Football is many things. For some it is religion, for some it is art, for some it is even a business. This side, of all businessmen and agents of all kinds, is perhaps a little less romantic than the artists or believers, but it can also ignite our imagination. It happened earlier this week, when super agent Raffaele Pimenta was interviewed by “Sky”.
Pimenta Inherited many of Mino Raiola’s clients, including Paul Pogba, Marco Verratti and Gianluigi Donnarumma. In addition to them she is the agent of one, Arling Holland, and she said that “Arling Holland could be the first player to go over a billion pounds”. This sum sounds imaginary, and to some extent it is
Chelsea, by comparison, were bought for £3.1bn. Neymar was sold from Barcelona to PSG in 2017 for £198m, the highest ever. The highest-paid player in 2022 was Anthony From Manchester United with 82 million. Are we going to reach a billion from here?
There is a situation where it is. Not sure if during the time of Holland himself, who is already after one big transfer but only 22 years old, but it is becoming more and more realistic. It may be more than a pretentious statement by an agent who wants to generate headlines around a player, but rather a statement about the way the transfer market is going. Let’s dive in.
The value of the players only increases
The perception around soccer players is changing. They break out at a younger age and so do the expectations. Arling Holland, Joao Felix, Anthony and Orlean Tschoemany are 22. Derwin Nunes and Mathias de Licht are 23. All moved for huge sums and were supposed to be the stars of big clubs as soon as they arrived.
At the same time, Luka Modric is one of the best in the world at the age of 37. Cristiano Ronaldo scored 18 Premier League goals in a season at the age of 36, Leo Messi leads one of the best teams in the world at the age of 35, and there are other examples. Sports medicine and conditions improve every year, and every player’s peak period is completely different.
If in the past players were at their physical peak from the age of 25 to the age of 32, for example, today we can talk about a period of 14 or 15 years in which a player is one of the best in the world. We saw it in the case of Messi and Ronaldo (from 2006, more or less, until 2020), and together with the sporting progress it is likely to happen even with players who do not reach the level of two of the greatest in history.
At the same time, the transfer structure itself changes. We see groups that agree on transfers where part of the amount is guaranteed and the rest in bonuses vary, and this is something that may also happen in big transfers in the future. We can imagine a situation where, for example, a player moves for £500 million with £300 million in bonuses.
Global brands
This can ensure a kind of financial survival for the clubs, while they see their profits rise year on year. According to “Forbes”, Real Madrid is worth 5.1 billion dollars and Barcelona 5 billion. In 2019, for comparison, the Blancos were worth 4.2 billion. This is an increase of about 19% during the Corona crisis.
And this jump is not based only on their achievements on the field. Barcelona was worth $3.2 billion in 2015, the last year they won the Champions League, rising to $5 billion in 2022. an increase of 36%. Both are leading by a huge gap before the English league, by the way, thanks to the two players who played in them in the last decades: Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
The value of players as promoters of a football team is enormous. People don’t travel to see Paris Saint-Germain, they travel to see Messi. Following this, there is a big increase in the popularity of Manchester City in India and China thanks to Arling Holland. An increase that is worth a lot of money.
We have seen a similar trend in cinema. Only eight films surpassed the billion dollar mark in revenue by 2010, while 42 different films have done so since then. “Top Gun: Maverick” reached $1.5 billion, while “Spider-Man: No Way Home” reached $1.9 billion. These sums were imaginary a decade ago, and the penetration of Western culture into the East made blockbusters a particularly profitable business. A similar trend may also happen in football.
it’s all relative
It is important to emphasize that this is not necessarily a change of perception, but a continuation of existing trends. Last March, “The Athletic” recalculated the most expensive transfers in the Premier League era with the help of an inflation calculator, which does not only calculate the economic changes in the UK, but also the price increases within football itself.
The Athletic used two researchers from the University of Liverpool, Kieran Maguire and Jason Laws, to calculate the cumulative increase in broadcasting rights, ticket prices and the various economic variables in football. The two calculated the different prices of 2019, to neutralize the effect of the corona virus.
According to this calculator, Alan Shearer’s move from Blackburn to Newcastle United was worth £222m in 2019, compared to £1.5m in real time. The market has grown 14.8x in 23 years. In Wayne Rooney’s case for example, we’ve seen a 4x jump in 15 sleep.
And so we may see a different jump, certainly considering the transfer structure that is based on bonuses and prevents clubs from taking too big risks. The big jump in sums may be behind us, but the broadcasting rights agreements and the new structure of the Champions League guarantee more meetings between good teams and more money.
Once the amounts increase, the teams will invest some of it back into their players to ensure they continue to receive and earn more money. These may be higher risk trades, given that soccer players can get injured and end their careers at any moment on the field, but the profit potential is huge.
The elephant in the room
And this ridiculous jump in amounts may happen faster than you think, even if in recent years we have seen a certain slowdown (at least until the apparent sale of Jude Bellingham). As with the entire future of world football, much will rise and fall on the Super League.
The ambitious idea of the super teams to establish a closed league is still alive. Recently, Barcelona, Real Madrid and Juventus appointed a new CEO who said that the idea is “still alive” and may be resurrected in 2025, apparently in a different format and not as a completely closed league, but as one based on armor similar to the Euroleague. of the Super League is complex and irrelevant to the topic itself, but the profitable potential is huge.
The 30 NFL teams sign a contract that gives them 346 million dollars, each, per year. The 20 Premier League teams sign a contract that gives them about 69 million dollars each, an amount five times smaller. Football teams may have a greater value, certainly if the broadcasting rights increase, and this will also reach the transfer amounts. Even in a world without a Super League and with a Champions League that guarantees more important matches at an early stage, the amount is expected to increase.
When you put it all together, a billion pounds for a football player does not sound like an unreasonable amount. Their marketing value increases, they can help the team for longer, the clubs make more and more money and the players become more famous by the minute. Is it worth paying a billion for one player? It Another discussion, but these amounts are going to go up.Hold on tight.