Roma Among Top 50 Most Valuable Football Brands

I'm not quite sure what's going on in the rest of the world today, but in The States it's a public holiday, so I doubt many of us are glued to our electronics, so we'll keep today's fare light. In addition to the focus on transfers, this time of year generally shines a light on a clubs finances and/or brand recognition, two areas of emphasis for the New Roma, in case you hadn't heard.

Brand Finance, the world's leading brand valuation consultancy, according to their website, recently released a top 50 list of the world's most valuable football brands. While Roma checks in at number 26, you'll notice a dramatic increase between 2013 and 2014, where Roma's brand increased from $82 million to $108 million, making them one of the fastest risers on this list. For a technical explanation of their methodology, click here. But in summation, brand value means:

Various criteria is used to determine which clubs around the world command the most valuable and powerful brands. Brand value is the cost that a third party would have to pay to license the use of a brand. The analysis of brand strength benchmarks risk, strength, longevity and future potential of the brand, relative to competitors. The financial factors taken into account are revenue mix and growth, plus football specific measurements such as squad value, club heritage, kickdex data, UEFA coefficient ranking and the average attendance, amongst others.

Brand Finance ranks the value of each club from DDD-D (failing) through AAA+ (extremely strong), Roma earned an AA+, which I guess we could consider very, very strong. Roma were actually the fifth most valuable Italian brand, falling behind Juventus, AC Milan, Inter Milan and Napoli, though neither Inter nor Napoli saw as great a gain as Roma year-over-year, while the Rossoneri's brand actually declined in value. While this is certainly great news, Pallotta has an awful lot of ground to gain if he wants Roma to be one of the top five sports brands in the world.

An important distinction here, this is merely a ranking of brand value and recognition, not the value of the club in and of itself, which Forbes values at $307 million, up 19% from the previous year.

This is certainly good news and proof that the Americans focus on the financial aspect of the project is already paying dividends. With Disney, Nike, and Volkswagen in the fold, not to mention Stadio Della Roma on the horizon, things are certainly looking up, but I guess that makes the impending sale of Mehdi Benatia more infuriating, right?