European club football’s revenues have grown at a steady pace for fifteen years, but so has the gap between the leagues and clubs at the top of the market and everyone else: the Premier League has captured a growing share of total revenue, the highest-earning clubs have pulled further ahead of the rest, and the Champions League’s latter stages have stayed almost entirely within the “Big Five” leagues.
Revenues at Europe’s 700 top-division clubs rose from €11.6bn in 2008/09 to €28.6bn in 2023/24 and are estimated to have passed €30bn in 2024/25, according to The Evolution of Club Revenues in European Football, the report by Football Benchmark and World Football Summit. The market grew at a CAGR of 6.2% over 2008/09–2024/25, against 7.1% in the decade before Covid. The 10% contraction in 2019/20 was recovered by 2021/22.
The Premier League is the only league group to have gained share, up from 21% to 26% of total revenue between 2008/09 and 2023/24. The other “Big Five” leagues slipped from 48% to 46% and the rest of Europe from 31% to 28%, although both groups more than doubled their revenue in absolute terms.
The top end of the market has grown faster still. The ten highest-earning clubs increased their combined revenue from €2,702m to €8,370m between 2008/09 and 2024/25, a 3.1x rise. Clubs above €300m went from 3 to 17 and those above €200m from 8 to 33. Chelsea, tenth in 2024/25 with €584m, earns almost twice the €300m mark that only three clubs reached in 2008/09. Real Madrid became the first club to pass €1bn, doing so in 2023/24, with Barcelona following in 2025/26.
The makeup of that top 10 has shifted by country. England has gone from four clubs to six and France from none to one, while Italy has gone from three (Juventus, Inter and Milan) to none. Spain (two) and Germany (one) are unchanged.
The Champions League has followed a similar pattern. Between 2014/15 and 2025/26, the Big Five supplied all 12 finalists and 47 of 48 semi-finalists, with Ajax in 2018/19 the sole exception, against a 72% share of European club revenue. Within that group, LaLiga clubs won six titles (five of them Real Madrid’s) and made the most semi-finals (15), Premier League clubs won three and made the most finals (eight), and Serie A clubs reached four finals without winning any.
The Evolution of Club Revenues in European Football: How growth has reshaped the economics of the game, the report by Football Benchmark and World Football Summit, covers this alongside the rest of the picture: how the revenue mix has shifted from broadcasting to commercial income, and how that growth has translated into record club valuations.
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