@SamiMokbel81_DM UEFA FEARS OVER WEALTH GAP

AN ELITE group of nine European clubs, including five from the Premier League, are so wealthy nobody else has a chance of catching them. Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool — along with Real Madrid and Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain — have boosted their annual income by about £100million each, mainly from club and shirt sponsorships, over the past six years, according to a new UEFA report. UEFA president, Aleksander Ceferin, warns of the dangers this imbalance could bring in the latest edition of UEFA’s annual report published today. Ceferin says: ‘As the guardian of the game in Europe, UEFA must take note of the less positive trends highlighted in the report, such as high wage growth and the increasing concentration of sponsorship and commercial revenue among a handful of clubs.’ Ceferin says the wealthy clubs’ share of football’s riches is... ‘being sliced and segmented into an ever larger and more lucrative number of deals. This is enabling those global super clubs to monetise their huge supporter bases, which extend across the globe and which can be accessed far better through social media than was ever possible through traditional marketing in the past.’ But Ceferin stresses that the controversial Financial Fair Play rules, which have prevented another Manchester City or Chelsea gatecrashing the top table, have been a success in one key area, reducing financial losses. In the two years before FFP began, clubs across Europe lost £560m, but in the past two years they have made a profit of £1.2bn.