Major Soccer Leagues Destroy the Economy

Major Soccer Leagues Destroy the Economy

By Ally Samuel

One of the most popular European soccer clubs, Real Madrid, is in tremendous amounts of debt and causing increasing possibilities of a complete economic collapse among all of the European soccer clubs.  Each year, soccer clubs offer players ridiculously large amounts of money solely to claim them on their team and to make more money for their club.  The most well-known soccer players that we know today make hundreds of thousands of dollars per week, which is one of the main reasons why the entire European soccer community may be at risk of falling under a never-ending pool of debt along with a destroyed economy.

The main ways that soccer clubs make their money is through three different sources -- television rights, ticket sales, and commercial income.  The English Premiership is one of the top broadcasters of European soccer, and it ensures that even the worst teams in the league still get millions of dollars per year, and then gives the top teams even more.  Clubs with bigger stadiums also make more money than the smaller ones, so the more fans that come to the games allows for more income for the club.  Selling merchandise -- shirts, scarves, flags, etc. -- seem to be the simplest, easiest, and most common way to make money for clubs.

 Either way, the soccer clubs have numerous ways to increase revenue, but it never seems to be enough.

Real Madrid made some of their top record amounts of money spent on trades in 2009 on Kaka for $86 million and Cristiano Ronaldo for $123 million.  In order to pay for these two players as well as a couple of others, the club had to sell their downtown training complex to the city of Madrid for $445 million.  With spending so much money on one or two players, the soccer clubs have given up opportunity costs to spend that money on maybe four or five equally distributed players instead of just one or two amazing players that are over-priced.  The people who manage those soccer clubs must believe that the benefits of having the players in the long run will outweigh the costs, which I find hard to believe.  The video linked here shows us just a glimpse of one example of what all goes into the process of trading players, as well as how much money is spent on certain players.

This debt never seems to stop the clubs from giving out more money though.  I’ve always wondered where the large amounts of money came from, and now that I know, I think that the whole trading and selling players situation is nonsense.  While many of the soccer-junkie boys here at Pewaukee High School would disagree with me, I strongly believe that there is no reason to be getting in half-billion dollars of debt to buy a few players off of another team when the money could be spent on much more useful things.  During the majority of the time, these clubs don’t have the money ready to be handled that they are offering many of these players but they commit to it anyways, which pushes their level of debt up that much higher.  The players on the teams have gotten so greedy to the point where they don’t care about the economy, they only care about their income.  Members of communities always wonder why their countries are in debt; maybe soccer clubs like these, and even the ones in the United States, are a big source of causing the country’s debt.

Works Cited

Karon, Tony. "Soccer's Billion-Dollar Players." Time. Time Inc., 3 Aug. 2008. Web. 9 Sept. 2014. <http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1828967,00.html>.

"Real Madrid toys and merchandise - World of Sport ApS." World of Sport ApS. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Sept. 2014. <http://worldofsport.biz/portfolio-view/real-madrid-toys-and-merchandise/>.

"Vizari Club Series Real Madrid Mini Soccer Ball - model 91684." -.... N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Sept. 2014. <http://www.soccergarage.com/Vizari-Club-Series-Real-Madrid-Mini-Soccer-Ball-model-91684.html>.

|, Leander. "Rolling out of control." ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 22 Sept. 2010. Web. 9 Sept. 2014. <http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/news/_/id/5580467/european-football-eating-itself>.

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