It's a simple question of arithmetic: Where is Shanghai SIPG going to get the money to pay for Brazil's Oscar? Reported transfer fee for the Brazilian $74 million The Chinese Super League soccer club has agreed on a fee of 60 million pounds ($74 million) to take the 25-year-old midfielder from English Premier League leader Chelsea, according to multiple newspaper reports in the U.K. The transfer may be something of a watershed moment for Europe's top leagues. There have been signs already of the flood of cash washing around Chinese soccer (clubs from the Chinese league were the biggest spenders in the last European winter transfer season, as Gadfly wrote in March). This deal takes the perceived threat to Europe's financial supremacy to a new level. Until now, most top footballers arriving in China to ply their trade were approaching the end of their careers, content to while away their declining years in a league where standards are significantly less demanding than in Europe. Chelsea's Didier Drogba and Nicholas Anelka, for example, had stints at Shanghai SIPG's cross-town rival Shanghai Shenhua when in their 30s (both left early after reports of unpaid wages). Oscar dos Santos Emboaba Jr. is a different case entirely. The player, better known by just his first name, is in his prime: A Brazilian international who scored in the 2014 World Cup semi-final , albeit one who has been stuck on the substitutes' bench at Chelsea recently. Even more striking than the transfer fee is Oscar's salary: At a reported 400,000 pounds a week, he will become the world's highest-paid player, outpacing multiple World Player of the Year winners Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid and Lionel Messi of Barcelona. So how can a club that's barely two years old afford it? Gate receipts hardly appear to justify the outlay. An average of 29,310 fans watched Shanghai SIPG play at home this year, according to worldfootball.net. That's the fifth-highest of the 16 teams in the Chinese Super League and barely half the 56,000 capacity of the Shanghai Stadium, where the club plays its home matches. Empty Seats A season ticket for the coming program is 1,000 yuan ($144, or 116 pounds), Shanghai SIPG's website shows. The cheapest adult season ticket at Chelsea, the club Oscar is leaving, is 595 pounds, five times as much. The most expensive is 1,250 pounds. Chelsea's average attendance this season is 41,522. What about broadcasting revenue, the source of 40 percent of the total for clubs in Europe, according to Deloitte's annual football money league report? In July, the Premier League sold worldwide broadcasting rights for the coming three years for a record 10.4 billion pounds. The amount will be split between the league's 20 teams. The China rights alone went for 560 million pounds. Ready for the Big League? China's most valuable club trails far behind Europe's leading teams by revenue Sources: Deloitte, Forbes Note: Forbes estimate for Guangzhou's 2015 revenue was converted from dollars to euros at the average exchange rate for the year. By contrast, rights to air the Chinese Super League online over the next two years were sold in February for a record 2.7 billion yuan, or about 3 percent of the value of the English deal. The buyer was LeTV Sports, an arm of embattled LeShi Internet Information & Technology Corp. What Shanghai SIPG does have in common with some of Europe's high rollers is a rich owner. The club dates its founding to 2014, when Shanghai International Port Group Co. took over the former Shanghai East Asia Football Club. It finished third last season. SIPG is a Shanghai-traded company with a market capitalization of more than $17 billion and more than $2 billion of cash on its balance sheet: easily enough to fund a Messi or two. Unlike the Middle Eastern and Russian tycoons who've bankrolled big spending at Premier League clubs, though, SIPG has to answer to public shareholders. The board had better hope its investors like football, because they're unlikely to see a financial return from deals like the Oscar purchase. Clearly, Chinese soccer has huge potential, but that will take time to realize. The more that is lavished on foreign players, the less there is for youth coaching and upgrading "cabbage patch" pitches, as Bloomberg News's Tariq Panja reported last week. Whichever way you slice it, these numbers don't add up.
Maybe Uncle Tony could go over there and show them how to blow £200M, on poor gate receipts, and have nothing to show for it after 5 years.....or they could get JFH in for some inspirational talks on how to make him happy!!
That is all well and good, but how do you think they manipulate the Yuan, according to what we, the West, say about them? They print money. And lets not forget - they're still supposed to be a Communist country. They'll share the wealth among their leaders as much they want with all them Generals and buy whatever they want. Of course, the US prints it own money and is doing the same thing, by saving its business executive but the US just calls it "austerity measures" and launder the money through its military industrial complex and label it as something else. How does a Communist nation write-off its business losses ??? And in an academic sense, if a Communist nation doesn't collect taxes, how does it value things this way so it can buy things in the Western way? A very tricky trick they're pulling, is how. But seeing as Beijing and the regions surrounding it are covered in unprecedented pollution levels of PM2.5, I'm amazed any big sports stars are even considering moving over there.
Chinese basketball took off and attracted former NBA stars like Stephon Marbury. It must make money, so they thought they could do the same with football. But the numbers being thrown around for transfer fees and proposed wages are insane! The bottom line is that Chinese football isn't going to take off as a global attraction unless either Messi or Ronaldo play there. Parenthetically, there is a new indoor American football league in China and their games are broadcast in America by Bein Sports Channel. Cable TV money can be substantial. Perhaps this is the way they plan to raise the quality of Chinese athletes participating in the global sports?
