Professor Rob Wilson, Director of Executive Education at University Campus of Football Business is one of the leading experts in sports finance. With a PhD exploring the factors that drive financial performance in professional team sports, Dr. Wilson has become a go-to voice in understanding the complex intersection of money in sport.
Speaking Exclusively to BoyleSports, Wilson offers his insight about the financial incentives at the FIFA Club World Cup and how it will incentivise some sides more than others. He argues that the competition could be crucial for emerging football markets but fears that the financial gap could widen across the globe if the competition isn’t competitive.
Balancing Prize-Money And Player Welfare
For a club like Chelsea, the prize money is game-changing in terms of their PSR calculation, Manchester City less so, but it's still important.
I think any club, particularly from a regulated marketplace, so anyone in Europe that's under UEFA regulations for instance if you've got upwards of a hundred million dollars plus in prize money then that is naturally very attractive, I think the big challenge for all of those teams is going to be getting players up for participating in the competition when they are technically out of season.
You’ve got an interesting dynamic there around the kind of pursuit of prize money, the extra games, the impact that will potentially have on next season's domestic competitions and European competitions in our context. Welfare, player loading, all of that stuff will naturally bring some pressure.
So what you could see is some of those European teams doing well but earning the money and then having to go out and buy players to make their squads bigger so they can cope with the domestic league next season. So it will kind of end up as a bit of a vicious circle I think.
Sundowns Chance At Stardom
That tells its own story, So for a team like Mamelodi Sundowns who are a relatively unknown quantity and certainly an unknown commercial proposition playing in a tournament this can be transformative to their own commercial profile.
They need one high-profile win or one high-profile performance and that will be worth several years of domestic revenue. So you can kind of through participation in one tournament protect your revenue streams for a long, long time. It also enables them to showcase their best talent which then helps them potentially export that talent and then attract sponsorship into South African football.
So, really quite a significant situation. And, to go into the dynamics of why the Club World Cup could be a really positive experience is exactly for some teams like that that will get much bigger international exposure.
Messi Back To Argentina?
Absolutely. I think South American football is starting to increase in popularity on the global stage mainly because of a lot of the exports that have been coming from there and some of the young playing talent.
So there's something quite poetic about a player like Lionel Messi potentially going back to Argentina to play and it absolutely improves the legitimacy of those teams as viable opportunities if they're able to participate and compete with some of the better teams on a world stage.
It’s a great opportunity for Argentinian football in general.
Ronaldo Is A “Commercial Machine”
What we know about Cristiano Ronaldo is that he is a commercial machine. So, you're not going to be able to sign Ronaldo on a cheap deal. This is going to cost a lot of money. For those kinds of, let's call them smaller teams from some of those emerging nations or those areas that are perhaps not as heavily broadcast, I think it makes it really difficult.
There is a lot of talk in Saudi about him potentially staying there but going into a different club on a short-term basis. There's something poetic about him and Lionel Messi potentially playing in this tournament together.
There is something poetic about Ronaldo playing in this tournament because of his kind of global footprint and where he's been playing for the last 20 years or so. But I think Ronaldo will be looking at the next couple of years and thinking actually you miss out on one tournament but you're able to maximize earnings elsewhere.
I think that's probably higher up his list of priorities but who knows, I don't know him personally. His ego might be such that he wants to absolutely play and he's looking for a club that he thinks might be able to win.
FIFA Need Marquee Names!
That's what's nailed it. So it highlights the dependency that FIFA have on marquee names for the success and critically the legitimacy of the tournament itself.
Without those leading world names, you could argue that it lacks that sporting credibility. We know that star power attracts social media activity. It engages new breeds of fans.
What FIFA should be concentrating on is making sure that the sporting side of the tournament makes it an interesting proposition rather than just the players that might be playing within it because they can't control that.
Football’s Wealth Gap
I think what you'll find is a few clubs leaving with those eight-figure payouts and enhancing global brand equity and then others that will leave with perhaps even a little bit of debt and an awful lot of fatigue.
It's another chapter in that kind of polarization of global football finance, isn't it. I think that's what it will ultimately do for the European teams. It's a great opportunity to help with FSR on a UEFA level which is why it's really interesting.
For some of those smaller teams with much smaller budgets while the prize money can be transformative their opportunity to compete is much less so.
Fixture Congestion Is A Problem
Absolutely. I think you'd probably argue that's already happening as well. So, clubs get pushed to choose between those kinds of opportunities to grow their fan base and then protect the squad.
It goes back to player welfare. The Club World Cup really adds to that layering of fixture congestion, the conflict between clubs and governing bodies and international federations. You could absolutely see a slow start to the season for some of these teams.
We always see it, don't we, when there's a major national tournament on, it takes those clubs a bit of time. They'll often rest some of their players so that the August fixtures become a little bit of a damp squib. When actually the domestic broadcasters want it to be really, full throttle and exciting.
Fixture congestion is a problem, but while there is a transfer marker and players keep demanding more and more in their paychecks, this will go on.
Club World Cup Trumps Messi for MLS Growth
Pivotal I'd say. It’s really important in the context of the World Cup and of the development of the US game. What we know about the US market is that those consumers bring with them quite a high level of disposable income because of their fandom and the way they consume sport, but they also bring a lot of digital engagement opportunities as well.
So, we've seen it with things like the UFC Fight Pass and how they kind of operationalize and magnetise and amplify the NFL and the NBA.
From a US market perspective, and I would say this about the MLS and the USL, clubs aren't just targeting bums on seats in those stadiums, they're also targeting the kind of eyeballs on the screens, the wallets of those fans and also future commercial sponsors and partners.
I think it's hugely important for the development of the US game, almost more so than the signing of Messi was a couple of years ago.
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