Waking up on the morning of Friday the 17th to attend a lecture, Erling Haaland announcing his Manchester City contract extension scarcely registered. After all, what is uncommon about a top player re-committing to a top club? Only when my flatmate mentioned how the contract was until 2034 did the economic enormity and consequent ethical issues suddenly begin to hit home.
Reportedly worth £500,000-a-week, the vastness of this sum has led to inevitable debate on whether Haaland can be worth £26m a year in footballing terms. However, the real debate should be reframed in a human capacity. Is it ethically right that any one individual should earn so significant a sum when the UK average expected income over an entire working life is just £566,000?
Sean Ingle, in The Guardian, makes the powerful argument that the total worth of Haaland’s contract, £234m, is dwarfed by that of NFL star Patrick Mahomes, whose contract of £410m is still yet overshadowed by the £628m contract of Juan Soto, of the New York Mets, and is therefore acceptable. From a financial standpoint, I am inclined to agree, as, in our modern market economy, if City determine they are willing to pay extortionate sums to retain a player from competitors, why shouldn’t they?
The real issue is with the source of the funds.
Manchester City, through Sheik Mansour, are owned by the Abu Dhabi United Group, and thus essentially by the UAE. Likewise, Paris Saint-Germain, who still hold the record for the highest transfer fee ever paid, are basically owned by Qatar. Whilst effective state ownership is problematic from a competitive standpoint, due to the unsustainable rise in wages and transfer fees this has brought, it is worse from a humanitarian perspective. The portrayal of both Mansour and Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the owner of PSG, as human faces has served as a vital facet of the sportswashing of these despotic regimes.
With the owner of Mahomes’ Kansas City Chiefs heavily involved in the environmentally exploitative oil industry, these colossal contracts raise questions over whether we should continue to tolerate the influence of these ill-gotten gains in the sporting sphere.
“Erling Haaland 2023” by Jacek Stanislawek is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.