The craziest thing about Erling Haaland’s £500,000-a-week salary? It makes sense | Erling Haaland

What do you make of Erling Haaland’s new £500,000-a-week basic salary? Ridiculous? Staggering? Obscene at a time when too many children are arriving at school unfed? That seemed to be the prevailing view after his 10-year contract with Manchester City was announced on Friday. Even Haaland admitted his contract was “a bit crazy”.

But do you know what may be crazier still? Haaland making £26m a year actually makes sense. For football reasons, yes. Because of what economists call the “superstar” effect – which explains why the gap between the sporting super elite and the next best is widening.

More of that later. But first some context. In 2021 the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes signed a 10-year deal worth almost $500m (£410m). But when it comes to huge salaries we are not in Kansas any more. Last month Juan Soto signed a 15-year contract with the New York Mets worth $765m (£628m). In Formula One rumours have linked Max Verstappen with a $1bn (£820m) switch to Aston Martin.

In fact, according to Forbes magazine, the world’s 50 highest-paid athletes made a record $3.88bn (£3.19bn) in wages and endorsements in 2023 – up 13% from the previous year. Haaland’s ranking? A mere 27th with earnings of $61m a year – well behind Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and his closest contemporary Kylian Mbappé, who made $110m.

While Haaland’s salary is outlandish, so is his talent. The bald statistics – 80 Premier League goals in two and a half seasons – tell you that. Mohamed Salah, as brilliant as he is, has scored 55 in that period. Given that Haaland is only 24, City can realistically hope for another six or seven years where he is topping the goalscoring charts.

That may be underselling it. According to Twenty First Group, a sports consultancy agency that works with many leading owners and investors in clubs across Europe, many more elite players are maintaining their level deeper into their 30s. In 2012, 18% of the world’s top 200 as judged by its player rating model were aged 30 or older. In 2024 it stood at 32%. Tellingly, the percentage has been increasing steadily.

Paying Haaland now also reduces the chances of Real Madrid fluttering their eyelids at him in a season or two and, as Twenty First Group’s Omar Chaudhuri notes, there is also considerably less uncertainty around the Norwegian’s future performances than a new signing.

A glance at the biggest Premier League transfers for strikers backs that up. Romelu Lukaku to Chelsea for £97.5m tops the list, Darwin Núñez to Liverpool for £85m is second, and Kai Havertz’s moves to Chelsea and Arsenal are fourth and fifth. That said, even Haaland doesn’t contribute as much to City’s points tally as you might think – something that has come into starker focus in the absence of Rodri.

“Our models suggest that a world’s top-10 striker or winger is worth around five points a season over an average Premier League starter, the biggest gap of all positions,” Chaudhuri says. “But the drop off isn’t as steep as the prices paid for players might suggest. Top central midfielders are worth about 4.5 points over an average Premier League starter. And centre-backs and full-backs between three and four points.”

That might sound absurd. But think of it this way: last season City finished on 91 points, 43 points clear of Brighton, who were 11th. That’s less than four points per starting player on average.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Haaland isn’t immensely important to Pep Guardiola’s side. His new contract, though, doesn’t just come down to basic economics – supply, demand, his talent, City’s wealth – but what the University of Chicago professor Sherwin Rosen identified in the 1980s as the strange economics of superstars.

Rosen used maths and data to back up his analysis, but essentially it boils down to this: as consumers we have a high willingness to pay to see megastars – through tickets or TV subscriptions – even if they are only a little bit better, and that is reflected in their mega salaries.

As David Forrest, an expert in sports economics at the University of Liverpool, puts it: “The superstar effect is that, even though the next player down would add nearly as many points, the addition to revenue from having the world No 1 on board is much greater. Evidently, the market has a high willingness to pay to see the very best. And while Manchester City will attract new fans from team success, the attraction of the superstar multiplies this effect.”

As Forrest notes, the fact technology now lets billions of us watch sport from across the globe has exacerbated it. When Gary Lineker and Kerry Dixon were topping the First Division scoring charts almost 40 years ago, few outside England cared. Nowadays, we see the latest LeBron James dunk or Mbappé wonder goal beamed into our homes and on our phones in seconds.

“It is consumer psychology – individuals will pay a premium to be associated with the very best,” Forrest says.

Incidentally, when it comes to Haaland’s new deal, Forrest is blunt. “In the end, salary reflects a willingness to pay by football fans.” But, judging by the reaction to Haaland’s goal from City fans at Ipswich on Sunday, it is something with which they have made their peace.

• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.