From the Red Devils and Real Madrid to Man City and Bayern Munich and beyond, check out the full honor roll of the most expensive football clubs the Beautiful Game has to offer.
Every year, fans, nerds, and would-be GMs alike celebrate what may as well be sports business Christmas: The great unveiling of various media outlets’ carefully calculated rundowns of the most valuable sports teams on planet Earth.
Mileage may vary — in plenty of cases, an outfit like Sportico might publish a noticeably higher dollar figure than another like Forbes for the same team — but in terms of depicting a clear set of relative distinctions for us to make between the haves and the have-nots, the exercise is never not a fun one for those of us constantly reckoning with the increasingly explosive ways money functions and flows throughout the games we love.
And with this being prime UEFA Champions League season, we decided to zero in on the world’s most popular sport to figure out who’s leveraging the biggest equity to get ahead of the rest of the global pack.
Naturally, depending on who you ask, the title of the world’s most expensive football club is actually very much up for debate — but the race between England’s Red Devils and Spain’s Galácticos is not the only intriguing set of data points worth diving into.
Let’s get right to it. Check out the top 20 most valuable soccer teams in the world for 2023.
Subscribe for the biggest stories in the business of sports and entertainment, daily.
Most Valuable Soccer Teams in the World 2023
Data based on 2023 studies from Forbes and Sportico. Click on a club to see its overall salary spending and contracts overview for the 2022-23 season.
| CLUB | FORBES VALUATION | FORBES RANK | SPORTICO VALUATION | SPORTICO RANK |
| Real Madrid | $6.07B | 1 | $5.23B | 2 |
| Manchester United | $6.0B | 2 | $5.95B | 1 |
| Barcelona | $5.51B | 3 | $4.95B | 3 |
| Liverpool | $5.29B | 4 | $4.71B | 4 |
| Manchester City | $4.99B | 5 | $4.43B | 6 |
| Bayern Munich | $4.86B | 6 | $4.46B | 5 |
| Paris Saint-Germain | $4.21B | 7 | $3.41B | 9 |
| Chelsea | $3.1B | 8 | $3.47B | 8 |
| Tottenham Hotspur | $2.8B | 9 | $3.19B | 10 |
| Arsenal | $2.26B | 10 | $3.6B | 7 |
| Juventus | $2.16B | 11 | $1.73B | 11 |
| Borussia Dortmund | $1.93B | 12 | $1.61B | 12 |
| Atlético Madrid | $1.54B | 13 | $1.56B | 13 |
| AC Milan | $1.4B | 14 | $1.2B | 14 |
| West Ham United | $1.08B | 15 | $665M | 30 |
| Inter Milan | $1.03B | 16 | $1.11B | 15 |
| LAFC | $1.0B | 17 | $900M | 16 |
| LA Galaxy | $925M | 18 | $865M | 17 |
| Atlanta United | $850M | 19 | $855M | 18 |
| Crystal Palace | $806M | 20 | N/A | NR |
Go Deeper on the Business of the Beautiful Game
- The Highest-paid Premier League Players of 2022-23
- The Highest-paid La Liga Players of 2022-23
- The Highest-paid MLS Players of 2022-23
