Is the Brazilian League a Peripheral League in the World-System of Professional Soccer?

By Ryan Lu

International Relations

Class of 2014

April 29th, 2014

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Abstract

Despite the success and reputation of their national team, Brazil’s own domestic soccer league

has often struggled to retain elite players and most of its current stars play in European leagues.

This paper applies world-systems theory and the concept of the core and the periphery as a way

to understand the relationship between the Brazilian league and other global soccer leagues. It

uses rates of elite players abroad, revenues and profits and losses from player transfers to

categorize Brazil and the other leagues into either the periphery or the core. This paper finds

that by available measures the Brazilian appears to be peripheral relative to several core

leagues located in Europe.

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Introduction

Brazil has been known as a global powerhouse in soccer1 for decades. It’s national team

has won five World Cups and qualified for every tournament, won the Copa America five times

and the Confederations Cup four times. It has also produced some of the best players of all

time: Pele, Zico, Socrates, Romario, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, not to mention a veritable

conveyor belt of current stars such as Neymar, Thiago Silva, Kaka, Oscar, Lucas and Hulk to

name a few. Yet the state of the domestic Brazilian league, or Brasileirao, does not seem to

reflect the status of Brazil’s national team and star players. There is a sentiment that promising

young Brazilians are inevitably poached by foreign clubs or leave Brazil in order to further their

careers, resulting in a lack of star players in their prime. With the relatively free international

labor market for soccer players, Europe is usually the choice of departing young prodigies or

star players. It is often said that there is a “Big Five” of European leagues that dominate the

global sport – England, Germany, Spain, Italy and France, and many Brazilian stars play in these

leagues. The purpose of this paper will be to investigate the economic and financial

circumstances of Brazil’s seemingly second-class status as a professional league by comparing it

to other professional soccer leagues around the world.

Research Question

1 Soccer, not football will be used throughout this paper to provide clarity to American readers

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Does the Brazilian league occupy a peripheral position in the world system of professional

soccer leagues?

Literature Review

The scholarly literature on this topic is less than plentiful. There exists some research on

player migration but it is mostly qualitative and looks at individual cases or small groups rather

than group numbers. There is also a reasonable amount of financial data and analysis available

from sources such as Deloitte and news media. There does not appear to be any scholarly work

focused on the league level, however, and their economic interconnections.

Chirot and Hall (1982) give a good overview of world-systems theory in its original form,

as a form of analysis centered on history, sociology and economics. They specifically discuss

Immanuel Wallerstein’s work. Wallerstein was the scholar who coined “world-systems” and

developed the system of analysis centered upon them.

In their paper, Magee and Sugden (2002) wrote qualitatively on the globalization of

labor in soccer players. They conducted their research through interviews with 22 England-

based foreign soccer players from the 1996-97 season to the 1998-99 season. They used their

research to classify soccer migrants into several categories depending on their motivations for

working abroad. They also discuss the world-systems model in soccer migration and broadly

propose the idea of Europe as the core in professional world soccer with labor generally flowing

inwards towards the “stronger and more affluent leagues.”

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Bale and Maguire (1994) in their book discuss world-systems theory in a more detailed

manner, mentioning Wallerstein and adapting that framework into the world of sports. They

explore the global forces behind migration of players from peripheral to core areas in greater

detail than Magee and Sugden.

There is a substantial amount of financial data available on the more popular soccer

leagues and clubs. The accountancy and consulting firm Deloitte does a significant amount of

research on soccer finances and publishes annual reports and articles. These reports were

essential in providing me the data on league revenues, plus supplemental financial data on

different clubs. I also consulted the soccer statistics and transfers website transfermarkt.com,

which provided me with all the data on national team appearances, player locations and

transfer figures. These were the main two sources I used to obtain data for the paper.

Theory

World Systems Theory

I will be applying world-systems theory, more commonly used in history, economics and

sociology, to the world of professional soccer. Specifically, I intend to apply the core-periphery

aspect of world-systems theory. World-systems theory was first defined by Immanuel

Wallerstein in the 1970s as an alternative to modernization theory that has its roots in

dependency theories and Marxism (Chirot and Hall.) It holds that the world should be

understood through interconnected world-systems rather than individual nation-states.

