Soccer club values are up 30% on average in the past two years as investors eye untapped potential in the sport’s global appeal.

1. The World’s
Most
Valuable
Soccer
Teams:
Barcelona
Edges Real
Madrid To
Land At No. 1
DAILY COVER | Apr 12, 2021, 09:16am EDT | 105,634 views
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2021/04/12/the-worlds-most-valuable-soccer-tea…
Mike Ozanian
14 min read
The World’s Most Valuable Soccer Teams:
Barcelona Edges Real Madrid To Land At
No. 1 For First Time
Soccer club values are up 30% on average in the past two
years as investors eye untapped potential in the sport’s
global appeal.
Lionel Messi of Barcelona in action during the La Liga Santander match between FC

2. SportsMoney
Mike Ozanian Forbes Staff
Traffic cop at the intersection of money and sports
Soccer club values are up 30%
on average in the past two years
as investors eye untapped
potential in the sport’s global
appeal.
Lionel Messi of Barcelona in action during the La Liga Santander
match between FC Barcelona and Real Valladolid CF at Camp Nou
on April 5, 2021 in Barcelona, Spain. JOSE BRETON/PICS
ACTION/NURPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES
For First
Time
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3. Move over, Madrid. Spain has a new No. 1.
Barcelona tops the Forbes list of the world’s 20
most valuable soccer teams for the first time,
knocking Real Madrid to No. 2. Barcelona is
valued at $4.76 billion, just nudging out Real
Madrid at $4.75 billion. The top spot had been
monopolized by two teams for the previous 16
years, with Real Madrid taking it five times and
England’s Manchester United 11 times.
Barcelona’s rise comes as the club has been caught
in a public fight with superstar Lionel Messi, the
world’s highest-paid player, who threatened to
leave last year before the final season under his
contract. The months-long cliffhanger ended with
Messi staying put and the team’s president
resigning.
The world’s 20 most valuable soccer teams are
worth an average of $2.28 billion apiece, an
increase of 30% from two years ago, the last time
we published the ranking. The jump comes
despite a decline in revenue caused by limited
attendance during the pandemic, with buyers
focused on what they see as still untapped revenue
potential in the sport’s massive global following.
Average revenue for the 20 teams was $441
million for the 2019-20 season, down 9.6% from
2017-18, while average operating income fell by
70% over the period to $23 million. The pain is far
from over, with a worsening decline in match-day
revenue during the current season as most of the
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4. teams in Europe’s top leagues still permit few fans
to attend games.
Still, investors continue to pay the kind of rich
multiples for top-tier soccer teams that they offer
for NFL, NBA and big-market MLB franchises.
For RedBird Capital’s recent acquisition of a
minority stake in Fenway Sports Group, which
owns Liverpool, an appraiser valued the Premier
League club at more than $4 billion, roughly 6.4
times revenue—about the same multiple Steve
Cohen paid for the New York Mets last year when
he bought the MLB franchise for $2.42 billion.
The NBA’s Utah Jazz changed hands for $1.66
billion in December, or six times pre-pandemic
revenue. Liverpool’s value is up 88% since our last
valuation.
The club, which lands at No. 5 on this year’s list at
$4.1 billion, has 84 million combined followers on
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and is the
world’s 12th-most-valuable sports team.
Barcelona (fourth in the world overall) and
Madrid (fifth) have more than 260 million social
media followers each. The NFL’s Dallas Cowboys,
the world’s most valuable sports franchise at $5.7
billion, has less than 16 million social media
followers.
Those massive followings pay off. Manchester
United, with almost 140 million followers,
recently replaced shirt sponsor Chevrolet with
TeamViewer, a German software company. The
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