Because football is a massive and booming business, it is easy to see why clubs sometimes sell or transfer players. However, sometimes transfers can be the most expensive part of the sport. Below we discuss the top five most expensive football transfers and how football manages to be lucrative.

How Football Became a Business

Football is an entertaining and competitive game that dates back to the 19th century. Although the 19th century was when modern football was first introduced, the concept of football dates back to the 12th century.

In 2022, the global football market was worth US$ 3.2 Billion. This figure is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 4% from 2023 to 2028. By 2028, the football market is expected to reach US$ 4.0 Billion.

While the figures are undoubtedly impressive, football didn’t start as a billion-dollar market. There was a time in history when the interest in football was waning.

Although football existed as early as the 1300s, modern football was created in the mid-19th century. In those days, players were paid stipends compared to football salaries today. In fact, in the 1885-86 season, players were paid around £1 a week.

Things got better when TVs took an interest in the game. It started in 1960 when ITV paid the Football League £150,000 to air 26 games. This was quickly followed by BBC Sport, who also paid a modest amount to show air football matches. This money was usually divided between all 92 football league clubs.

However, things quickly turned around when Sky Television was interested in airing football matches. Noticing this, the top 22 clubs in the Football League separated from the league at the end of the 1992-1993 season. They formed the FA Premier League and arranged their television deals.

The Growth of Football as a Lucrative Business

Soon after the 22 leagues broke away to form the Premier League, they signed a whopping £304 million deal with Sky Television. This deal was for the live televised coverage of 60 Premier League games over the next five years. This marked the beginning of the growth of football as a business.

In 1993, the UEFA changed the format of the European Cup and renamed it the European Champions League. Soon, over a few years, there was an inrush of talented footballers from other countries. These players, including Gianfranco Zola, Ruud Gullit, Roberto Di Matteo, and Thierry Henry, came to play in the Premier league. As the influx of talented players increased, so did the payment requirements for player transfers.

Player Transfers in Football

The concept of player transfer was first introduced in England after The Football Association (FA). Before that, players could choose to play matches for any football club.

In football, a transfer involves the movement of one player from one club to the other. During this movement, the previous contract is terminated, and the player accepts a new contract from the new club.

According to a sports governing body, a player can only be transferred during a transfer window. A transfer window is when a country’s football clubs can recruit new players from other national leagues.

The transfer window is a registration period given by the global governing body, FIFA. It has a deadline during which deals and players’ registration can be completed.

Transfer window dates vary from country to country, depending on their seasons. For example, the Premier League transfer windows vary from that of Major League Soccer (MLS).

To facilitate this transfer, the ‘buying’ club pays a negotiated fee to the club that owns the player’s current contract. This fee is determined by a range of factors, including:

• The perceived quality or abilities of the football player
• The player’s future potential
• Current contract length
• Amount of salary owned
• Footballer’s commercial value

The Most Expensive Football Transfers Ever

Football transfers can be extremely expensive. They can be so expensive that they cost hundreds of millions. Below are the top five most costly football player transfers in the game’s history.

Neymar to PSG

Neymar is popularly known as the football player with the most expensive transfer in football history. His transfer from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain in 2017 cost a whopping €222 million (£200 million). Before Neymar’s transfer, Paul Pogba set the record in 2016 with a transfer worth €105 million.

Needless to say, Neymar easily set an all-time high record. Since that transfer ended the Brazilian player’s four-year stay in Camp Nou, no other transfer has come close.

Kylian Mbappe to PSG

PSG once again closed a jaw-dropping transfer deal, this time snatching Kylian Mbappe. This case of football transfer was famous for how expensive it was. However, it was also well-known as the first case of a “loan with an option to buy”

Kylian Mbappe was transferred from Monaco to the French team for €170 million in 2017. After the deal, he made headlines for being the most expensive teenager in football.

Phillipe Coutinho to Barcelona

In 2018, Coutinho transferred from Liverpool to Barcelona. His transfer was only a few months after Dembélé’s.

Phillipe Coutinho’s deal was worth €120 million. However, several variables in the contract raised the price to an impressive €135 million.

Ousmane Dembélé to Barcelona

Ousmane Dembélé kickstarted his professional football career in 2015. In 2017, Barcelona paid €135 million to Borussia Dortmund for Dembélé’s transfer. Although the base fee for the transfer was €105 million, bonus fees quickly increased to €135 million.

Joao Félix to Atletico

Before his transfer, Joao Félix played for Benfica. In 2019, Atletico Madrid bought Félix from Benfica for an impressive €126 million. However, after adding the solidarity €1.2 million payment to Porto, the transfer fee totalled €127.2 million.

