Liverpool are the fourth most valuable football club on the planet. Worth £4.6bn, up 15% on last year, and more than four times what FSG paid their way into a decade ago. By any measure, that's a remarkable trajectory.
And yet Manchester United — a club that finished the 2024/25 season in domestic embarrassment — are still ahead of them. United sit third in Forbes' 2026 valuations at £5.3bn. Football's financial logic has never been clean, but that particular gap stings a little when you've just won a record-equalling 20th league title.
What the numbers actually reflect
Liverpool's valuation is built on hard results. Arne Slot's first season delivered the Premier League title, a League Cup final, and a Champions League round of 16 run. The club turned over £703m last season. These aren't inflated projections — they're backed by performance and revenue.
United's 9% growth, by contrast, looks like brand inertia more than earned momentum. Their valuation has only doubled in a decade; Liverpool's has quadrupled. The direction of travel is obvious, even if the current gap isn't.
Real Madrid lead the list for a fifth consecutive year at £8.2bn — and to understand that number, consider this: their sporting revenue of £940m in 2024/25 beat the Dallas Cowboys' £910m NFL haul. That's the scale Madrid operate at. Barcelona are second at £6.5bn, with PSG (£5bn) and Bayern Munich (£4.9bn) rounding out the top six.
The Premier League's grip on the top 10
Six of the top 10 clubs are English. Behind Liverpool and United, Manchester City (£4.1bn), Arsenal (£4bn), Chelsea (£3.1bn) and Spurs (£2.2bn) fill out the rest. Eleven English clubs make the top 30 in total, with Everton sneaking in at 25th with a £688m valuation.
The next most-represented league? MLS, with seven clubs. That's the world football's financial map looks like in 2026.
For Liverpool, the valuation confirms what on-pitch results already showed — FSG have built something real. Whether they can close the gap on United's brand value while continuing to outperform them on the pitch is the more interesting question. Liverpool's turnover of £703m suggests the commercial ceiling isn't far from being tested.