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The problem with using world-systems theory is that it does not lend itself particularly

well to quantitative analysis. Although it fits the research question I am working on, it is not

inherently structured for rigorous quantitative work. There are many models and definitions of

core and periphery regions, and little agreement on what exactly constitutes a core or

periphery region. To get around this, I have chosen a basic but accurate textbook definition of

the core-periphery relationship. This is so that quantitative analysis can be done on a few key

pieces of data. By the model I have chosen, core leagues will accumulate high-skill labor (elite

players) and accumulate more total revenue. In contrast, peripheral leagues will export more of

its high-skill labor (elite players) and depend more heavily on capital from core leagues (transfer

payments) (Bale and Maguire.)

Semi-peripheral vs peripheral

World systems analysis as conceived by Wallerstein also has a third category, the semi-

peripheral. In his analysis, semi-peripheral regions exploit peripheral regions and also act as a

release valve for political pressures from the core (Chirot and Hall.) However, I will not be

formally defining semi-peripheral leagues in my paper. This is not because the concept is

invalid, but rather because it is even less consistently defined than the core and periphery.

Some theorists see it as merely a midway step between core and periphery, other see it as a

unique and distinct category. None can agree at what point a peripheral country becomes a

semi-peripheral one, or a semi-peripheral becomes a core one. Therefore, this paper will not

rigorously define a semi-peripheral league, though it may be possible in the future with both a

clearer and more detailed interpretation of world-systems theory and more data points to

analyze.

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Hypothesis

My hypothesis is that the Brazilian league is indeed peripheral. Despite its financial size

and anecdotal reports of improving quality of play and returning elite players, it will remain

dwarfed by the top leagues in generating revenue and continue to export its top players abroad

at a much higher rate. Furthermore, it will depend much more heavily on transfer income for

revenue than the Big Five leagues. Thus, it remains essentially subordinate to and dependent

on core leagues.

Methodology

I will compare nine leagues (including Brazil) from across the world in terms of

proportion of elite players abroad, gross revenue and transfer profits/losses. I have chosen

these nine leagues because they are all historically and currently strong in international soccer

and are thus similar in both skill level and total number of elite players. If all these countries

produce similarly high-skilled players, then the emigration rate of elite players should depend

on financial and sporting factors, e.g. player wages, quality of play, etc. For example, a large

proportion of Russian elite players may play in Russia, but perhaps it is because Russian players

on average simply aren’t as good as, say French or Spanish players – which is borne out by the

comparative weakness of the Russian national team. Thus, by only analyzing the leagues of the

countries with very elite national teams I can reduce the confounding effects of differing player

quality by country.

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Most of the leagues analyzed have 18 (Germany, Netherlands) or 20 teams, with only

the Portuguese league having 16 (as we will see, the Portuguese league actually does a roaring

trade in both domestic and all player sales despite its slightly smaller size and player pool) so

the actual number of players in any league is relatively similar. All these leagues are the top

division for their country, although not the only professional leagues there.2

Revenue

First there is simple total revenue numbers for a single season. These will give an overall

impression of the financial strength of the leagues relative to one another and can be seen as

roughly analogous to GDP. Revenue numbers do not reflect outside investment from owners

who pump enormous money into their clubs such as Chelsea, Manchester City and Paris Saint-

Germain. This issue will be addressed further in the paper.

Elite Players

I will also measure the percentage of elite players playing outside their home league. I

have used several definitions for this – players with more than 10 caps (national appearances)

who have been called up in the last year that play abroad, the same players who have ever

played abroad, the percentage of World Cup 2010 squad members that played abroad at the

time of the tournament, and Euro 2012/Copa America 2011 squad members that did the same3.

Players who play for their national team, especially those who have played consistently or have

been selected for a major tournament, act as a proxy for elite players as a whole. By seeing how

2 England for example has three more professional divisions below the Premier League, and many more semi-professional and amateur leagues3 The last two major international tournaments have been the World Cup in 2010 and the Euros in 2012 for European countries, and the Copa America in 2011 for the South American countries

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many of these players play outside their home league, we can measure how much high-skilled

labor has left its home country. Restricting elite status to those who have made more than 10

appearances also helps even out comparisons; a country with a large pool of players such as

Brazil may call up and even play more players than a country with a small pool such as the

Netherlands, but most national teams play a similar amount of games every year and thus a

similar amount of consistent national team members should exist among all teams – e.g. Brazil

may experiment with more players but still rely on a similar number as their core players since

it plays roughly the same number of games as the Netherlands and selects the same size squad

for every game (23 for international matches.)

