Whenever new financial data pops up on my radar, I start licking my chops, because good data in football, especially when cash is concerned, is difficult to come by. Recently I took a deep dive into Atalanta’s financial success via KPMG, investigating more closely what the club does well to consistently turn a profit. And to my luck I stubmed on Deloitte’s annual publication of its Football Money league dissecting the revenue profiles of the top 20 revenue earning clubs in Europe. I highly suggest taking a deeper look at it, given the wealth of information.
I didn’t go into Deloitte’s article, or my own subsequent writing with any topic in my, instead letting a topic rise to the surface. Ultimately, I looked at six clubs compared to Atalanta and ultimately convinced myself that stadium ownership is a net positive for the club – and an accomplishment that should be lauded. So buckle up and let’s go on a financial roller coaster ride again!
Serie A was fortunate to have three teams in the money league top 20, and looking at the graph above: Juventus, Inter, and Napoli arrive at their revenues in vastly different ways. Inter has the largest matchday revenue on this list, Juventus can flex it’s muscles with commercial branding, and Napoli look to have benefitted wildly from it’s Champion’s League cash.
Still the most surprisingly data point on this list is the disparity in matchday revenue as a percent of total revenue.
The first obvious statement is size matters. San Siro is enormous, and by sheer attendance numbers alone Inter was able to pull in 57M euros (avg. attendance was 65k/Serie A match). Similarly capacity numbers help Lyon and Eintracht Frankfort boast large gate numbers with both clubs posting gate revenue in the high 30’s. Juventus is still able to contend with clubs with much larger stadiums, perhaps due to much pricier and I imagine very posh club seats that cost a pretty penny.
But look at the other clubs on the list in blue. Their matchday revenues are dwarfed in comparison to the four clubs mentioned above, all receiving less than 7% of their revenue from matchday. Everton makes sense, given the large TV contract doled out in the UK, but Napoli is still a head scratcher. The Stadio San Paolo is quite large, at 54k capacity, but still suffers given that Napoli can barely fill the stadium to 50% capacity. Besides recent renovations in 2018, the stadium is old (built in 1948) and hardly screams modern football stadium, with the notorious track around the playing surface that is now synonymous with Serie A.
Unfortunately Napoli is hamstrung. As we discussed on a recent episode of the AtalantaPOD the perks of owning a stadium may not smack you in a face, but a deeper dive can spell out the benefits. In Napoli’s case, the club will most likely struggle to get a more favorable lease with the city, an increased percent of matchday revenue, increased decision making power on renovations, PLUS a mile long line of red tape if the club ever wanted to investigate the feasibility of building its own stadium. Napoli is probably capped below 20M annually in matchday revenue without consistent sellouts. Perhaps becoming Scudetto contenders again could help the club increase revenue by 50-75%, but even then reaching figures of Eintracht are close to impossible.
In contrast, Atalanta has more freedom to make decisions that positively affect it’s matchday revenue return. I highly doubt Atalanta will ever triple it’s highest ever matchday revenue figure, when it earned 12M euros in 2018/2019. But there is absolutely room to grow on that figure with creative revenue earning ploys. I’m not entirely sure what those are, but Atalanta at least has the flexibility to try and fail on it’s own volition. Juventus obviously has done that with it’s insane revenue to capacity ratio, and Lyon has shown similar prowess being the only club in France to own it’s stadium.
Meanwhile renters such as: Inter, Eintracht, Napoli, and Everton (unless it’s new stadium goes through) will have to let the market and on-field success determine its match receipts. I was recently skeptical on the ROI of stadium ownership, but looking at some of these clubs (specifically Napoli) eliminated my hesitancy putting me firmly on team ownership. Atalanta will never be able to boast matchday revenues seen by Juventus and Lyon (capacity simply isn’t there), but the opportunities are boundless to use the stadium as an asset rather than as an object out of necessity. Hopefully we get to see La Dea pave the way in some unique stadium upgrades, and continue forging the path of what modern football looks like in Italy!
