The business of football
Brand, sponsorship and the fan as a consumer.
Drake, Rosalía, the Rolling Stones, Coldplay and now Tyler, the Creator. The Clásico shirt has become music's most coveted showcase, but what Barça sells in the shop is almost symbolic. The value lies elsewhere, and the key piece of the deal — who pays what — has never been told.
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On Tuesday, El Monumental bids farewell to Lionel Messi from the Argentine national team. Behind the emotion lies a bill: for years, much of what the AFA earned abroad was paid for because of him. The question is how much of that money leaves with the number 10.
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Instinct says a club that plays sixty games a year should be worth more than a national team that plays ten. The contracts say otherwise. What a brand buys in each case is not the same merchandise.
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Nike's fall has become ammunition for the culture war. The dates tell a different story: the company hit its peak in 2024, six years after the campaign that supposedly destroyed it. What came next was a distribution and product problem.
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The club has just signed with Nespresso and keeps Spotify on the shirt until 2030. A sponsorship has two values: the money that comes in and what the brand does with that association. The problem is that only one of the two shows up in the accounts.
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The Real Madrid striker's brand switch is not just another boot deal: it reveals who really owns a footballer's image, who bears the risk, and why the traditional fixed sponsorship is starting to disappear at the top of the game.
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Hosting a final barely leaves any direct money for the stadium owner, because ticketing, television and sponsorship belong to UEFA and FIFA. What Barcelona, Madrid and Morocco are really competing for is something else: credibility to pay off their stadiums, public investment and power.
France Football is no longer a magazine that hands out a trophy. It is a trophy that sustains, out of convenience and legitimacy, a magazine that barely turns a profit.
Football regulates to the square centimetre the advertising that can appear on a referee's sleeve, but the only object capable of disallowing a goal has no owner, no official brand, no technical standard. The explanation is not romantic: it is a market problem.
The league phase pushed UEFA revenues above five billion euros, but the commercial success carries a cost that does not appear in the accounts: more inequality between clubs and a calendar pushed to the limit.
A World Cup doesn't sell beer inside stadiums — it sells it in bars across the country in front of a screen. The stadium is the expensive showcase; the real business is at the pub around the corner.
The fan without a ticket has become the most valuable customer in modern sport. The stadium is no longer the business; it is the bait.
