Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona lead the way as the top 10 football clubs in Europe generate 1.2 billion euros (1.6 billion dollars) in turnover from retail sales of merchandising items, according to a report published on Tuesday.
The 10 clubs make up more than half of the total 2.1 billion euros in overall turnover by clubs in 10 European leagues through sales of shirts, replicas, flags, scarfs and other items.
No individual club figures, however, were given by the Sport+Markt agency in its Football Merchandising Report which looked into sales during the 2009-2010 season.
Real and Barca make up 80 percent of the leading Spanish league income of 190.1 million euros, as La Liga moved ahead of the English Premier League, which got 167.5 million euros. Germany's Bundesliga (129.7), Italy's Serie A (76.9) and the French league (66.6) complete the top five.
The report also covered the the football markets in Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the Netherlands as a total 727 million euros were generated by the 10 leagues overall.
The top 10 retail turover clubs are Real, Barca, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Olympique Marseille, Manchester United, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Olympique Lyon and Fenerbahce Istanbul.
Football shirts make up 57 percent of merchandising sales, and of the 13.7 million shirts sold, 11.4 million are made by sports goods giants Adidas and Nike.
The merchandising report was compiled by questioning 182 clubs and through a survey among 10,000 people, Sport+Markt said.
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