Following this transfer, Joao Félix held the title of the second teenage footballer with the highest transfer fee.

Other Expensive Football Transfers

Some other expensive footballer transfers include:

How Does Football Make Money?

With football clubs splashing hundreds of millions on players, it is easy to wonder how football makes money. Football is an extremely popular sport with numerous means of making money. These include:

• Stadium naming rights
• TV deals
• Sponsorships
• Games and memorabilia
• Attendance and events

Stadium Naming Rights

Traditionally, stadiums are named after the cities they were founded in. However, big companies quickly discovered an ingenious way to gain exposure by getting stadium naming rights.

Companies soon started paying for their names to be mentioned during games. In 2004, the football team Arsenal closed a £100 million deal with Emirates Airlines for naming rights on their stadium for 15 years.

TV Deals

TV deals remain a great way for football teams to make money. In 2016 the Premier League signed a deal for £10.4 billion distributed amongst the league’s clubs. Out of this sum, £5.3 billion was to broadcast live matches.

Sponsorships

Major brands use clubs and players as an advertisement. They sign payment deals with winning clubs/teams and have the team represent them. Teams do this by printing the brand’s name on their jersey.

Games and Memorabilia

Thanks to the mass of football fans there are today, games and memorabilia are other streams of revenue. Football games are highly-popular and purchased in the video game sector. Fans also purchase football merchandise, such as jerseys and other sporting apparel, from their favourite clubs.

Attendance and Events

Football games pull large crowds, generating revenue for the clubs/teams playing. For example, Paris Saint-Germain made €132 million in matchday revenue in the 2021/22 season.

Final Thoughts

Football is a highly lucrative business that generates millions in revenue yearly. This revenue is amassed from various income streams and explains how teams can afford expensive player transfers.

Although player transfers can be extremely expensive, it is essential to note that the prices usually vary for players. However, as a rule of thumb, the more valuable the player, the more expensive the transfer fee is.

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For example, on the casino website braziliancasinoonline.com real money is wagered, won and lost in the same way as in a physical casino. To play at an online casino, you must be of legal age and in a location where online gambling is legal, and always do so responsibly.

However, there is still a healthy skepticism about online casinos and whether they can be trusted. Some fears are justified, and some can be dispelled by understanding how online casinos work, how they are regulated, how games are developed, and how your money is handled. Using the best online casinos and understanding how they work, you will be able to dispel all your doubts. In this article, we will talk about how to bet on sports in an online casino. This includes which games you can play and how they work, how to activate the signup bonus, and some key gameplay differences when playing online.

Legality, licensing and regulation

As in any other industry where money changes hands, careful regulation is necessary to avoid exploitation of one or both parties against the state. The online gambling industry has strict rules that apply differently depending on which country you are in. If you are wondering if online gambling is legal in your country, you should first make sure of this before entering into a contract with an online casino.

You should look into the issue of casino licensing before you register with one. Just like in a real casino, you can win real money. If an online casino is not fully licensed or licensed by an unknown licensing authority, you could lose all your winnings. If an online player has a complaint about an online casino, they file it with the regulatory body. The respectability and location of this regulatory body may determine whether anything is done.

Working with online casino

Once you have done your research and found out that online gambling is legal in your area, the next step is to choose the best online casino to play. There are many sites that offer online casino reviews. These reviews will help you understand what each online casino has to offer in terms of support, bonuses, games and mobile apps. When you choose a casino where you want to bet on sports, you can also get a gift from the casino in the form of the best bonus in online casinos in Brazil.

Once you have made your choice of an online casino, you will generally follow the following four steps:

• Create your account;
• Load your bankroll;
• Choose a game;
• Place a bet on the outcome of the game.

When creating an account, you will be asked to provide identification documents, proof of address and bank details. It is important to make sure that your information is encrypted by the online casino so that it is not available to third parties. All the best online casinos have software to encrypt their players’ data.

Operations with a deposit

In the past, online casinos and players were forced to be creative in order to circumvent the legality of gambling in regions where it was banned. To do this, many casinos have created payment processors to process payments between players and the casino. Naturally, this is risky, and in areas where online gambling is legal, this is not necessary. The best online casinos will allow you to use Visa and MasterCard for payments. Once your account is registered, you will upload money to your account. Typically, this is part or all of your bankroll. Your bankroll is the amount of money you have set aside for use in gambling.

Bankroll management is an important part of making money and not losing it while gambling. It includes knowing how to bet, when to exit the game and what type of buy-in you should pay. You have to be extremely careful about how you use your bankroll, otherwise you may lose much more money than you originally intended. This is part of responsible gambling and is essential to enjoying the game. Once you have added your bank details and deposited money, you are ready to play. You will then browse through the games offered by the online casino. Most online casinos do not create their own games. Games are created by software companies that rent them out to casinos.

