Deloitte points to the financial reality of Newcastle United and Champions League opponents

When it comes to Newcastle United and their Champions League opponents in this stage of the competition, the latest 2025 Deloitte Football Money League gives us valuable clues to the financial reality.

Deloitte’s football finance experts with their latest annual overview of which clubs in the world generate the most money.

The report covers the 2023/24 season, with Deloitte showing the huge differences that exist between different clubs.

In the Swiss League format, which was introduced in the Champions League since last season, each club plays eight opponents in the competition phase, four at home and four away.

Newcastle United played at home against Barcelona, ​​​​Benfica, Athletic Bilbao and PSV, while Union SG, Marseille, Bayer Leverkusen and PSG were away.

So when it comes to comparing finances, how do Newcastle United and their eight Champions League opponents fare?

Here are Deloitte’s top 30 (the top 20 in a table, and another showing 21st through 30th) for the most up-to-date report on the highest club revenues.

In this Deloitte 2025 table, all figures are in millions of euros (€ million). Using the new position on the left (with last year’s Top 20 position in brackets) and on the far right, you will find the total revenue for each of the top 20 clubs, with the breakdown in between of revenue from matchdays, broadcasting and commercial activities:

Then these are the clubs in positions 21 to 30 in the new 2025 Deloitte Football Money League 2025:

I think we can learn a lot from that latest Deloitte 2025 report when it comes to the competition in the Champions League and where the comparative finances are going.

Here’s how Newcastle United and their eight Champions League opponents rank, based on the most up-to-date financial information available:

€806 million PSG

Barcelona from €760 million

€372 million Newcastle United

€287 million Marseille

Benfica €224 million

As you can see, Bayer Leverkusen, Union SG, PSV and Athletic Bilbao are not even among the top 30 in club revenue.

This perfectly sums up the direction of the journey when it comes to competing financially.

Newcastle United are of course slowly but surely trying to close the huge gap that exists with the likes of PSG and Barcelona, ​​the usual six Premier League suspects, plus a few others.

However, if you look the other way, Newcastle United have their own huge financial advantage over their other six Champions League opponents. Of the remaining six, only Marseille and Benfica are in the top thirty.

When the financial figures for this current season (2025/26) are revealed by Deloitte in the future (January 2027, last season’s 2024/25 turnover will be published by Deloitte in January 2026), then I would absolutely predict that the gap between Newcastle United and the likes of Marseille and Benfica will have become much wider.

The TV deals in the Premier League, mainly thanks to the sharp increase in foreign ones, ensure that the incomes of the English teams are skyrocketing, while those in the other European competitions are stagnating. The domestic money available in countries such as Portugal and France is minimal, while Germany, Italy and Spain are also far behind England. No wonder we see the desperate attempts by La Liga and Serie A clubs to play league matches abroad, in the belief/dream that this will bring a pot of gold that will allow them to better compete financially with Premier League clubs.

As you can see in that most recent Deloitte report, not only are there six Premier League clubs in the top ten, but a total of fourteen PL clubs are in the top thirty.

In that 2023/24 season, Benfica finished second in their domestic league, played in the Champions League group stage and then reached the quarter-finals of the Europa League (and had over 62,000 spectators), but their financial turnover was basically the same as that of Palace, Everton, Fulham and Wolves, none of whom did anything in the league that season (finished between 10th and 15th) and none of the four played in a European competition that season.

It seems only a matter of time before all twenty Premier League clubs can reach the top thirty in world football in any given season.