The top-tier Chinese football side Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao FC has reached a market value of 21.8 billion yuan (3.35 billion US dollars) after it finished the first transaction in China’s National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ) on Tuesday March 8. This means they have surpassed Real Madrid’s $3.26 billion and Manchester United’s $2.35 billion.

The CSL club has traded a volume of 36,000 shares for a total sum of 1.98 million yuan ($300,000) at 55 yuan ($8.5) per share, which marks the club’s first ever trade in the real sense since its listing on the NEEQ in November 2015. Calculated on that closing price, the market value of Evergrande will amount to 21.8 billion yuan ($3.35 bn) with 396.73 million shares in total.

Before trading, the most valuable listed club was the Premier League’s Manchester United, which was valued at 2.35 billion dollars when the market closed on Monday.

Set against the wider background, when non-listed clubs were included, La Liga’s Real Madrid's worth is estimated at 3.26 billion dollars according to Forbes' list of the most valuable football clubs in 2015 and FC Barcelona is valued at 3.16 billion dollars.

However, Evergrande is not on the same level as the top European clubs when annual revenue is taken into consideration. Evergrande's earnings in the last three years averaged 400 million yuan (61 million dollars), much less than Manchester United's 400 million dollars in the same period.

Source: ifeng & Xinhua

Proofread by John Devlin.