Most Valuable World Football Teams

One notable omission from the ranking is Serie A club Napoli, which recently fielded an unsolicited offer of around $2.3 billion from sports-focused private equity firm Underdog Global Partners, according to a report from the Athletic citing unnamed sources. (In an email to investors reviewed by Forbes, Underdog did not explicitly deny making the bid but said, “Anything you read in the press should be taken for what it is at this stage—pure speculation.”)

Such a price—at roughly 11.7 times Napoli’s $197 million in 2024-25 revenue, excluding player trading—would be an extreme outlier in European soccer. For instance, the sale of La Liga’s Atlético de Madrid to Apollo Sports Capital, which closed in March and was priced at roughly $2.95 billion at the current exchange rate, including debt, came at about six times the team’s revenue the previous season. In the Premier League, meanwhile, Forbes values five top teams between 6.0 and 8.3 times trailing-year revenue and most other clubs below 4x. At a multiple between 3x and 4x, in line with marquee Italian clubs like Inter Milan and AS Roma, Napoli would be worth less than $800 million.

The math works quite differently in MLS, where the average multiple is 8.9x, and in other major North American sports leagues, including the NBA (12.9x), the NFL (10.7x), the NHL (8.9x) and even MLB (7x). The gap is a result of numerous challenges that make European soccer clubs less enticing to investors, starting with the promotion-relegation model. In England, for example, the three teams that are demoted from the Premier League to the second-tier Championship each year see their annual revenue decline by tens of millions of dollars—a threat that looms over even well-established clubs like Tottenham Hotspur, which narrowly avoided relegation this season.

European leagues have also been confronted with a more tepid market for media rights than many of their American counterparts and must grapple with a less commercialized sporting culture more broadly. Liverpool, for instance, is dialing back planned ticket price increases in the face of fan protests after charging an average of $99 in 2025—more than most of its European rivals but less than half the comparable figure for top NFL franchises. In addition, European soccer lacks a salary cap, and the arms race for the most talented players has traditionally made the sport a fairly unprofitable enterprise.

Those factors, among others, help explain why Real Madrid lags well behind the $13 billion valuation of the NFL’s Cowboys even though it has the edge in revenue.

Still, the Atlético sale, along with some transactions involving lower-profile teams outside the 30 most valuable soccer clubs, shows that investors’ interest may be growing. Just last year, Forbes valued Atlético at 3.8 times revenue, and the average multiple of the European clubs in the top 30 was 5.1x, compared with 5.6x this year.

Stoking the enthusiasm, teams that finish high in their domestic league’s standings gain access to increasingly lucrative continental tournaments such as the Champions League, which is reportedly poised for a 20% increase in its media rights fees for the cycle that begins in 2027, and a wave of new and renovated stadiums should help revenue continue to grow at the local level. Real Madrid and England’s Everton are among the clubs that have recently unveiled significant venue upgrades, and projects are expected to be completed over the next few years at Barcelona, Manchester United and AS Roma and in Milan, where AC Milan and Inter Milan are collaborating to replace the historic San Siro.

However, the biggest driver of valuations right now is the influx of American investors desperate to break into sports ownership. This season, more than half of the clubs in the Premier League were majority-owned by Americans or U.S.-based firms, and Americans or Canadians controlled nine of Serie A’s 20 teams, as well as three clubs in La Liga after Apollo’s purchase of Atlético. U.S. investors have also begun to buy up teams in lower divisions and in other countries, such as Mexico, where Atlanta-based Innovatio Capital acquired Liga MX’s Querétaro in July and New York’s General Atlantic took a 49% stake in Club América in December.

“There are just so many Americans with cash who like sports, and the American market is kind of closed off to a lot of these owners,” one European soccer insider says. “If you’re an American millionaire from North Carolina, you’re probably priced out of your local USL club, and you’re definitely priced out of an MLS club—that is like cash billionaires now.

“But if you can buy an English football club—maybe even though they’re all the way down the system—at one times revenue, when a USL club is probably trading at anywhere from seven to 15 times revenue, that’s probably a no-brainer.”

The World’s Most Valuable Soccer Teams 2026

#1. $9.5 billion

League: Spanish La Liga | One-Year Change: 41% | Revenue: $1.265 billion | Owners: Club members