The Unbelievable Money Game: How Footballers Really Get Paid

It’s common knowledge that footballers make a lot of money, but the true scope of their earnings—and the complex ways they get paid—is mind-boggling. The average Premier League footballer’s salary now sits at over £65,000 a week. Yet, that’s just the starting point. Star players like Cole or Jude earn more, but even their massive salaries can be considered “mid-tier” when we look at the whole picture.

Salary is only one piece of the puzzle. Bonuses, image rights, and ridiculous contract clauses often make up a sizable portion of a player’s total haul. I’m Ebuka, I’m here to break down the ridiculous economics of the beautiful game and help you become 1% more informed.

Beyond the Weekly Wage: A Look at the Payslip

When a player is an employee of a club, a large chunk of their income is processed just like any other job—with a payslip and deductions.

The Tax Man Always Gets Paid

In the UK, footballers fall into the highest income tax bracket, meaning 45% of their earnings go to tax. A leaked payslip from former Manchester City player Carlos Tevez shows this clearly. In one month, he was paid over £720,000, which loosely equates to a £180,000 per week salary. His massive tax deduction serves as a reminder: for all the talk about their wages, professional footballers are huge taxpayers within a given economy.

Performance, Loyalty, and Luxury: The Bonus Bonanza

Contract bonuses are where things get spicy, often resulting in additional line items on a payslip. These incentives range from standard to truly unique:

• Goal and Clean Sheet Bonuses: Liverpool’s Mo Salah reportedly earns an extra £2.5 million if he achieves more than 35 goals or assists in a season. Meanwhile, his former teammate Virgil van Dijk allegedly nets £750,000 if the team keeps 22 clean sheets in a season.

• Team Performance Incentives: Former professional goalkeeper Ben Foster revealed that when he played for Wrexham, the team was promised a £100,000 bonus for achieving promotion.

• Loyalty Payments: These are designed to reward a player for seeing out their entire contract. The highest-profile example involved Kylian Mbappé and Paris Saint-Germain, who fought over an €80 million loyalty bonus when he eventually moved to Real Madrid. Mbappé won the case and got paid.

What the Hell Are Image Rights?

This is where a player’s income stream often separates from a standard employment payslip, as money may be paid directly into a business on the player’s behalf.

Image rights are simply the rights to a player’s name, likeness, voice, and signature. Initially, the player owns 100% of these rights, but the club negotiates a percentage during contract talks.

The Real Madrid Model

The most notorious negotiator in this space is Florentino Pérez at Real Madrid. His historical policy states that if you play for the club, you give up 50% of your image rights unless they are clearly separate from club activities.

Pérez’s simple theory? Playing for Real Madrid increases a player’s global profile so much that it’s worth the 50% split. Both the club and the player are incentivized to boost the player’s image, aligning perfectly with the club’s “Galáctico” philosophy. So, if Jude Bellingham signs a £2 million deal with a company like Beats by Dre under a 50/50 agreement, half of that money goes to Real Madrid. Every top player is happy to agree to this, though Cristiano Ronaldo did manage to negotiate a slightly better 60-40 split when he arrived in 2009.

Playing the Tax Game: The Overseas Loophole

The most lucrative tax setup for a footballer is in the Middle East. Most Emirati regions are exempt from income tax altogether. This means the 45% Carlos Tevez paid in Manchester, he would keep in the Middle East.

However, taking advantage of this requires strict adherence to international law.

A player must stay out of the UK for a full tax year before they can benefit from overseas tax exemptions. Given the UK tax year runs from April to April, and transfer windows are in summer and January, a player who leaves in July must wait for the current tax year to end and then complete a full tax year abroad. This often means they cannot return to the UK for a short visit or transfer for nearly two years without facing a hefty tax bill.

Jordan Henderson learned this the hard way. He left Liverpool for Saudi Arabia in the summer of 2023 but returned just six months later in January 2024. To keep his tax exemption, he would have had to remain outside the UK until April 2025. Signing for Ajax in the Netherlands allowed him to continue earning a high salary outside the UK, strongly suggesting he was ensuring he got the “bag” by playing the long game with his tax obligations.

The Wildest Way to Get Paid

Beyond the salary, bonuses, and image rights, some players have negotiated truly unique and valuable assets into their contracts.

David Beckham and the MLS Empire

When David Beckham signed with LA Galaxy, he was famously offered the right to buy an MLS expansion team for a mere $25 million. He later exercised this right, forming Inter Miami. Forbes now values the club at over a billion dollars, making Beckham’s upfront contract right one of the greatest payment methods in sports history.

The Bizarre Contract Clauses

Finally, some contract demands are just purely fun—or ridiculous:

• Neymar’s Barcelona contract reportedly included a clause allowing eight of his friends to fly into Barcelona to party and watch him play.

• Ronaldinho’s Flamengo contract allegedly included a contractual allowance to go out and party twice a week, regardless of the team’s schedule.

• Troy Deeney’s contract extension with Watford was a masterclass in personal demands. He successfully negotiated for the club to remove speed bumps from the car park so his sports car wouldn’t get scraped, as well as securing two director’s car parks and multiple executive boxes for his friends and family.

If a player like Troy Deeney can secure demands like removing a speed bump, just imagine what the truly elite players are asking for!

Ultimately, footballers get paid in a huge variety of ways, transforming a high salary into a massive financial ecosystem of bonuses, business deals, and tax strategy.

What’s the most surprising part of a footballer’s pay structure for you: the tax implications, the image rights, or the ridiculous contract clauses?