Revealed: Clubs need to shift this MANY shirts to recoup players transfer fees

Interested in the transfer market, TicketGum.com sought to discover how many shirt sales would need to be approximately achieved by clubs to recoup the transfer fee of the biggest signings of the 2021 summer transfer market.

The Results for the Research

Analysis of the Results from the Research

• Manchester City would need to sell an estimated 1,176,471 Jack Grealish official replica jerseys to make back the £100 million they forked out for the dynamic attacking midfielder
• Jadon Sancho is in second place as Manchester United would need to sell approximately 913,071 Sancho jerseys to recoup the £73 million they paid Borussia Dortmund for his services
• Romelu Lukaku (812,839) and Achraf Hakimi (675,000) are among the other players whose clubs would have to sell more than 600,000 of their jerseys to reaccumulate the respective transfer fees paid for each of them, respectively ranking third and fourth
• Criticised hugely for their acquisitions during the transfer window, Arsenal would need to sell 588,235 Ben White jerseys to recoup the £50 million they paid for the defender and would need to sell 282,352 Aaron Ramsdale jerseys to recoup the £24 million they paid for the goalkeeper

Methodology for the Research

• TicketGum.com wanted to identify how many shirt sales would need to be made by clubs to recoup the fee they paid for some of the biggest signings of the 2021 summer transfer window.
• To do so, TicketGum.com identified the 20 biggest transfer fees paid by clubs for players in the 2021 summer transfer window from various reputable sources such as Sky Sports, BBC and the Athletic.
• After the 20 biggest transfer fees were identified, for each of the 20 players in the list – their respective official replica jersey with their name on it was sought from the official online store of the team they had transferred to this window (i.e. their new club) to see how they charge for their official replica jersey (with the players name on it) – when searching on each clubs official online store, TicketGum.com looked specifically at the adult men’s official jersey with the players name on the back of the jersey (with no badges, as there is an additional charge for this – i.e. no Premier League badge, no Champions League badge etc.)
• Once stage three was done for all 20 identified players, each players transfer fee was divided by the cost of their official replica jersey (with their name on the back of the jersey) to establish how many of their official replica jerseys would need to be sold in order for their new club to recoup the entire transfer fee they paid in the 2021 summer transfer window.
• The transfers of Tammy Abraham (Roma), Patson Daka (Leicester City), Joe Willock (Newcastle United) and Fikayo Tomori (AC Milan) were identified among the top 20 biggest transfers of the 2021 summer transfer window but due to lack of/no data regarding the price of their official replica jersey (with their name on the back of the jersey) meant they were excluded from the research.
• All figures for the amount of official replica shirt sales (with a player’s respective name on the back of the jersey) needed to recoup a respective player’s transfer fee are estimates.