This week Football Benchmark released the 11th edition of its report The European Elite, putting the aggregate value of Europe's 32 most valuable clubs at €72.641 billion, 12% higher than in 2025. Real Madrid top the list with an Enterprise Value of €7.725 billion —the highest ever recorded by the study— and FC Barcelona climb to second place with €5.918 billion, after posting the largest absolute growth in the entire table: +€1.459 billion in a single year. Impressive figures. But before treating them as revealed truth, it's worth understanding exactly what they are.
A ranking is an opinion with a methodology, not a fact
This is no criticism of the report, which is serious and transparent —a rarity—. It is a warning about how to read it. Football Benchmark itself explains it with welcome honesty: its value is calculated by applying a multiple to revenues, adjusted by five parameters that it chooses and weights at its own discretion: profitability, social-media popularity, squad value, broadcasting rights and stadium ownership. And it warns, in its own fine print, that the analysis "is not to be construed as an investment recommendation" and that the actual price at which a club might sell "may be significantly different" from the estimated value.
Translated: change the five parameters, or merely their weights, and the ranking changes. A different firm, with different variables, would produce a different order. That doesn't invalidate the report —it is a rigorous reference, and one of the few that shows its workings— but it forces us to treat it as what it is: a photograph taken through a particular lens, not reality laid bare. Anyone quoting these numbers as dogma hasn't read the methodology.
More value for what? The Barça paradox
Here is the heart of it. Barça are the second most valuable club in Europe and, at the same time, the continent's best-known case of financial strain: a club that has spent years wrestling with LaLiga's squad-cost limit and resorting to its famous "levers" just to register players. The report itself hints at it: the club's staff-costs-to-revenue ratio exceeded 88% in 2020/21 —an unsustainable level— and, although it has been cut to 52% and the wage bill reduced by more than €124 million since 2022/23, the road has been anything but smooth.
So how does "second most valuable in Europe" square with "struggles to register players"? Because Enterprise Value measures the size of the business, not its liquidity or its health. These are different questions. One thing is how much the whole company is worth —brand, revenues, squad, stadium—; quite another is how much cash you have to spend tomorrow without breaking the rules. A club can be enormous and still be gasping for air, just as someone can own a three-million home and not make it to the end of the month.
And from there comes an uncomfortable reading: that "great value" can, paradoxically, be a licence to get into deeper trouble. A high valuation feeds the belief —in the club and in whoever lends to it— that any debt is bearable because "the asset backs it". It's the psychology of every bubble: while the value rises, the risk looks free.
The Futbolnomics read. Let's be honest about the limits here: I doubt a serious bank grants a loan based on Football Benchmark's ranking —that's what audited accounts are for, not a sector report, however prestigious—. The document itself hedges by stating it isn't meant for transactions. But the report does something subtler, and more slippery: it manufactures a mood. When "we are the second most valuable club in Europe" becomes a headline, it feeds a narrative of invulnerability that softens discipline —the club's when it spends, and everyone else's when they judge it—. Value, misunderstood, is not a cushion: it's a temptation. And it's worth remembering that Andrea Sartori, Football Benchmark's own founder, frames financial sustainability —not size— as clubs' real strategic challenge.
"Financial sustainability is no longer simply a regulatory requirement but an increasingly central strategic challenge for clubs operating across very different markets and business models."
— Andrea Sartori, Founder and CEO, Football Benchmark
What I would measure, and this ranking barely touches
If I built this benchmark, I would scrutinise one thing above all: the real customer. Because a club is, ultimately, a business whose customers are the people who watch the matches, buy the shirt and make up the audience a sponsor like Spotify or Nike pays to reach. Football Benchmark already includes social-media popularity as one of its five pillars, and the data it provides is telling: Madrid and Barça together hold 455 and 412 million followers, 39% of the entire digital fanbase of the top 10. Good. But I would go further in two directions.
First: followers are the size of your market, but what truly matters to a sponsor is conversion —how many of those millions actually spend—. A follower who doesn't spend is a vanity metric. Second, the acid test no ranking measures: do you fill the stadium for a bad match? Everyone fills it on a Champions League night. The real indicator of commercial health is the cold Tuesday in winter against the bottom side. If you fill it then too, you're not a club: you're a machine for generating business, with inelastic demand —the most valuable asset there is, and one Enterprise Value captures only obliquely, through matchday revenue—.
Because that is the difference between being worth a lot and being solid: value measures what you have today; inelastic demand measures what people will keep giving you no matter what. And for any business, the second is worth more than the first.
Sources
- Football Benchmark — The European Elite 2026 (11th edition), by Ace Advisory. All value, ratio and follower figures come from this report.
