English elite rake in record revenue

PARIS - England's 92 Premier League and Football League clubs recorded combined revenues in excess of $5.7 billion in the 2015-16 season, according to consultants Deloitte.

Top-flight clubs generated record revenues of $4.4 billion, a 9 percent increase, in the final year of the league's 2013-16 broadcast cycle, the firm said in its annual review of soccer finance.

Revenues will continue to rise in the 2017-18 season, the review forecast.

Salary costs rose 12 percent to $2.9 billion and the Premier League showed little sign of austerity, with its 20 clubs recording a third straight season of operating profits in excess of $800 million in the 2015-16 season.

Dan Jones, a partner in Deloitte's Sports Business Group, said top clubs did well out of European competition.

"In the 2015-16 season, the 'big six' clubs participated in the group stages of UEFA competitions and benefitted from improved UEFA broadcast-rights deals, which resulted in an increase in distributions to participating English clubs of around $140 million," he said.

Deloitte forecasts "total Premier League clubs' revenues to rise to over $5.9 billion in 2017-18."

Newly promoted Huddersfield Town will benefit from the windfall "with clubs standing to earn a revenue uplift of at least $210 million from promotion to the Premier League, rising to over $325 million if they survive one season."

The Premier League continues to boom after competition between Sky Sports and BT drove the overall value for domestic TV rights for the 2016-19 cycle to more than $6.1 billion over three seasons.

In other findings, the review said the European soccer market was worth nearly $27 billion in the 2016-17 season, a 13 percent increase from 2014-15, with the aggregate revenues of clubs in the 'big five' leagues topping $15 billion, a 12 percent increase.

Agence France-Presse