This is borne out by the data – all nine teams had between 19 and 26 players who

qualified for elite status through 10 national team appearances and national squad status

within the last year with an average of 22.89 elite players per team.

Profits and Losses from Player Transfers

Finally, I use profits/losses from player trading as a way to measure foreign capital

inflow/outflow. Consistent losses indicates that the league is importing and accumulating talent

from outside leagues; thus the league is part of the core. Conversely, consistent profits indicate

that the league is exporting talented players to core areas and thus the league is located in the

periphery. I am measuring two types of player transfers in this paper; transfers of domestic

players, or the purchases/sales of players from the country the league is in (e.g. Brazilians to

and from the Brazilian league), and transfers of all players, or the purchases and sales of all

players to and from a given league (e.g. all players to and from the English league.) These two

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measures imply different patterns. Transfers of domestic players shows whether native talent is

leaving or returning to its home league. Transfers of all players indicate whether or not the

league tends to import and accumulate talent or export players for profit.

I have chosen to measure transfer payments4 because they are the primary form of

economic exchange between different leagues. Other than player purchases and sales, different

leagues typically do not directly do business with each other.

Results

Revenue

Looking at 2011-2012 revenue figures, we can easily see that Brazil occupies the sixth

spot, both in this chart and for professional soccer leagues worldwide. Its revenue is

significantly higher than that of either the Netherlands or Portugal. However, total revenue for

the Brasileirao is 29.21% lower than its nearest competitor, France’s Ligue 1, and well under

4 In soccer, most players are signed to contracts at all times, usually from 1 to 5 years. When a player is sold, the buying club pays a fee so that the selling club will release him from his previous contract and sign a new one with his new club. Such transfers are very common; players are usually not allowed to run down their contracts to become free agents because that deprives their current club of any transfer fee. Player trades occur as well, but are not the main form of movement in soccer. Because of this, transfer payments change over time. For a hypothetical pair of players who are exactly the same except that one is 22 years old and the other is 32 years old, the younger player is usually more expensive. This is because the younger player probably has more years left in his career, is more likely to improve rather than maintain or deteriorate in overall ability, and will have more potential for profit if and when he is sold again (a 25 year old with 5-10 years left in his career has more value than a 35 year old who may soon retire or decline.) The cost of a player is a function of both his current ability and his future potential. Soccer players peak at different ages depending on position and individual, but mid-late 20s is usually considered peak years, over 30 is generally considered to be veteran status and there are very few excellent players over 35, goalkeepers being the exception. The remaining time on a contract and the financial situation of the buying and selling clubs are also relevant to the price; a longer contract requires a higher price to be bought out while. A selling club in financial trouble or debt may be forced to sell for a lower price while a buying club known to be flush with cash after selling a big player of their own may be compelled to pay a higher transfer fee.

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half of that of the top three leagues of England, Germany and Spain. In fact, England’s Premier

League revenue is 331% larger than that of the Brasileirao. Only Argentina is omitted due to

lack of data, though there is no indication anecdotal or otherwise that Argentina’s league is

comparable in finances to Brazil’s.

Elite Players

The results for elite players playing abroad are certainly interesting. In all four of the

measures used, Brazil scores second or first, losing only to Argentina. On the other hand,

England, Italy and Germany consistently scored the lowest, with Spain and especially France

scoring rather highly. The domestic transfer data (next page) also implies an exodus of elite

Brazilian players, with Brazil making twice as much off international transfers of domestic

players over the last five years as the nearest competitor, Spain (€483.68m net vs €238.91m.)

All of these results imply that Brazil is both losing many of its elite players to foreign leagues

abroad, and profiting heavily from these departures.

