The price inflation has increased an incredible amount for the top players in the European league that even the former Manchester United defender, Rio Ferdinand, commented on it. He made a point in saying that English footballers were so overpriced it was a "joke."
The average price of a Premier League soccer player has basically doubled since 2012. Tomkins and Riley have been converting all transfers made in the past into current day money so that teams are able to be compared across different seasons. For example, Manchester City's 2011 deal with Sergio Aguero for 38 million euro is worth 65.6 million euro today, and that is what it would take for a rival team to produce equivalent talent if he was tied to a full contract. These insane prices are making it virtually impossible for the less wealthy teams to buy better players, which I see as a potential problem in the football industry. If inflation keeps increasing the way that it has been recently, then there might be a huge change in the business of the European leagues in order to keep things fair. How do you believe that can be done? Do you believe there is a way to handle the increasing inflation rates of the players?
Pictured: Rio Ferdinand
Paul Tomkin's, writer for Liverpool, and Graeme Riley have been working on creating Transfer Price Index's (TPI) for over five years. These calculations measure the average price paid for a Premier League soccer player each season and then from their analysis, measures the amount of inflation occurring in the sport of football. Football inflation occurs a lot faster than standard inflation. Every time a new TV deal is made, more money is put into the game. Since TV deals are made all of the time, every season, inflation increases dramatically.
The average price of a Premier League soccer player has basically doubled since 2012. Tomkins and Riley have been converting all transfers made in the past into current day money so that teams are able to be compared across different seasons. For example, Manchester City's 2011 deal with Sergio Aguero for 38 million euro is worth 65.6 million euro today, and that is what it would take for a rival team to produce equivalent talent if he was tied to a full contract. These insane prices are making it virtually impossible for the less wealthy teams to buy better players, which I see as a potential problem in the football industry. If inflation keeps increasing the way that it has been recently, then there might be a huge change in the business of the European leagues in order to keep things fair. How do you believe that can be done? Do you believe there is a way to handle the increasing inflation rates of the players?
I think that it is hard to control the amount of money that teams are paying for players, especially when you have a few teams that just continue to get stronger and wealthier, while other teams get weaker. To be completely honest, I'm not sure how the European leagues would be able to control this. I think that eventually, it will just be too late because many teams will have gone bankrupt while others have complete monopolies over the stronger players.
ReplyDeleteMarguerite --
DeleteI agree, finding a way to even out the playing fields, economicall and physically, is a hard task to accomplish and may never be done. However one solution to the problem has been an increase in the academies for young boys to become a "home grown" asset for their regions team.
I think that at some point UEFA is going to have to put a salary cap in place. WIth a salary cap in place it will make the weaker teams competitive against the big market teams. Obviously this is a little extreme and would take a lot of time to adjust, but I truly believe this is the only to make teams play on an even field.
ReplyDelete- Cory