Celtic listed as one of Europe’s elite clubs in ‘financial stability’ rankings

CELTIC have been ranked among the European elite when it comes to financial stability, a study has found.

The Premiership champions announced a profit of £44million in their most recent financial year and continue to benefit from a successful player trading model.

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In recent years, Celtic have raked in £50m combined for the sales of Kieran Tierney and Jota (ironically, both players are now back at the club).

Revenue dipped slightly in 2024 but with profits rising, it’s seen the Hoops make the top ten in a list of Europe’s most financially sustainable clubs.

The research, undertaken by football business experts Off The Pitch, puts Celtic inside the top ten of clubs across Europe.

Notably, teams from Europe‘s so-called Big Five leagues make up only just over half of the spots in the top ten.

And only two of them were league champions this past season.

Indeed, two of the sides in the top ten don’t even in their respective country’s top flights.

Serie A winners Napoli top the rankings but behind them are two Scandinavian clubs.

Silkeborg of Denmark are in second with Molde of Norway are listed third.

Premier League giants Manchester City occupy fourth spot.

But in fifth are French Ligue 2 side Clermont Foot.

Their weighted score is equal to that of Bundesliga powerhouse Bayern Munich but how they achieve that ranking couldn’t be more different (more on that later).

Just ahead of Celtic are Italian outfit Fiorentina, with Elche of Spain‘s second division in ninth and AGF Aarhus of Denmark rounding out the top ten.

Fiorentina pip Celtic in large part thanks to their much greater equity margin (63.6 percent compared to 47.4 percent).

Equity margin essentially refers to the difference between a club’s revenue and its expenses.

Against the other clubs in the top ten, Celtic scored just above average in the EBITDA margin category.

This metric measures indicates how efficiently a company manages itself and how it controls its operating expenses relative to its revenue.

Celtic’s margin is 15.3 percent, which was higher than every other club apart from Man City (17.3 percent) and Napoli (30.6 percent).

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Return on assets (ROA) was the other metric that clubs were measured on.

This is essentially a measurement of the probability of the club’s in relation to its assets.

ROA would therefore include money made from player sales and Celtic’s rating here is 9.3 percent.

Bayern, Man City and Fiorentina all scored LOWER than the Parkhead club in this regard (6.3, 5 and 2.5 percent).

Elche and Napoli had comparable ratings to Celtic (12.7 and 17 percent) but the Scandinavian clubs and Clermont Foot topped this metric with Aarhus, Molde and Silkeborg scoring 18.2, 20.7 and 28.6 percent, and the French outfit way ahead on 62.6 percent.

Silkeborg have the highest equity margin percentage with 70.1 and despite a 0.9 percent EBITDA margin, their overall score is 23.1.

Napoli top the list with a weighted score of 26.2, ranking well across all of the categories.

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