Profits and Losses from Player Transfers

The net transfer profits/losses reveal some interesting trends. Over a five-year period,

Brazil have seen the highest amount of profit from international player trading both on Brazilian

and all players within their league. The Netherlands, Portugal and Argentina have also seen

consistent transfer profits, and the discrepancy between domestic-only and all player transfer

profits indicates that the former two countries may act as intermediary steps for players from

peripheral leagues headed to other peripheral or core leagues. This is in contrast to both Brazil

and Argentina where both the figures are closely aligned, implying that most players sold from

the Brazilian or Argentine league are Brazilian or Argentine, respectively.

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A curious case is England, whose league is the only one to make a loss on domestic

player transfers. Given the very low percentage of elite English players abroad in the last five

years, England’s transfer deficit must be from either lower level English players being bought

back from foreign clubs or lower level English players being bought from lower division clubs in

England, since this study only take into account top-division soccer leagues.

It is also interesting to see what percentage of a league’s total revenue is derived from

transfer payments. The Brazilian league made the second-most profit of any league on

domestic player transfers over the last five years relative to total revenue with player fees

making up 10.99% of its 2011-12 revenue. Only Portugal made more at 12.68%. The Brazilian

league was also third with regards to profits on all player transfers at 10.35%. The Netherlands

is higher at 13.65%, and Portugal destroys the competition with its 5-year average net transfer

profits a staggering 25.68% of its 2011-12 revenue. In this respect while Brazil is definitely

dependent on capital inflow from core regions, it perhaps is less peripheral in this aspect than

some European leagues such as the Portuguese Primeira Liga.

Confounding Factors and Possible Explanations

Data

Unfortunately, I was unable to find revenue data for more than two years for the Big

Five leagues, one year for Brazil, Portugal and the Netherlands, and none at all for Argentina.

Luckily the data I was able to find all fir the 2011-12 season. More historical data on the English

Premier League probably could have been found; it gets a lot of attention due to its financial

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wealth and obviously its sources are in English as well. Revenue is less unstable than net

transfers since much of the total revenue of a league is tied into long-term TV contracts,

commercial income (shirts, merchandise, etc.) and match day income (tickets.) And hopefully

the 2011-12 data was the median between those five years with two seasons before and after

it. Nevertheless, much firmer conclusions could be drawn if revenue numbers could be found

for all leagues in all years, especially Brazil.

Superclubs

In the last decade, professional soccer has seen a pattern of extremely wealthy, foreign

ownership that. These ultra-rich owners invest hundreds of millions into their team, often

without the expectation of repayment, to buy new players and hire coaches, renovate stadium

facilities and improve youth development. Due to their wealth, which may be disproportional to

the wealth of the league as a whole, these clubs are capable of influencing the aggregate data

for the league.

For example, take France’s Ligue 1. According to aggregate data on all player transfers, it

has been the third-largest importer of talent in the last 5 years with € 269.47m net losses, only

surpassed by Germany and England. However, a closer look at the data shows that 188.98m of

that was from 2013-14 alone. Furthermore, transfer payments out of Ligue 1 in that year

totaled € 433.18m, and the majority of that was spent by two clubs, Paris Saint-Germain (net

spend of € 109.4m, gross of € 135.9m) and Monaco (net € 172.95m, gross € 177.7m), both of

whom are owned by wealthy outside investors, Qatar Investment Authority (Conn) and Russian

billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev (Lawrence) (transfermarkt.) Remove the transfer activity of these

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two clubs and suddenly the French league has made a profit of 93.37m. This type of investment

decouples a club’s revenue from its spending at least in the short-term, allowing for a club to

spend money in order to make more revenue in the future, rather than the other way around.

As you can see, this “sugar daddy” model of financing can obscure the financial health and

status of other clubs within the league when finances are only examined at the league level.

Therefore, there is uneven development and concentration of resources within as well as

between leagues.

However, the Brasileirao does not appear to have any clubs owned by super-rich or

generous patrons injecting large amounts of unearned income, so this factor does not appear

relevant to the Brazilian league, except perhaps as increased fees being paid to Brazilian clubs

by lavishly funded European ones.

Defining Eliteness

Defining what constituted an elite player was very tricky. Using nominations or wins of

individual awards would not have provided anywhere near a large enough sample size, and the

game is too complex for elite players to be ranked purely on the basis of statistics such as goals

or assists (this would shortchange defenders, for example.)

