A lot of people (mainly Utd fans) are saying that Ibra has paid for himself already due to shirt sales and that Pogba is projected to do the same.

I remember a previous thread or discussion on shirt sales and how a lot of it is exaggerated or just plain false. What do you guys think?

Man utd's fans only justification on spending £100mill for the development of their own academy player, but it is a load of tosh.

Honestly not sure what's worse, the utd fans bleating happily over getting him back, or the people rating him world class because he looked slightly above average playing for the best team in one of the weakest leagues in Europe.

http://thesetpieces.com/features/transfer-window-myth-busting/

"Despite the nonsense you may have heard about Zlatan Ibrahimovic shirt sales generating £50 million for Manchester United, which would far exceed his wages, it’s simply not true. In fact, United don’t even automatically receive the 10-15% industry-standard royalty payment, no doubt because the up-front £75 million annual payment is so large. United’s royalty payment only kicks in once a certain number of shirts are sold."

i dont have numbers, but imo shirt sales and huge spendings only get along when you do it for the biggest stars in the game

such as messi, ronaldo....and ibra, who will certainly have huge sales worldwide

Several sources have hinted on various clubs getting ~ 20% of the money they make in shirt sales (but still BEFORE taxes). Real Madrid was among those teams and it seems to me a Top 3 club like them must generally be in a good position whenever it comes to contract negotiations with their respective sportswear brand.
Assuming those 20% are remotely close to reality, it's very unlikely that any player ever has paid for himself (don't forget that there are immediate costs like transfer fees and additional costs like wages for every single player) in shirt sales.
Not even talking about the great names like Messi, Ronaldo, Ibra etc. who probably have contract clauses granting them each a higher percentage of their own shirt sales proftis and thus pulling their clubs' percentage down to less than 20%.

This post was edited by aneas on Aug 8 2016 12:47pm

exaggerated but its no matter

I honestly think you can get more revenue signing an asian player for 1m. The people over there go nuts.

i agree. in europe you're making your calculations in a pretty much saturated market. sure, zlatan's / pogba's shirts might be amongst the most sold but only a fraction of this will realistically be additional revenue generated, most of it will be part of a "budget" the club's fans would have spent either way. so it'll be more zlatan shirts sold but fewer rooney or carrick ones for example...

i thought that whole "the transfer fee and wages are easily made up by shirt sales" myth had been debunked properly already...

i wanted confirmation, preferably through some sort of article containing figures and evidence

the link kbk provided was good

This made more sense 10-15 years ago, when there was so much market to conquer. Now most people in those market countries (mostly in Asia, Australia and US/Canada) have already chosen their team and aren't as likely to jump on a team's wagon and buy their shirt just because of a fancy transfer.

Now it's more like what Fender is saying; most of the people buying a Zlatan/Pogba will buy it at the expense of a Rooney shirt. If this had happened a decade ago it would be different, because many of the people buying those shirts probably wouldn't have bought any (or bought some other club's shirt) if that transfer hadn't been made, as there was still a lot more market to conquer.