European football highlights a scenario of imbalance year after year, an aspect that differentiates it from other sports developed in the USA. For example, the NFL has been won in the last 30 years by 15 different teams andNBA in the same period it had 30. The situation in European football is different: in this same period of time the Premier League has seen just 6 different winners, the Bundesliga 7, in Liga instead there is the dominance of Real and Barça who have won 24 of the last 30 championships, in Ligue1 PSG has 11 of the last 13. While in Serie A Inter, Juventus, Milan and Napoli are in command.
“Polarization – he explains today Il Sole 24 Ore – was born as a direct consequence (or rather, as a distorting effect) of the industrial growth of the sector: in the last thirty years, the revenues of the over 700 clubs in the European Top Divisions have increased 10 times (from 2.8 to 28.6 billion), a trend driven first by the boom in TV rights and more recently by commercial revenues. A development, however, which is not homogeneous: 75% of revenues in Europe are produced by 10% of clubs, that is, the 96 participants in the “Big 5″ (Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A and Ligue 1). The 3% of companies (the 20 with the highest revenues) account for 40% of the total, and the clubs in the top 10 account for almost 30”.
Between 1996 and 2024, the revenues of the 5 Top Leagues increased by 19 billion. A fact that then evolved over time. The financial newspaper recalls that in 1996 Real Madrid’s revenues were substantially in line with those of Juventus, Inter and Milan (around 50/70 million), but then in 2023-2024 they reached 1,045 million. The three big Italian companies are much lower, which on average reach 380. Similar arguments can be made for Bayern Monaco, Barcelona, Arsenal e Liverpoolbut also for Manchester City e PSG, “clubs that have revenues and salaries equal respectively to double and triple those of the Nerazzurri, and that in the last 5 years they have spent a billion each in the transfer market”, he recalls Il Sole 24 Ore.
Exceptions are increasingly rare, but they exist. “Inter itself managed to achieve these goals without jeopardizing its economic-financial balance, and in 2024/25 the budget profit was achieved, un something that hasn’t been seen since the Pellegrini Presidency (1990s)”, concludes the newspaper in its in-depth analysis.
