The Neymar Conspiracy 🕸 🇸🇦
Plus Fabrizio Romano defeats Elon Musk and Chelsea are under investigation.
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For years it felt like Neymar was at the centre of some huge conspiracy.
No matter what problem you had with modern football, from high transfer fees and wages to player power and excessive diving, most threads of blame seemed to eventually converge on Neymar.
His €222m move to Paris, a record that has yet to be broken, is always held up as the main reason behind the rampant transfer inflation of recent years.
As impressive as that remains, Neymar isn’t done there. The Brazilian has gone and broken another record.
With his €90m move from Paris to Al-Hilal, Neymar has now been involved in €400m worth of transfers over his career. This absolutely destroys the previous record held by Romelu Lukaku (€333m).
What makes this more impressive is the fact that Neymar only needed three transfers to reach this amount. His average per transfer is €133m. The only person to beat that average is Kylian Mbappé (€180m from his sole transfer to PSG).
But that isn’t even the most impressive part of this transfer.
According to some unverified reports online, Neymar will receive:
$100m+ per season
A 25-bedroom house with staff
Several cars including a Lamborghini Huracán
Access to a private plane
$80k+ bonus for every Al-Hilal win
$500k+ for every post on Instagram about Saudi Arabia
Neymar is certainly maximising the return on his final years as a footballer and Saudi Arabia is cleverly utilising his star image to increase its profile.
This isn’t limited to the country’s footballing ambitions. Saudi Arabia wants to market itself as a holiday destination. What better way to do this than get one of the most famous men on the planet to live there and take some photos?
🐦 Fabrizio Romano Defeats Elon Musk
Talking of transfers. There is another name that always comes to mind at this time of year…Fabrizio Romano.
His classic ‘Here We Go’ tweets announcing recent player movements are some of the most trusted on the internet and have earned the Italian journalist an 18m strong audience on Twitter.
While it may have felt like his influence was limited to the football bubble, it turns out that bubble is a little bigger than expected.
According to Notus, Romano is actually the most influential person on Twitter.
His transfer tweets earn him a ‘social capital’ score of 4.4 billion, almost double that of Twitter overlord Elon Musk.
Social Capital is a metric created by Notus and represents how much influence an individual has based on who, how, and when others engage with them.
Several of Romano’s top tweets have 300k+ likes and 30m+ impressions. According to Notus, Romano earns up to $86k per month from Twitter’s new creator revenue sharing scheme (these figures are estimates and not confirmed).
Perhaps what is helping Romano’s rise is the content of his tweets. In recent years, people have become obsessed with football transfers. The drama associated with these big-money moves almost acts as a replacement for the footballing action that is missing during the summer. Romano’s position as the most trusted name in the space makes him the obvious go-to account for filling that demand.
But why take our word for it? Why not just ask the man himself…
👕 Chelsea Shirt Deal Under Investigation
In the movies, a character professing that everything is right with the world is usually followed by a series of unfortunate events that culminate in a gruesome death or some sort of embarrassing failed romance (sometimes both).
In the world of football, there is one club that is fulfilling this movie trope beautifully…Chelsea.
Last week, we confidently expressed that Chelsea had ended their search for a shirt sponsor by signing with Infinite Athlete. Just days later, it was revealed that the deal was being investigated by the Premier League for links to the team’s owners.
There are a few interesting things going on here:
Infinite Athlete has a fund called Silver Lake as an investor. Silver Lake also has investments in a fund owned by Todd Boehly.
Infinite Athlete has pledged $50m to Chelsea despite an estimated annual turnover of $15m.
This has led some to ask whether Chelsea’s owners are actually the ones behind the sponsorship deal. Having investment from your owner’s company is not illegal, but the value of the deal cannot exceed the ‘fair market value.’
This is determined by third-party analysis and it remains to be seen if the proposed terms will qualify.
This appears to have delayed Chelsea from putting the company logo onto the new home shirt that was worn against Liverpool in the league and has just gone on sale without any logo.
While some argue that the shirt looks better without sponsorship, from a commercial perspective this is a disaster. The more games that Chelsea play with that valuable real estate blank the less money they can effectively demand from the sponsors.
Also, it isn’t a great look when attempting to convince new players and sponsors that everything is running smoothly within the club.
💰 Who is the Most Sponsored Footballer?
A new report into sponsorship within football has come out with some pretty interesting revelations.
According to the European Football Report 2022-23:
Premier League clubs average the most sponsorship deals at 60 active partnerships per club.
Newcastle United and Leeds were the clubs with the most partnerships in Europe.
Coca-Cola is actually the most active brand in football with 47 partnerships across the top-five leagues.
Tottenham’s Son Heung-min is the most sponsored athlete with 33 deals, beating Neymar (31 deals), Messi (30 deals), Ronaldo (23 deals), and Ochoa (21 deals).
👟 Harry Kane has just signed a lifetime deal with Skechers!
Perhaps we are just too caught up in the traditional Nike, Adidas, and Puma bubble, but Skechers is certainly not what we expected.
Now that Kane's new home is so close to the Alps, maybe he was looking for appropriate footwear to do some mountain walking 🤔?
In all seriousness, Skechers appears to be making a play for football. Kane will wear the company’s first football boots, SKX_01, which will be released in September. Let’s see what the partnership has in store for Kane, Skechers, and the fans.
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