What Makes Football Players Super Rich?

Known as soccer in the United States of America, football is unarguably the biggest and most followed sport worldwide. Some fans are so passionate that they see the sport as a religion.

Europe is a continent where, statistically, the most quality is displayed. This has resulted in many investors, talents, fans, and sponsors across the major European football leagues (Spain, England, Italy, Germany, and France). The revenue generated in these five leagues in the 2020-2021 league season reached 18.1 billion euros.

However, this has generated an astronomical rise in salaries and wages of some stars in Europe and Asia. Their counterparts who participate professionally in some sports in the US have a salary cap.

Based on available data after studying 471 players, it has been revealed that the celebrity status of a player has a huge impact on the correlation between players’ performance and salaries. The celebrity status was measured by counting the number of “likes” every player got from fans on their verified public Facebook page.

Basically, the result indicated that a player’s popularity and high status result in more salaries for the same performance levels.

The announcement of the suspension of the application of the “Financial Fair Play” for the ongoing season by UEFA is largely due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, it has been argued that top clubs like Galatasaray, Manchester United, Juventus, or Atlético Madrid have huge debts escalated before the pandemic outbreak.