One of the problems with using national appearances to define eliteness is that this

leaves out the young and old players. Young players who have just recently begun making an

impact may not be represented as a player may take a year to accumulate 10 appearances if

and when he is selected at all. And many older players have been known to retire from

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international soccer in order to focus on and prolong their club careers – these players may still

be of international standard even as they renounce further games with their national teams.

Using national team standards also does not account for countries with extremely deep

pools of players, such as Brazil. At over 200 million the population of Brazil is more than twice

as large as any other country examined, and this combined with the Brazilian passion for

futebol means that Brazil probably has many more high-quality soccer players than, say the

Netherlands with a population of only about 17 million. However, both Brazil and the

Netherlands national teams select the same amount of players for each game and play around

the same number of games a year. Thus, it is more likely that high-skilled players are being left

out of the Brazilian national team than the Dutch national team.

Europe as Cultural Core

This explanation still uses world-systems analysis, but in a cultural rather than economic

sense. It is quite possible that in Brazil and other peripheral areas Europe, and especially the

“Big Five” are seen as higher-status leagues in addition to being economically more powerful.

This would partly explain why leagues such as the Netherlands and Portugal can attract so many

foreign players – Portugal in particular has the most Brazilian players of any country other than

Brazil (175 including both the first and second Portuguese league, out of 1205 players.)

First, the very fact of these leagues being European increases their attractiveness – even

a club from a peripheral league in Europe may be seen as higher status than domestic clubs.

Second, these peripheral European leagues can still be used as stepping stones for larger

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leagues and clubs, places for a player to adjust to a different style of play, learn the language

and culture and get a European passport.

There may exist another confounding factor here. If European soccer is seen as the best

league and if, all things equal, playing there increases a player’s status, then the Brazilian

national team coaches and public may be biased in favor of players in core leagues over

domestic players. In other words, players may be more likely to be picked for the national team

if they are playing in Europe simply because they are playing in Europe, which would distort

measuring a player’s eliteness through their national team career. In other words, it may be

that Brazilian players become seen as elite by moving to Europe, rather than moving to Europe

because they are elite.

Rich Clubs in Peripheral Areas

There are many clubs in peripheral leagues that nevertheless manage to attract famous

players, often through extremely high wages. David Beckham’s transfer from Spain’s Real

Madrid to the US’s L.A. Galaxy is a good example, but Didier Drogba’s from England’s Chelsea

FC to China’s Shanghai Shenhua and Samuel Eto’o’s from Italy’s Inter Milan to Russia’s Anzhi

Makhachkala are other instances of this phenomenon. This may skew the data for players

abroad; elite Brazilian players may play abroad in peripheral leagues that pay wages out of

proportion to earned income.

Inflation

Inflation refers not only to general inflation of currency, but also inflation in the finances of

soccer. Global market expansion and the consequently sought-after TV broadcast rights mean

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that the amount of money in global soccer has increased dramatically in the last few decades,

especially for the “Big Five.” This can be seen in the progression of transfer world records –

from 8m ponds for Roberto Baggio in 1990 to £ 15m pounds for Alan Shearer in 1996 to £ 46m

pounds for Zinedine Zidane in 2001 to £ 80m pounds for Cristiano Ronaldo in 2009 – a tenfold

increase in only 19 years5. So both general and soccer inflation may have skewed the data on

total and transfer revenues, making more recent seasons more important than previous

seasons.

Brazilian Exceptionalism

As mentioned in the introduction and known to almost everyone who know of the sport

of soccer, Brazil has a reputation for exceptionally skillful and free-flowing soccer and for

producing players that play in such a manner. This perception may cause Brazilian players to be

overvalued on the global market, which would increase both their transfer prices and the

likelihood of them playing abroad. Because Brazilians are perceived to be exceptional in soccer,

any given Brazilian player may be more likely to be transferred abroad than, say an identical

Australian or Chinese player. And the transfer value of this hypothetical Brazilian might be

higher than that of the imaginary Australian or Chinese as well.

