General Football Transfer Fees

I mean in terms of % of total revenue. :slight_smile:

Depends where you go tbh. In England football started losing the tag ā€œthe peoplesā€™ sportā€ after the serious money started pouring in and clubs became more corporate. The current state of top level England football is a product thatā€™s mainly marketed to middle class people domestically and in America and Asia internationally.

The atmosphere thing is largely a result of poor legislation which required all seater stadiums. You introduce safe standing at one section of the ground at the emirates come the start of the season and guaranteed theyā€™d be making the most noise even if theyā€™re paying the same price.

Of course thereā€™s some correlation between ticket prices, the type of people who come to the ground and atmosphere but in the prem who can you say has a decent atmosphere throughout? Palace maybe and thatā€™s it. Heck even in Arsenal away support you have people who pay the most yet are still the most vocal.

Iā€™ve never really brought into that tourist/daytripper thing, I think itā€™s just a scapegoat tbh. At home matches the stadium is filled with 45,000 season tickets holders, most of the ground is filled with dedicated Arsenal fans paying big sums to be there. The collective pressure to make noise is on them.

That top level snobbery right there, exploring lower league football shouldnā€™t been seen as a negative thing at all. Youā€™d probably get a more authentic match day experience. I donā€™t find my assumption weird at all, the Uk is very much a place where alot of people lack basic fiscal responsibility. Advocating to live within your means seems very sensible to me. Like I said before I donā€™t think itā€™s a right to attend football matches regardless of where your from.

The main point is that no one is really being excluded, people with lower income will still be able to attend matches and support their team. You donā€™t even need to attend matches in order to support anyway.

Yeah I agree some things in life shouldnā€™t be measured by the supply and demand-principles but I donā€™t rate attending football matches as one of them tbh. Iā€™d rather invest in something more practical. If you were on a low income and you had a child would it be smart to be spending Ā£1000+ on season tickets for you and your son or instead put it in a trust fund for your kid?

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Fine Iā€™ll do the math ya lazy cunt.
Assuming Bergkamp signed a 5 year deal, it would have cost us a total of 4,94M in wages. That would have been 20,5% of our turnover that year.

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And I also meant total wage bill. But thanks for your efforts. :slight_smile:

Im not gonna check either but the 21m income for when we signed Overmars seems a tad low to me. :slight_smile:

Probably a bit lower that it should, but back then the sponsorship and commercial deal werenā€™t nearly as important as now. It was mostly the TV deal, which was Ā£304m for 5 years of TV rights, and the matchday revenues.

Iā€™ve zero problem with crazy money in football as long as FFP or something along those lines is being enforced. If a club can afford to buy Pogba, Ibrahimovic, Bailly and Mkhitaryan and give them super wages then why shouldnā€™t they? I donā€™t agree with wage caps / transfer caps, if a club wants to value one star player at 80m / 300k a week and another at 10m / 20k a week they should be allowed to do that as long as their overall spending doesnā€™t bankrupt them.

I find it annoying when people say shit like ā€œomg 300k a week for kicking a ballā€ because that logic just as easily applies to 10k a week and it annoys me even more when itā€™s actual football fans saying it when theyā€™re paying the ticket prices, the TV subscriptions and buying the merchandise to create this multi billion pound thing. Football is an industry and it is 100% about players and coaches so the players and coaches should get their fair share of that industry and acquiring players/coaches should be what costs the money.

No club is forced to sign players. Any big club at any one time will have 40 professional footballers on their books. Clubs want to improve though and acquiring an upgraded player is worth money to a club, so they should have to pay money to get that.

Clubs should also be allowed to sell players for what theyā€™re worth to them. Nobody forces United to pay 100m for Pogba, but Juventus are well within their rights to say well, heā€™s one of our better players and itā€™s not in our interest to lose him, so if you can give us 100m then weā€™ll do it. Thatā€™s Juventus acknowledging his ā€œvalueā€ is clearly not 100m, but itā€™s not worth their while to lose him for less and United are perfectly able to go shopping elsewhere, but not if they want to get that player. The same can be said of Higuain getting a Ā£75m clause in his contract, Napoli thought if the time does come where clubs want our man, weā€™d accept losing him for that much.