This is beneficial for the players for two reasons. First, it means that the game maker gets an incentive to create a game that is trustworthy and fair. The quality of the game is checked and it must be above the competition. Secondly, casinos cannot rig games, which they would not want to do anyway, since they do not have direct access to the game software.

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The oldest records of sports betting date back more than 2,000 years. The ancient Greeks were passionate about sports and created the Olympic Games. The first records of betting were made as the Olympics started to travel. From the Greeks, it spread to the Romans, who enjoyed wagering on gladiator games. Furthermore, the Romans were the first to legalize sports betting. Gambling has continued to spread all over the world since then. It was during medieval times that the church attempted to prevent the pastime by passing laws forbidding it. After this, gambling was forced to go underground, but it only made it grow bigger and spread faster.

The origin of modern sports betting is primarily from horse racing. In the early 18th century, betting on horses became popular in the UK. Two-horse races became common again. By the late 19th century, countries like the United States, Canada, and New Zealand had formally established laws to govern gambling. Europe, however, has remained one of the largest markets.

Interesting facts about American sports betting

• As it was mentioned before, modern sports betting started with horse racing. And in the 1890s, more than 300 horse-racing tracks had been built all over America.
• In 1910, gambling in the United States became illegal.
• 1919 was the year of the Black Sox scandal, when eight members of the Chicago White Sox were charged with intentionally losing the series.
• Nevada legalized gambling, including betting on sports, in 1931. For decades, the state’s casinos have been the only places in the United States in which it is legal to place a sports bet.
• In 1951, the federal government imposed a 10 percent tax on the money brought in by legal sports gambling outside of Nevada.
• On September 13th, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed the Federal Wire Act, which prohibited the use of wire communications for interstate sports gambling. This was an attempt to limit bookmaking by organized crime groups. The law is seen as the reason sports gambling is under the purview of states and not the federal government.
• 1975 saw the opening of the first sportsbook inside a Las Vegas casino at the Union Plaza.
• Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal opened a sportsbook at the Stardust in 1976, which will become the prototype of sportsbooks to come. Robert De Niro played a character based on Rosenthal in the 1995 movie “Casino.”
• In 1983, the federal government reduced its tax on Nevada’s legal sports bets to 0.25 percent, where it remains today.
• In 1992, President George H. W. Bush signed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which outlaws sports gambling in states that do not already have laws allowing it. Nevada will become the only state with legal sports gambling.
• In 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. This law says that companies can’t accept payments for a bet or wager that involves the use of the Internet.
• The Supreme Court struck down PASPA in 2018, ruling that the law is not “consistent with the Constitution” and that states are free to establish their sports gambling laws lacking a federally regulated system.
• DraftKings became the first online sportsbook outside of Nevada in 2018, taking its first bets over the internet in New Jersey.
• In 2021, legal sports gambling brought in $4.33 billion in revenue.

Today’s sports betting

Since the popularity of sports gambling has increased, so has the number of events that people can wager on. With the advances in technology, betting with online bookmakers has become a new thing. People have the possibility to place a bet on different sports, events, virtual and esports etc. As the number of betting options grew, so did the process of placing a bet. There is no longer a need to hunt for a bookie. The ability to place bets is now available via online sportsbooks. People can watch sports matches and place bets online from the comfort of their homes. They can also do it with a mobile device. The internet enables gamblers to compare odds and market conditions between sportsbooks. With a minimum deposit, both in online casinos and bookmaker offices, everyone gets a chance to earn some profit.

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Cristiano needed a refreshment without leaving the pitch. At this point, the cameraman kept the Portuguese star in the frame. Being in the Ghanaian penalty area, Ronaldo, who was not actively involved in the episode at that moment, because the goalkeeper fixed the ball, was looking for something in his underpants for a few seconds, and then chewed on the run and continued to play.

Recall, November 24, Portugal defeated the national team of Ghana 3-2. Ronaldo converted a penalty in the 65th minute and became the first player in history to score in five World Cups.

Cristiano Ronaldo (full name: Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro) – the greatest player of modern soccer, played for clubs Sporting (Portugal), Manchester United (England), Real Madrid (Spain), Juventus (Italy), for the national team of Portugal, who set a dozen records.

His record is full of the most beautiful goals, awards and titles. Among them – the victory in the European Championship, the UEFA Nations League, a record five victories in the Champions League, as well as five awards for the best footballer of the year in Europe “Golden Ball” and four awards for the best striker of the European Championships “Golden Boot”.

