American here who has very casual knowledge of European soccer. How do small towns/neighborhoods/areas have big, successful clubs worth billions of dollars? For example, Arsenal or Tottenham.

I can understand clubs that represent a large city (eg Manchester) being able to have a large fan base thus leading to big viewership, ticket sales and merch value.

I can think of some small, lesser known cities that have professional sports teams in the US but typically they’re the biggest team in the state (or part of a big state) and thus get a lot of fans in a large geographical area around them. Large cities may have up to 2 NFL/MLB teams.