Who gets the football transfer fees?
 

The cost of transfer fees is often in the millions.


Who gets the football transfer fees, the footballer. the club?

Re: Who gets the football transfer fees?
 

Depends, it's complicated

the player's agent gets a lot

the club gets some, and in some cases previous clubs get a sell on fee, which helps a little club when they sell a player to a premiership club, when then sell him on for silly money, for example Southampton got some money when Bale went to Real Madrid from Spurs.

The player may or may not get them. If the player is mid contract, and asks for a transfer, then he's not entitled to transfer fee money, however, if it's all done above board properly, and team A approaches team B, and they agree to sell player, then he gets money.

I'm pretty sure brown envelopes are involved so players get money no matter what though ;)

Re: Who gets the football transfer fees?
 

The player, club, agents... It certainly isn't me Ken !
The figures are obscene given the amount of poverty in the World. FIFA should put a cap on transfer fees, if they weren't totally corrupt themselves. No football player is worth more than £30k. Howeverer a nurse or many other worthwhile professions are.

Re: Who gets the football transfer fees?
 

It's strange though, like in America where they have a wage cap so teams can only pay a certain amount, and players have taken cuts to get another well paid player in their team, so the team does well, I suppose in the long run that helps their career if they then win the league, cup, get more sponsorship etc.

A work mate and I had a discussion about best paid US sports, he said it was baseball, I thought no way, would be basketball. Interestingly the top baseball players are on a better salary than the best paid basketball players, however, the sponsorship deals etc of the basketball players are greater than baseball players, i.e. over double their salary so they earn more per year.

I digress, a wage cup in football, would have to be universal, otherwise a lot of the best players would go to the best paying countries, and as you say with FIFA being corrupt, and cost of living varying so much around the world it couldn't work.

TV Networks, Chinese companies etc getting involved with obscene amounts of money as well, who knows if the bubble will burst one day? season ticket prices are expensive for premiership clubs, sports channel subscriptions are high, but a lot of people, some happily, some begrudgingly are still paying them.

Re: Who gets the football transfer fees?
 

Thanks for all your replies and as you say very complicated.

Re: Who gets the football transfer fees?
 

Yep backhanders ones suspects are the norm in the murky world of the transfer market.

Re: Who gets the football transfer fees?
 

There was an interesting documentary on tv a while ago about the rise of replica shirts, and the rise and fall of Admiral, it talked about the deals in hotel rooms etc, I forget who it was, but many years ago, one player did a deal with 2 different boot manufacturers, got to match day, so he wore one brand on the left foot, one on the right! I don't think Nike, Adidas etc could let them get away with that now :)

Re: Who gets the football transfer fees?
 

Football is one of the only "professions" I can think of where the workers get payed more than managment.

It should go back to the old days, where your footballer was the local milkman ....much like many of the lower league players nowdays

Re: Who gets the football transfer fees?
 

Rather lazy emotive analogy. Anyone can train to be a nurse very few are good enough to reach the top in football and they are paid according to the income they bring in, do you really think clubs would give the cash to the poor or make it cheaper for fans or fill the owners pockets, no-one complains when Tom cruise gets 50 million a movie or Richard Branson taking millions in dividends a year but football is different so much so we still discuss wages as weekly pay

---------- Post added at 16:59 ---------- Previous post was at 16:57 ----------

I think the bubble will grow a while yet, streaming will be the future for football and it may dwarf current deals

---------- Post added at 17:05 ---------- Previous post was at 16:59 ----------

Interestingly if the player is out of contract the player receives the equivalent of a transfer fee as a signing on fee sometimes. They also get 10% from selling club providing they haven't requested a transfer and 10% from the buying club if they're under contract. There's also stipulations about buying out your contract if you're older and not playing games like cech did to join arsenal

Re: Who gets the football transfer fees?
 

Sports clubs are a sort of monopoly. They're not like supermarkets where people easily switch any allegiances. This means they can charge over-inflated prices as the product isn't available anywhere else or in any other form.

Re: Who gets the football transfer fees?
 

With some of the transfer fees of £80 million there needs to be a maximum limit of say £1000 on these fees any thing above is taxed at 200%, I know it will never happen as there are too many that want their cut..

Re: Who gets the football transfer fees?
 

The agents get their cut directly from the buying club, separately from the transfer fee. Seems rather perverse that the buying club should be the ones paying them a fee, when the agent is meant to be representing the best interests of the player.