Analysis and Conclusions

Brazil

5 These figures are in pounds because most of these transfers occurred before the widespread adoption of the Euro and two of the transfers (Shearer and Cristiano Ronaldo) involved English clubs.

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Based on the data analyzed, Brazil appears to be a peripheral league. While the league

does have substantial revenues, it still pales in comparison to the “Big Five.” Furthermore, Brazil

has one of the highest rates of elite players playing outside their home country by any measure;

only Argentina exceeds it. And Brazil makes by far the most profit from player transfers of any

country, likely due to the depth of their talent pool. However, unlike other peripheral leagues

such as Portugal and the Netherland, Brazil along with Argentina have very similar numbers in

both domestic and all player transfer profits. This implies that unlike the two European leagues,

neither South American league is much of an intermediate or middleman league that buys

players from peripheral leagues to sell on in the future at a profit to core leagues. In this sense

Brazil is perhaps more peripheral than either Portugal or the Netherlands, despite its much

higher revenue numbers. Also, Brazil posts consistently higher numbers of elite players abroad

than either the Netherlands or Portugal, regardless of the fact that in 2011-12 it made twice as

much as the Netherlands in total revenue and nearly three times as much as Portugal did. Given

that Brazil still suffers from high rates of elite player outflow (both numerically and financially),

makes a significant portion of its revenue from transfer payments and does not seem to import

many players from similar or lower leagues, Brazil can be reasonably considered a peripheral

league within the professional soccer world system.

Brazil’s peripheral status is also implied in another fashion; very few foreign players ply

their trade in the Brazilian league, and no prominent Europeans. Of the nine leagues measured,

Brazil’s has the lowest percentage of foreign players in its league at 6.55%. More importantly, it

currently (as of 2014) has only two Europeans (Fran Merida of Spain and Fabio of Portugal),

neither of whom are famous stars or elite players by any of the definitions used above. The only

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prominent European to play in Brazil in the last few years has been Clarence Seedorf of the

Netherlands, and although he was a fantastic player with 87 national team appearances and a

CV of huge clubs such as Ajax, Real Madrid and Milan, he was already 36 at the time of transfer

(2012) and retired two years later. Not having played for the Netherlands since 2008, he would

not qualify as an elite player by any standard of this paper and besides when compared to the

scores of prominent Brazilians playing in Europe, one outlier barely matters.

Interestingly, it appears that over the five-year period studied, the Brazilian league

actually made a €28.395 million loss on non-Brazilian player trading. It is possible that this is a

sign that skilled foreign players from more peripheral leagues are starting to enter Brazil to

replace the skilled Brazilians leaving the country. This may herald the development of Brazil into

a more diverse league with a strong foreign presence that can improve the quality of the game

or be sold off at profit, just like with the European leagues studied.

The Rest

The data also implies interesting characteristics of the so-called “Big Five” and their core

status. England’s massive revenues, retention of elite (and non-elite) players and enormous

losses on player transfers place it squarely within the core as the dominant league, a huge

importer of high-skilled labor and income generator. However, the other Big Five leagues are

less secure as core leagues. Spain’s La Liga is perhaps the best example. The Spain national

team has won 3 international trophies in a row (Euro 2008, World Cup 2010 and Euro 2012) and

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the league has two of the best teams in the world, Barcelona and Real Madrid. However, La

Liga’s net spend on all players is the lowest of the Big Five and they are the only member of the

group to have made net profits from all player transfers in the last two years, to the tune of

€181.93m, where the other four leagues all ran net transfer deficits. La Liga also made the

second-most profit on domestic player transfers during the five-year period at €238.91m, just

above Argentina at €233.23m and below Brazil at €483.68m. All these signs point to a Spanish

league that is perhaps weakening financially and thus either unable to pay high enough wages

to retain its stars or in dire need of the transfer payments. Of course two to five years is hardly

enough time to make a definitive statement about medium-long term trends. When one player

can easily cost €25m or more, only the movement of a few players is necessary to influence net

profits.

Policy Recommendations

If it is taken that Brazil is a peripheral league, then what can be done to remedy this

situation? There are several possible avenues for improvement over a medium to long-term

time scale.

