham and the Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League (NFL).
By Paul Nicholson
April 30 – Ellis Short (pictured), US billionaire of former Premier League club Sunderland, is selling up and getting out of English football after a ten-year ownership spell that has seem him lose £250 million.
April 27 – In a move that has split public opinion across the nation, the most iconic venue in English football, the national stadium at Wembley, could be sold within weeks following a multi-millionaire pound bid by US billionaire Shahid Khan.