At the end of the day you canā€™t stop money. If there is a cap of 150k a week, it just means that clubs will have 10 players on 150k a week rather than 5 players on 300k a week because agents will know that the club has spare money and clubs want players. If you cap transfers, there is probably no transfer market. If there was a transfer cap of 40 million, Pogba would not be going to United and Higuain would not be going to Juventus and the only players you could get would be from smaller clubs and every teenager would end up costing 40m because thatā€™s all you could get your hands on. The money in football will always be huge and clubs will reinvest their money to improve the quality of their team.

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Of course the transfer still happens. If the player wants to leave 90% of the time they leave and itā€™s out of the clubs hands (remember RvP?), Just like Juve with Pogba now, why is Pogba looking to Leave Juve? Theyā€™re currently more successful than United, theyā€™ve also just splashed a large amount of money on Higuain so with that money they could have easily matched what United are offering in terms of wages.

Regarding the table contained in this post:

How on earth did William Gallas cost us Ā£20m in that deal?! Iā€™m sure they gave us Gallas and 5m or some similar paltry sum for Cole?

The guy fucked up in that one I believe, counted the value of Cole as 25M but not the one of Gallas.
Also the Overmars date in wrong, I think he corrected it on twatter but I was too lazy to search it.

There are a number of factors to consider here .
Firstly there is TV , the English game is now exported worldwide and is no longer given away for peanuts like it used to be so the Money from TV will continue to increase !
Secondly as the game spreads worldwide more people and clubs become involved , China,The Middle East and even America have ambitions and they have money too ,right now China is offering Top dollar to people to lure them over there however thias can be a false dawn as if things dont go right the Cinese will pull the plug. Many a player has allready walked out of China having not been paid !
Lastly in Europe Clubs are 1 by 1 getting taken over by Oil Barons or super rich and they all want to buy their way in which increases values in the market not only for the top players but for the second string and this has kicked in big time in the last 2/3 years.This is having a devastating effect on the secondary market where Arsenal used to reign supreme.
Its all well and good saying that it will all end but right now you have to be in it to win it !
Leicester did it on a shoe string but that I firmly beleive was a once in a lifetime affair and whilst they might stay strong for 1/2 more seasons they will be eclipsed by the money boys real soon !
Arsenal have been conservative and have bought as little as possible in the vain hope that everyone will get fit and will play to their maximum potential !

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There is a fair bit of sense in your post. I was a season ticket holder for seventeen years, but my dad and I have had to give them up because it isnā€™t financially viable at the moment. We could have paid for them, but at the moment it would have been a bit of a stretch and not the wisest use of money. A friend of a friend has taken them both on for a minimum of two seasons, theyā€™re still in our names so at that point weā€™ll reconsider, but I really do have my doubts that Iā€™ll take mine back when Iā€™ll have other priorities that are more pressing, like buying a house in London and starting a family.

But the bit in bold really makes me think that you just donā€™t get what being a season ticket holder is about for fans. At all. Have you ever regularly been to Arsenal matches? Have you been at all? People donā€™t cling to their season tickets because it gives them some sort of sense of grandeur. We do it because going to the Arsenal becomes an ingrained part of your life, it becomes a defining feature of grandfather, father and son relationships. We do it because the attachment you build to the club when you go to the ground every fortnight for over a decade (or several decades for some fans) is inexplicably strong. It absolutely doesnā€™t make season ticket holders or regular attendees better than fans who never go, or better fans from abroad, but you do form a different bond to people who have just watched on TV from a distance. And it sounds like you just donā€™t get it

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We donā€™t always see eye to eye Jakey, but you have hit the nail on the head.
Great post.

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The bit in bold was a slightly tongue in cheek assessment not a blanket statement wrt ALL people who hold a ST. I get the connection to the club and all that father son stuff. I most certainly understand what football meant to local communities before globalization and money.

But I think there are lots of cases where supporters and long terms ST holder laud their match going record as some sort of trophy over other supporters. ā€˜Iā€™ve been going down the Arsenal for X amount of years, I know what the club is about blah blah blahā€™

There is a large group of people who have invested alot of time and money into club who think their opinions are more valid than others, Iā€™ve always thought that the supporters who broadcast their record of attendance loudly hold a false sense of superiority contrary to your opinion on the personal interrelationship holding a ST brings.