Attracting Foreign Players

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Despite Brazil’s sporting and financial dominance of South American soccer, it is notable

how few foreign players play there. In 2013-14, Brazil’s percentage of foreign players was the

lowest of all leagues studied at 6.55%6. Perhaps Brazilian clubs could target more non-

Brazilians, especially South American players from neighboring countries. This could increase

the Brasileirao’s popularity in these countries as viewers tune in to see their countrymen play,

boosting TV revenues. Also, the quality of play could be improved by the influx of talented

players playing alongside Brazilians, which could further boost TV popularity as well as making

the Brazilian league more attractive to foreign and domestic star players looking for a challenge.

And finally, this could provide Brazil with additional revenue from acting as a middleman in

transfers between the core leagues in Europe and the peripheral leagues that these foreign

players are bought from.

New Ownership

Brazil may attempt to seek outside investment of the “sugar daddy” model where a

super-rich owner takes over and invests vast sums in the club. This could attract more elite

players, especially foreign stars. The downside to this model is its instability; new owners are

not always competent either financially or sport-wise, and may make poor decisions. Also, what

an owner giveth they can also taketh away, and this could prove disastrous if club whose

operating costs surpass its earnings suddenly has its owner sell out or stop funding the club –

precedent exists in other leagues.7 Additionally, it appears that many soccer clubs in Brazil are

6 Argentina was next at 8.76% before shooting up to 34.19% in the Netherlands.7 Portsmouth FC of England was

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fan-owned8 rather than privately held (Scott and Duarte,) and while this may prevent financial

recklessness it also discourages clubs from being bought by rich benefactors.

Increase Domestic Consumption

A significant problem for Brazilian soccer is low attendances. In 2011, the average

attendance for a Brasileirao match was 14,976, below even that of a Major League Soccer game

in the US at 17,872. This is vastly below the 2011-2012 figures of 45,726 and 34,601 for the

German and English leagues, respectively (German Bundesliga Stats: Team Attendance - 2011-

12) (English Premier League Stats - 2011-12.) For a country as soccer-loving as Brazil, these

numbers are shockingly low. Such low attendances result in a poorer atmosphere in games,

where fans are both less visible and quieter, lower TV popularity from the aforementioned lack

of atmosphere, and lower revenues for the clubs.

Possibilities for Future Research

This paper was only a first foray into analyzing professional world soccer through world-

systems theory. A researcher with access to more data, such as comprehensive revenue figures

for many years, could do a longitudinal study and analyze the patterns of growth and change in

these same data points. It could show, for example, the comparative growth rates of the

8 Data on the ownership of Brazilian clubs is, as ever, hard to verify but Corinthians, the richest club in Brazil, are definitely member-owned

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Brasileirao vs. other leagues or pinpoint when the Brazilian league began to export so many

elite players to Europe.

Another possibility for future research is to do a similar study between individual clubs,

rather than league systems. After all, just being in the English Premier League does not mean

that a club is necessarily dominant; the supposedly core Premier League can have a team such

as Wigan Athletic that only made 53m pounds in 2011-12 (Sedhi and Conn) while Corinthians

from the Brazilian league and Galatasary from the Turkish Super Lig can earn € 94m and € 157m

in the same time period, respectively (Battle et. al.) At the same time, lesser clubs from the

Premier League can sometimes attract players from larger clubs in more peripheral areas so the

hierarchy on a club level is more nuanced than simply what league a club belongs to. A

comparative study between a large sample of top-division clubs across Europe could shed light

on whether individual clubs can be considered core or peripheral as well.

Yet another possible study, and one I considered undertaking earlier in the process,

would be a wage comparison between leagues. Perhaps a researcher with an economics

background could quantify how much more a foreign player might need to be paid compared to

a domestic player of the same skill to play in a country – the premium of hiring foreign players.

Or quantify if players from peripheral leagues are actually cheaper in wages and/or transfer

fees and by how much. Unfortunately I was handicapped by a lack of wage data from Brazil in

particular.

Finally, I could see a similar study that differentiated between three types of leagues –

the peripheral ones that produced and exported skilled players, the core ones that imported

23

and accumulated them, and the semi-peripheral leagues that bought from the former and sold

to the latter. I noticed that the leagues I studied tended to fall into these three groups: Brazil

and Argentina were great examples of peripheral leagues that mostly sold their own players,

England was clearly a core league that imported a large quantity of skilled foreign players, and

Portugal and the Netherlands were intermediate leagues that, in addition to selling their own

players, also sold non-domestic players for a healthy profit.

