{"id":1053,"date":"2021-04-27T10:21:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-27T08:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/insights.ieseg.fr\/?p=1053"},"modified":"2024-11-06T11:48:22","modified_gmt":"2024-11-06T10:48:22","slug":"top-football-stars-famous-because-theyre-rich-or-rich-because-theyre-famous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insights.ieseg.fr\/en\/resource-center\/management-society\/top-football-stars-famous-because-theyre-rich-or-rich-because-theyre-famous\/","title":{"rendered":"Top football stars: famous because they’re rich, or rich because they’re famous?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Football (known as soccer in the United States) is the most popular sport worldwide with 4 billion fans<\/a>, who consider it a passion and sometimes even a religion. In terms of quality and tradition of the game, Europe is considered by many as the most attractive location for talents, sponsors, investors, and fans. Such success is reflected in the total revenue generated by the top-five European football Leagues (England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain) that reached, in 2020-21, 18.1 billion euros<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that glitters is not gold, however. This upward trend has produced an inflationary effect on salaries of professional players who, contrary to their counterparts in some US professional sports, benefit from the absence of a salary cap. One representative example that recently caused a mix of admiration and outrage was the most recent four-year contract of the football star Lionel Messi, who signed in 2017 an agreement for the huge sum of 555 million euros<\/a>. The costs that professional football clubs must cope with are therefore strongly challenging the sustainability business model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the astronomic salaries of some stars, a question that many observers and fans is ask again and again: do professional football players really deserve what they\u2019re paid?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Popularity and performance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In a March 2021 study<\/a>, carried with the co-authors Alessandro Piazza (Rice University, United States), Fabrizio Castellucci (Bocconi University, Italy) and Cyrus Mohadjer (IESEG School of Management, France), we sought to shed new light on this topic by exploring the existence of potential mismatches between players\u2019 performance and their salaries that are generated by their level of celebrity and status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Based on a dataset of 471 players from the top-five Football European Leagues during two consecutive years (2015\u201316 and 2016\u20132017), our study shows that celebrity (measured via counting and logging how many \u201clikes\u201d each player received by fans on their official public Facebook page) and status (measured via the number of appearances in their national team) have an impact on the relationship between players\u2019 salaries and performance (measured by the score available on the website Whoscored<\/a>). More specifically, the results show that for average performers, being popular (figure 1) and having a high status (figure 2) leads to higher salaries for the same levels of performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 1. Interaction effect between player celebrity and performance. Giangreco et al., 2021, Author provided<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Figure 2. Interaction effect between player status and performance. Giangreco et al., 2021, Author provided<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This suggests that, to maximise their salary, players may try to increase the interest of their profile and popularity through, for example, social media and the press. Indeed, popularity does not depend necessarily on players\u2019 performance, but might be determined by their \u201cpublic\u201d lifestyle, which increases their visibility. These findings on celebrity are particularly relevant not for the best \u201cperformers\u201d, who can still obtain high levels of compensation and visibility, but for more \u201caverage\u201d players who, through the professional management of their social media profiles (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.) could obtain higher compensation. Furthermore, higher visibility for these players might translate in higher revenues for the club (for example through merchandising, advertising and broadcasting rights) and clubs take into consideration not only players\u2019 performance, but also their capacity, as a celebrity, to generate economic revenues in determining salary levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, our results show that having a higher status might \u201cshield\u201d certain footballers from variations in performance. For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n