£155m. That is how much Real Madrid generated in match day revenue. That is the scale of the challenge facing Newcastle United to one day bridge the gap on Europe's elite, according to a new UEFA report.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has called the European club finance and investment landscape study the 'ultimate guide to European football finances' and Newcastle look set to break into the top 20 for match income in the next edition after the Magpies' gate revenue grew by nearly a third to £50.1m last season with the help of three blockbuster Champions League fixtures at St James' Park, which the club's accounts stated 'significantly increased home revenue'.
For context, this figure is greater than what Borussia Dortmund, Juventus, Roma, Stuttgart and Rangers all raised in match day revenue in UEFA's latest report, which is based on the audited accounts for 2023.
However, Newcastle still have a long way to go to catch Arsenal, who come out on top in England, after the Gunners' latest accounts revealed the club brought in £131.7m in match income in 2023-24. Spurs, meanwhile, made £103.1m last year, according to Deloitte, and also generated £249m in commercial revenue with the help of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which has staged big-name concerts, become the official home of the NFL in the UK and hosted the first F1 branded electric karting experience in the world.
There is an obvious caveat, of course. Arsenal and Spurs are London clubs and UEFA have rightly pointed out how clubs based in even bigger cities tend to have 'higher basic and premium ticket prices'. That is why PSG, for instance, have a yield per fan figure of £115 in UEFA's study while Newcastle are in 39th place with a figure of £31 per supporter albeit it is worth noting ticket prices have since risen further at St James'.
Newcastle CEO Darren Eales last week highlighted the need for Newcastle to find 'some way' to increase capacity to 'get us to those levels of revenue that we need to be able to compete' in a PSR world. Eales even floated the prospect of a bigger stadium providing a hospitality offering that would 'help us also make more tickets more affordable' elsewhere.
It really could be transformative. UEFA noted how new grounds have multiplied gate revenues at Spurs, Juventus, Atletico Madrid and Galatasaray since 2009 while stadium expansions and/or increases in premium seating and hospitality have also doubled gate revenues at PSG, Bayern Munich, Liverpool and Manchester City across the same 15-year period.
In contrast, without major stadium changes, Manchester United and Chelsea have dropped from second to fifth and from fifth to 10th respectively in UEFA's top 20 gate revenues in that time. No wonder football finance expert Kieran Maguire told ChronicleLive: "You've got to run to stand still."