Actually you hold all Arsenal fans in contempt Ive seen your posts when youve said it !

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I pretty much exclusively use this forum and not twitter or any other forums, and we donā€™t have that many season ticket holders on here unless Iā€™m not much mistaken. So Iā€™ll take your word for it that there are large amounts of people who behave this way, itā€™s not unbelievable to me as I have come across similar thinking in the form of plenty of domestic fans being dismissive of foreign fans. Whenever I see it on here I make a point of challenging it, and saying that being a foreign fan doesnā€™t mean that you are any less knowledgeable, passionate or supportive of our club. I just think thatā€™s such sloppy thinking, and I would apply the same logic to people who think that because they attend games they are superior to fans who donā€™t. My dad put me on the waiting list when I was basically a toddler and I had a season ticket at the start of the 97/98 season when I was seven. Aside from Barcelona in the CL, Gala in the EL and Chelsea in the CC heā€™s taken me to all of our cup final appearances. I was incredibly lucky that that was the case, if I thought that something I had no control over made me better than someone who didnā€™t go to matches Iā€™d be stupid.

But I do think that going to virtually every home match over a long period leads to a different kind of bond with the club. Not a better bond or connection, just a different one.

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Would it really even be wrong to say itā€™s a better bond or connection?

I really donā€™t have any problem with gooners in/from London thinking they have a stronger connection to the club than I do. They do. Letā€™s be honest, those of us not living in the UK suffer fuck all consequences, for example, the day after losing to Tottenham. Most of my friends donā€™t even know Arsenal and Tottenham is a rivalry and if they do theyā€™ll quickly forget it if I donā€™t remind them. Just an example.

Obviously, though, youā€™re being a twat if you think that the fact you go to the matches all the time makes your opinion on the club more valid than someone elseā€™s. Your opinion on the environment in the ground, the feeling among match-attending gooners, sure, but on the actual product on the pitch no. (Unless youā€™re giving me some really brilliant analysis involving off the ball dynamics that you canā€™t see on the telly in which case my hats off to you sir, but I digress) So we obviously agree about that.

But I really donā€™t think you have to tiptoe around the idea that those that are in London have a more direct bond to the club. Itā€™s just a fact, IMO, one that may be relevant when expressing how one feels about the club, how one feels about the environment around the club, etc., but not when analysing the product on the pitch.

That said, I donā€™t think your point about what a sort of intergenerational bond it entails really refutes @sevchenko 's hard-line stance. Given what it means to you and other people like you it would no doubt be a blow to no longer be able to afford season tickets, but itā€™s still a first-world problem as he says, and thereā€™s things that capitalism does that are much more serious than forcing, as he says, a bunch of ā€˜grown menā€™ to be disgruntled because they canā€™t go to the match and instead must watch in the bar. It is what it is, and I tend to agree with him when he basically says: if you canā€™t afford it, tough luck, perhaps consider supporting another club which isnā€™t competing in the very upper echelon of the sport financially. Just as I would tell a Madridista who canā€™t afford to get into the BernabĆ©u (and there are plenty of them) tough luck, round your mates up and go to the bar, or pay less and support some shit like Getafe.

People closer to the club, regularly visiting the matches and mixing up with fellow gooners, will definitely have more connection with the club.
Donā€™t see whatā€™s there to debate.

As for real fan debate, I lump them into real men, real parents bullshit, which has no definition & just thrown around to provoke people.

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Yea, I think supporting is more of an emotional bond and that aside I honestly donā€™t know how you could have argued last season that watching Flamini shout and point with his finger was worth the money you pay for an Arsenal game :laughing: At least offer the fans something in return, because the way Arsenal plays these days the productā€™s hardly worth paying top money for.

Anyone who was a White Hart Lane for the league cup match will tell you that Flaminiā€™s match winning performance that night was a joy to behold .
After what happened outside the ground before hand it made the night very special and Flamini got a season long pass because of it from all the gooners I know !

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That doesnā€™t stop him from being a mediocre football player.