Man Utd First UK Club to Earn £500m in a Year

Manchester United has recorded record revenues of £515.3m for the 2016 financial year, the first UK football club to do so.

In a year when it won the FA Cup, the Old Trafford club also signed 14 sponsorship deals, and saw commercial, match day and TV revenues all rise.

It is now predicting 2017 revenues of up to £540m, even though it is not in the Champions League this season.

Under new boss Jose Mourinho they are currently third in the Premier League.
The club’s accounts up until June 30, 2016 confirm that the Premier League club was the first British team to break the half-billion mark, but the figure is short of Barcelona’s €679m (£570m) revenue revealed in July.

The Premier League giants also revealed operating profits of £68.9m, and adjusted core earnings of £191.9m, both also records.

Net debt increased by £5.7m on the previous year, to £260.9m, which the club said was primarily due to the impact of foreign exchange rate movements on its US-denominated debt.

Big figures for Manchester United, slightly exceeding their own expectations of £510m revenues for the year to June 30, 2016.

As has been the case for a number of years now, commercial income is roaring ahead, with a 36.3 per cent increase in that sector alone to £268.3m.

To put it into context, that figure would have put United 11th in the latest Deloitte Rich List, ahead of Tottenham, both Milan clubs and Roma.

The only slight downer is that United cannot claim to be the first football club to generate annual revenue in excess of £500m.

That claim belongs to Barcelona, who benefited from a stronger Euro against the pound post-Brexit.
Meanwhile, Manchester United has written off £6.7 million due to Bastian Schweinsteiger’s demotion to the reserve team.

The club also paid £8.4m to clear out former manager Louis van Gaal and his coaching staff. However, an extra exceptional cost was that of the value lost in Schweinsteiger’s banishment from the first-team.

The German midfielder is not wanted by new boss Jose Mourinho and cannot train with the senior players, while he has been left out of their Europa League squad.