In a study that came out a couple of months ago SL Benfica ranked in the top 20 richest soccer clubs in the world. This is a great accomplishment if you consider that Benfica is from a small country, with small companies without big advertising budgets.

To top it off, SportTV controls the TV market, and signed Benfica to a very long term contract when Benfica was in much worse financial shape than it is now. Benfica will be launching the Benfica TV channel later this year, but without live games the commercial value of the channel will be limited. Once the SportTV TV contract ends Benfica should be in very good shape to look for a better deal, even if with a foreign TV station, since the cable networks that carry SportTV also carry lots of other foreign TV channels. In another scenario Benfica can put the games on it channel, and then make it a premium pay channel. Even if Benfica only kept $10 a month per subscriber, Benfica would make a small monthly fortune, even more so if you consider than Benfica can put the Benfica channel on cable in countries like France, Germany, England, the US and Canada where Benfica has a large fan base with lots more purchasing power than fans in Portugal. How many people wouldn´t sign up to get a chance to watch live Benfica games along with exclusive interviews of players? Benfica could even transmit the daily training sessions! All this increased exposure would also have a indirect impact on merchandise sales.

Benfica has a few more years to work on this and to make sure it is ready for launch. Lets do this right, and hopefully we will be seeing Benfica in the top three spots on this list of the richest clubs in the world.