Do Manchester United still make a profit?




Pochettino Solskjaer

Manchester United is reported as one of the richest football clubs in the world. In 2018, Manchester United was reported as been the richest club in the world by accounting firm Deloitte in conjunction with the Premier League.

Report by same accounting firm, Deloitte as at 24th January 2019, sees Manchester United as the 3rd riches club with its first position overtaken by European football club giants Real Madrid and Barcelona. The total estimated revenue value of the 20 richest football clubs is $9.42 billion in 2019 which is a 6% growth from 2018.

The report and ranking from Deloitte places Manchester United at the third place with a value of £666 million. The football club popularly called the ‘Red Devils’ still maintain their spot as the richest football club in England despite losing the top spot as the richest in the world in 2018. Manchester United makes huge revenue streams from its commercial deals with some of the biggest brands in the world. One such big contract is with sports giant Adidas. Adidas is the football club’s supplier of its playing, training kits while automobile giant, Chevrolet sponsors the club’s shirts playing shirts.

In 2018, Manchester United missed out of playing in the Champions League after finishing in the 6th place from previous premier league season. Despite missing out on this prestigious football competition and possible revenue stream for the club, Manchester United still recorded an impressive profit for the year ended. It is reported that Manchester United is the first football club in Britain to surpass the half a billion mark with an impressive profit return of £515.3 million in 2017, but they did even better in 2018 with a recorded £581.2 million revenue in 2018. The earnings before interest, taxes , depreciation and amortisation of the club was £199.8 million. This was largely attributed to the clubs outstanding performance for in the 2016-2017 football season.

Although the football club had a great revenue making year for 2018, what are the odds they will exceed it this year? The management of the club are pretty optimistic and estimate an increase in revenues of over £570 million for the year 2019 but this might not be the case as the club had some major signings in 2018. The year 2018 saw Manchester United signing Zlatan Ibrahimović, Paul Pogba, Eric Bailly amongst others. Asking us to throw the die in favour of Manchester United making even bigger revenues this year would not be as favourable as free spins no deposit UK 2019. Why? It is reported that the revenue of the football club was down by £55 million from last quarter. Although its revenue is still higher than it was in the previous year.

Presently, the football club is reported to have made a third-quarter operating profits of £14.2 million. The revenue reportedly made by the club stands at £152.1 million. The club management is optimistic this figure will rise despite some huge payments the clubs is making presently. One such payment is its wage bill. The club has some expensive players whose bills combined amount to a good chunk of its earnings. Such players are Paul Pogba, Alexis Sanchez etc. These payments have succeeded in increasing the wage payment bill of the football club by 13%.

The money making streams for most clubs is the sale of the players football jerseys in shops. Most fans of football clubs buy their favourite player jersey number and even have it customised with their own names. Fans also have the opportunity to buy jersey’s and have the number they want printed on it. Club stadiums have such shops where these jersey’s are sold. Sales of jersey’s is one of the big revenue generating streams of football clubs.

Another way by which football clubs make money is from transfers. Transfers refer to the selling and buying of football players. When a club sells a player for an amount greater than they bought him, they would be making a profit from the sale. Add this also the sale of tickets for matches and income made on such days. Old Trafford which is the stadium of Manchester United has a seating capacity of 76,000 fans. With an average ticket price of £50 depending on the match, matches between top English football clubs would command ticket prices of as high as £105, makes for a huge amount of revenue flowing into the club.

In all Manchester United is still a profitable club. The club just signed a new deal with Marriot Hotel which opens up another stream of revenue for the club in addition to the profitable contract deals the club already has. The major revenue stream the club has will be the matchday revenue which flows into the clubs coffers. Old Trafford seats 76,000 fans and as a recorded end of second quarter earnings to be at £ 31.7 million.

Sharing the rights to air their matches on television and broadcast, the football club has a recorded revenue of second quarter 2019, £53.8 million which is higher than the reported revenue from first quarter 2019, additional one game played in the premier league, and largely due to the new television rights contract with UEFA Champions League.

The earnings for the first quarter of 2019 is reported to be £41.2 million which is more than most other clubs in England have made this year and the estimates for the revenue for the whole fiscal year for the club is estimated to be over £600 million and the management intend to surpass it.

The football club might achieve this estimated revenue, as they has a good football season for 2018-2019 plus a return to the Champions League. So, the club is still making some good profits and seem to be well on their way to making even more this year. A new manager, some envious player signings and the 20-time English champions could even surpass their estimated revenue for this fiscal year or not.   




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