Football is regarded as the King of sport. People enjoy football for many reasons, one of which is that football leagues are so entertaining, thrilling, even chaotic, and what’s more important: they make us feel alive. But the most lucrative football leagues are a profitable industry for sports executives, according to Vietnamese Casino Online. Here are the top five most valuable football leagues in the world.
English Premier League
When it comes to professional football leagues, the English Premier League is the world’s most valuable football league by far. The Premier League’s combined revenues in the last season amounted to around £5.7 billion, making it become the third-valuable sports league in the world just after the National Football League and the Major League Baseball.
What’s more? The total sum of the English Premier League’s match-day, broadcast, and commercial revenue even outweighed the combined revenue of Brazil’s Campeonato Brasileiro, Major League Soccer, France’s Ligue 1, Chinese Super League, and Japan’s J1 League, by almost a billion Euros.
Spanish La Liga
There’s no need to doubt that the world’s best football players in the most recent years have plied their trade in Spain. However, the difference in the value between the Spanish La Liga and the English Premier League is the money that they receive from broadcasters.
Being home to Real Madrid and Barcelona, two of the best-performing clubs in the history of football, the Spanish La Liga knows how to turn a profit. In addition to the vast empires of these two clubs as well as the ticket sales, the lucrative sponsorship deals from massive companies such as Puma, Budweiser, Microsoft, Santander, and EA, all together helped the league earned hundreds of millions last season.
Germany’s Bundesliga
With around £3.6 billion in revenues last season, Germany’s Bundesliga comes third in the list. The league has seen its international prominence with the following growing exponentially in recent years.
They have two big clubs, including Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, who will look to move up in terms of value in the near future. Particularly, thanks to a brand value estimated at around £1.2 billion, Bayern Munich is the big moneymaker. In addition, other Bundesliga teams such as Borussia Dortmund, VfB Stuttgart, Hamburger SV, and Werder Bremen, have developed global followings and have seen their individual revenues rise notably recently.
Italy’s Serie A
Italy’s Serie A lies in fourth place in the list thanks to its undergoing a rejuvenation of sorts after its decline in the past decade. From the 1980s to the early 2000s, the world’s best football players were playing in Italy and they have turned the tide in certain respects, particularly with Cristiano Ronaldo in recent years.
It is another European league with a formidable bank balance thanks to an annual sponsorship deal worth £40 million with the Italian telecoms giant TIM. Having star squads like AC Milan, Juventus, and Internazionale, arguably three of the most iconic clubs in the world, the Serie A drew in around £1.85 billion in revenue last year.
French Ligue 1
Perhaps, French Ligue 1 is not considered the most competitive league in Europe. There is no doubt that France’s top domestic league has hurt its image among the general public. However, the home country of Ligue 1 is known to churn out many great football talents on a regular basis, with their youth development programs being some of the best in the world.
In general, with revenue of around £1.4 billion last season, French Ligue 1 is still the fifth most valuable football league in the world. Of course, the league’s richest club by far is Paris St Germain, which is currently valued at around £900 million. Although Ligue 1’s revenues may not be as large as several other major leagues in Europe, their finances may be the most sound. According to the annual Deloitte Football Money League, the French Ligue 1 clubs have the strongest finances and largest surpluses out of all other countries around the world.
Portuguese Primeira Liga
The Portuguese Primeira Liga, also known as Liga NOS, is the top football league of Portugal and commonly considered one of the best in Europe. With many Primeira Liga sides buying young talented South Americans in truck loads, they can be great threats in the UEFA Champions League.
The league often finds several clubs doing reasonably well in European competition, such as FC Porto and Benfica – two biggest teams in the league. There is a fun fact that FC Porto have up to 11 Brazilian players in their squad. So, there is joke that it’d better change its name to Porto Brazil. The Primeira Liga is home to several great football talents like Falcao, Nicolas Gaitan, and Hulk – the league’s latest players who are rumored to be of interest to Europe’s elite.
According to Transfermarkt, the Portuguese Primeira Liga has 18 teams with a total market value of players of 949 million euros, 641 million of which are on the top three teams, including Benfica, Porto, and Sporting. That leaves just 308 million among the other 15 teams with an average value of around 20.5 million. So, the top three teams occupy around 2/3rds of the overall value of the league. In terms of the median team value in the Liga NOS, it is around 17 million euros. In general, Portugal’s top league has large revenues, high TV money, as well as a pretty high level of competition in the challenging continental system of UEFA. All that said, the league deserved to be ranked sixth in this list.
As you can see, the world’s most valuable football leagues right now are all European ones. However, that may be not the case for the upcoming decade since other leagues are going on to catch up.