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Slopestyle: women

The women in slopestyle were the first on the most difficult track of Laksa. The conditions were perfect, the sun was shining – nothing prevented each athlete to give her best today.
Every year it becomes more and more exciting to watch women snowboarding, especially when the industry is driven by such monster-talented riders as Anna Gasser. In addition to her rides, the audience waited for a performance by rising star from Australia, Tess Coady.
As events unfolded, Coady dominated every stage. Scoring her best time on her first attempt, the 21-year-old came to the victory lap confidently, beautifully, and with a clear desire to hold on to her lead. Beginning with a textbook Cab 180 to Backside 360 on the bottom rail, she finished with a magnificent Double Cork 1080 on the second ramp. Cody improved on her first attempt with a score of 86.18, her highest score of the day.

Slopestyle: men

The men’s slopestyle final delighted with a series of the brightest performances in the career of up-and-coming American riders. Sean Fitzsimmons, 21, took first place, landing the Back-to-Back Triple 1440 with a score of 80.91. That result was enough to edge out Stole Sandbeck with 80.43 points and Leon Fokensperger, who scored 71.05 in the final seconds of his performance.
Sharing the podium with Fitzsimmons and Sandbeck was their compatriot Jake Kanter with a score of 74.76. Kanter overcame the terrible excitement of his fall on his first attempt and had his most spectacular performance of the day. American Brock Crouch, with a score of 73.88, finished fourth.

Halfpipe: women

The giant halfpipe on Mount Crap Zone Gion in Laxa is known for the fact that riders here demonstrate a prohibitive level of tricks, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in this sport. And this year was no exception.
Reigning Laax Open champion Chloe Kim rushed into action. She advanced to the women’s halfpipe finals with an impressive combination of Method Air, Switch 900 and Back-to-Back 1080. The American halfpipe star scored a 90.25 and won her sixth straight contest victory since returning to action last year.

Halfpipe: men

The men’s final was full of surprises: many top riders made landing mistakes, making way for veterans Jan Scherrer and Sean White. But despite White’s unexpected return to the top echelon of snowboarding, the winner in Laxa was the hopeful Japanese athlete Ayumu Hirano.
Laxa is home to the world’s largest halfpipe.

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While the mechanics prepare the bikes, participants can walk the course to check for changes since the last race. Usually it can be completed twice, once a day. Riders memorize the fastest route and keep in mind that the course may change dramatically due to the weather and the racers’ passing.
Route or obstacle technique can make or break a race. Of course, the fastest bikes ride in a straight line, but downhill is not just a way to find the fastest and straightest way down. Taking a turn on the inside radius may shorten the distance, but the competitor will lose speed compared to taking a turn on the outside radius. The trick is to successfully balance both. At speed. Flying down the hill.

Time training

Each bike is equipped with a timed transmitter. During this workout, the athlete can set a time and complete the entire distance. No points are awarded for this, but the practice can turn into a fun game of “who gets where and in what time.
Participants often stop and start their descent again to determine the best path for themselves – and it’s a great chance for all the fans to see their favorite idols up close.

Start order

Competitors start according to their position in the UCI World Cup rankings and set the time of the race, which will determine the order in which they appear in the starting gate on race day. The advantages of starting first or last is that you know exactly what result you should improve.
Not many points are awarded for this race, but in a high-density competition they can determine first or second place.
The weather can also affect the race – over the years we have seen the best of the best show the worst time just because of weather conditions. It’s good to pass the course while it’s still in acceptable condition, but it’s pure luck.

Race day

The big day. Usually there is practice in the morning, with most competitors just taking off for the start of the course to warm up before the main action begins.
There is a “hot seat” at the finish line, where the current leader stays until his or her time is beaten by a more fortunate competitor. Competitor results can be a total mess, but sometimes the very first ones are not easy to beat, such as the result of Aron Gwin in 2015, who was twenty-first after qualifying.

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The format

Downhill is easy to understand: athletes take turns on the track and the winner is the one who showed the best time of the race. The order in which they appear at the start is determined by the qualifying run, according to the results of which the last to start is the one with the best time.

Downhill is won by whoever can get down the mountain as fast as possible. It’s not as easy as you might think to complete a downhill course. Today’s downhill courses are very dangerous and challenging. They abound with “twists” of jumps between trees, piles of rocks, winding sections, steep descents. For downhill skiing you need a fairly serious training of the athlete. The most important is to have the bike control on the top, although one should not forget about the physical preparation, as after 5 minutes of downhill most athletes just fall off the legs. The average speed on the competition downhill – 36 km / h, the maximum – 60 km / h. Height difference on the track is about 80 meters.

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