I just wanted to clarify something for those who may visit this site in the wake of the David Beckham news. There seems to be quite a bit of confusion about his contract. I wanted to clarify that the MLS and AEG will NOT be paying him $250 million dollars a year to play soccer for the MLS (thanks to It’s a Simple Game for pointing this out). He will receive something on the order of $10 million dollars a year to step on the field and play soccer for the Galaxy. Even more importantly, MLS will only be paying $400,000 of that. AEG has to pony up the rest. The other 200 million odd dollars comes from sponsorships, i.e. Pepsi, Gillette, etc, paying for the right to use his image in their advertisements (as a side note, currently Real Madrid gets 50% of those fees, so he will be getting a pay raise after leaving Madrid). I’m not quite sure why everyone if focusing on the $250 million number. For instance, when A-Rod signed his obscene contract, it was reported only as the amount he gets for stepping on the field. They didn’t lump in the worth of his endorsements, did they (did they? Am I missing something?)? At least this Sports Illustrated article gets it straight:
Beckham’s playing contract falls well short of the big deals signed in Major League Baseball, where Alex Rodriguez is being paid $252 million and Derek Jeter $189 million, both over 10 years.
With all this information in hand, I feel better about the whole Beckham situation. MLS takes little financial risk (most of it is on Phil Anschultz and AEG) and gets a players that will raise the profile of the league. Hopefully tons of fans will come out to see Beckham at his away games, and maybe a small percentage of them will realize ‘Hey, this is a great game, Becks or no Becks. I wanna come back next week!’. One other concern is that the MLS will be seen as the retirement home for European players. While I agree this is a risk, I think we all need to keep in mind it was only 7 short months ago that Beckham was captain of the English National Team. Washed up, I think not, but it all depends on how seriously Beckham approaches the game here in the US.
Finally, as a DC United fan, having Beckham on the LA Galaxy will make their failures all the more enjoyable.
A reason the endorsement number gets mentioned with the wage is that in European soccer, clubs controls image and endorsement rights of their players. And because there are so many governing bodies and no collective bargaining agreement like in US major sports, those endorsement terms have to be negotiated every time a player joins a new club.
That makes sense, but I am wondering why the US media is including the endorsements amount when they don’t typically do that.
I’ve decided to finally break my silence. Bobby and John have been doing such a good job running the site I figured I’d stand by and read like everyone else does…. if you believe that one I’ll tell you another.
I’d figure I’d start my comeback with a different comment then usual……. Should we thank Tom Cruise for Becks coming to LA?
The link on the bottom is to an article that says “Beckham said yesterday a late-night phone chat with the “Mission: Impossible” star helped seal his decision to move stateside.” Katie is also trying to convert them to Scientology…….
This isn’t the typical soccer related thought but I figured I’d jump back into things with a comment that demonstrates how people influencing American soccer aren’t the ones you’d normally suspect.
http://nydailynews.com/front/story/488357p-411202c.html