Two of the richest clubs in the world will battle it out at Old Trafford tomorrow night as the Champions League nears its pinnacle for the season.
Manchester United posted the highest revenues in the Premier League last season, the club’s £590million almost exactly £90million higher than nearest rival Manchester City and around £145million higher than Liverpool in third place.
Nevertheless, an enormous £63.4million exceptional tax charge for the year, a side effect of US President Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, dragged the club to an eventual loss for the year.
Subtracting this effect, the club’s pre-tax profit still more than halved year-on-year, from £56.5million to £26.1million, as the club ramped up its spending on signing players and wages in order to challenge for the title, with revenues only £9million higher.
Pawing through Barcelona’s mind-numbing 288-page annual report for 2017/18, it seems it would be easier to catch the wind in a net than provide a succinct summary of the club’s financial health in such terms.
A press release provided by the club last year proudly proclaims ‘Record income revenue in the club's history: 914 million euros.’
And indeed, several news outlets picked up on this headline figure, including Forbes, which stated the club were the first ever “to surpass $1billion in revenue.”
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This would place them well above United - a small but significant victory in a battle between two clubs vying for world supremacy.
Ignoring the conflation of currency in these stories, the figure appears misleading for several reasons, based on standard metrics.
For a start, Barcelona determined their ‘income revenue’ figure by adding on the profits derived from player sales.
Neymar’s world record transfer to Paris Saint-Germain naturally led the way in this regard, but the club’s €203.6million profit from transfer activities also included the benefit of selling Gerard Deulofeu to Watford and Javier Mascherano to Hebei China Fortune, among others.
By Barcelona’s metric, United’s revenues would have been closer to £610million, thanks mainly to the sale of Adnan Januzaj to Real Sociedad in 2017/18.
Put another way, it would be like Liverpool reporting revenues of around £570million, instead of £455million for last season, thanks largely to adding back the profit derived from the sale of Coutinho to Barcelona.
Subtracting this effect, Barcelona were still in rude financial health for the year.
But pinning down their revenues and profits still proves a challenge.
Barcelona reports total revenues of around €690million for 2017/18 – although more than €100million of this came from activities outside the men’s first team, including a substantial portion from the club museum.
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Income from the junior teams, basketball, handball, roller hockey and futsal, among others, also topped up revenues.
However, Barcelona’s accounts show, every single one of the club’s other sports teams and activities were loss making, and Barcelona depended on the first team to be in the black.
The men’s first team enjoyed a pre-tax profit of €133.3million, again almost entirely due to selling Neymar, which was reduced to a €20.1million pre-tax profit when all the losses from the other club activities are factored in.
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So while there’s less of a disparity between the two teams than a first glance would suggest, there’s a gulf in terms of club overheads.
Manchester United’s total wage bill for last season amounted to £296million, the highest in the Premier League.
But given the vast sums paid to the likes of Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez and Philippe Coutinho, Barcelona boast a wage bill of just under €412million – around £355million.
Still, not everything is as it first seems, and the two clubs appear far closer off-the-field than the Catalan side would have the general public believe.
