It’s widely reported that Cristiano Ronaldo has
paid back his £80 million transfer fee to Real Madrid just in the value of shirt sales. Examining this claim is not easy as shirt sales are not the only economic impact that signing a player has, things such as a player’s image rights, brand equity and other marketing opportunities are also to be considered while calculating the economic impact created due to the transfer of players. However, let's have close look at the revenue generated by the clubs through shirt sales.
It's not easy to get the exact number of shirts sold as kit manufacturers such as Adidas and Nike rarely announce the total shirts sold per club. And there are no accurate studies/reports made on the economic impact of shirt sales. However, the best study on this subject available in the public domain is
done by a German marketing institute. This study looked at sales in the period 2005 to 2009 to get an accurate long-term picture, and found that Manchester United and Real Madrid sold, on average, 1.2 million to 1.5 million shirts per year each. Manchester United for Nike, and Real Madrid for Adidas. It is to be noted that this is the total number of official jerseys sold by the club, inclusive of all player names and unmarked ones as well. These figures seem about accurate, as a
more recent media reports also seem to arrive at roughly similar figures.
http://www.sportyghost.com/top-10-highest-selling-club-soccer-jerseys/
http://www.totalsportek.com/football/clubs-with-most-shirt-sales/
In any case, even the most optimistic figures do not cross 1.6 million official shirts sold per season by even the largest clubs. Naturally, this means that no single player sells more than 1.6 million shirts for his club per season either.
Now let's have a look at the cost of one shirt. The official price of a kit usually ranges from €40-70 per shirt, with most being on the lower end of that scale. Let's take the average of that price, say, €55 and multiply it with the total sales per season. It would seem that Manchester United and Real Madrid could conceivably make around €90 million per season from official shirt sales, which sounds great and looks like a massive source of revenue.
However, it's not as simple as that. That price of €55 is the retail price of the kit. Most of the revenue from it goes to the manufacturer, which is why they agree to the huge sponsorship deals in the first place, as sponsorship of a club essentially creates the right to sell their kits. The revenue is also shared between various shipping companies, and often the player himself in the form of his image rights.
Now, there aren’t too many sources available as to the exact amount that the clubs receive as a cut from the retail price. There was a report on this in The Swiss Ramble blog and as per that report, a club receives around €12-13 as their cut from retail price of the shirt. I can't find the link to that blog, however i am attaching another report from the same blog which talks in details about the kind of money involved in football leagues.
http://swissramble.blogspot.in/2016/02/money-league-oh-you-pretty-things.html
Based on the reports that Real Madrid or Manchester United selling 1.6 million shirts per season and a club receives €12-13 per shirt sold, these two clubs receives an absolute maximum of €20 million per season. And this figure is very optimistic, as these two clubs are more likely to be selling around the 1.4-1.5 million shirts, so the monetary figure would probably be even lower.
Even this reduced figure still sounds great though, and shirt sales are most definitely a valuable source of revenue. But still the revenue is not anywhere near as it is claimed to be.
And if we compare the revenue from the shirt sales and the players wages, we will surely come to a conclusion that, the shirt sales makes up for the transfer fee is a myth.
For example, Cristiano Ronaldo’s yearly salary is estimated to be around €17 million per year. Thus, based on this analysis, assuming Real Madrid only sell Ronaldo jerseys, they would make only marginally more than his annual salary. Obviously, fans buy jerseys of other players too, which means that the maximum figure of €20 million is the sum total of all the shirts sold, not just Ronaldo ones. Based on these numbers, it becomes rather clear that shirt sales alone cannot cover any superstar player’s annual wages.
Shirt sales are definitely a useful source of revenue for a club, as €10-20 million per season is definitely a sizeable chunk of money. However, the effect that an individual player can have on shirt sales, especially a popular one, is often grossly exaggerated. No player, particularly a superstar, can pay for himself solely on the back of shirt sales.