Tables and Graphs

Revenue

24

Brazil

England

Spain

Germany

Italy

France

Netherlands

Argentina

Portugal

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500

Total Revenue 2011-2012 Season (Millions of €)

Revenues (in millions of euros) 2011-12 2010-11Brazil 880England 2910.78 (2355 in pounds) 2273Spain 1765 1719Germany 1872 1746Italy 1570 1553France 1136 1040Netherlands 434ArgentinaPortugal 298

Source: Deloitte

Elite Players

25

Brazil

EnglandSp

ain

Germany

Italy

France

Netherlands

Argentina

Portugal

0.00%

20.00%

40.00%

60.00%

80.00%

100.00%

120.00%

Percentage of Elite Players Abroad

Elite players abroad Elite players who have played abroadWorld Cup 2010 Squad Euro 2012/Copa America 2011

Elite players (10+ caps) called up in last year who play abroad Players Percentage

Elite players (10+ caps) who have ever played abroad Players Percentage

26

Brazil 18/22 81.82% 21/22 95.45%England 1/22 4.55% 1/22 4.55%Spain 12/25 48% 16/25 64%Germany 7/24 29.17% 8/24 33.33%Italy 4/26 15.38% 9/26 34.62%France 14/24 58.33% 18/24 75%Netherlands 15/19 78.95% 16/19 84.21%Argentina 20/23 86.96% 23/23 100%Portugal 15/21 71.43% 18/21 85.71%

World Cup 2010 Squads Players PercentageEuro 2012/2011 Copa America Squads Players Percentage

Brazil 20/23 86.96% 16/23 69.57%England 0/23 0% 0/23 0%Spain 3/23 13.04% 5/23 21.74%Germany 0/23 0% 4/23 17.39%Italy 0/23 0% 3/23 13.04%France 12/23 52.17% 12/23 52.17%Netherlands 15/23 65.22% 16/23 69.57%Argentina 17/23 73.91% 22/23 95.65%Portugal 13/23 56.52% 13/23 56.52%

Profits and Losses of Players Transfers

27

Net transfers (all players) euros 2013-14 2012-13 2011-12 2010-11 2009-10 Total

Average per season

Average profit/loss as percentage of total revenue

Brazil 209,800,000 110,045,000 15,170,000 39,185,000 81,083,000 455,283,000 91,056,600 10.35%England -526,613,000 -410,505,000 -210,425,000 -362,697,000 -70,702,500 -1,580,942,500 -316,188,500 -10.86%Spain 112,425,000 69,500,000 -90,690,000 -5,610,000 -258,050,000 -172,425,000 -34,485,000 -1.95%Germany -82,480,000 -117,290,000 -28,807,600 -4,860,000 -111,315,000 -344752600 -68,950,520 -3.68%Italy -4,415,000 -21,389,632 -81,761,000 -73919725 -28,909,000 -210394357 -42,078,871.4 -2.68%France -188,980,000 -20,697,368 -61,578,500 58,620,000 -56,841,000 -269476868 -53,895,373.6 -4.74%Netherlands 116,038,000 64,565,000 54,840,000 33,450,000 27,230,000 296,123,000 59,224,600 13.65%Argentina 33,020,000 34,675,600 33,109,500 68,082,000 77,695,000 246,582,100 49,316,420 n/aPortugal 101,807,000 152,795,000 25,532,000 85,545,000 16,944,000 382,623,000 76,524,600 25.68%

References

Bale, John,

and

Net transfers (domestic players) euros 2013-14 2012-13 2011-12 2010-11 2009-10 Total

Average per season

Average profit/loss as percentage of total revenue

Brazil207,700,00

0109,680,0

0021,125,00

061,690,0

0083,483,0

00483,678,0

0096,735,6

00 10.99%

England -8,415,000

-60,220,00

0-

587200001,833,00

0

-42,360,0

00

-167,882,0

00

-33,576,4

00 -1.15%

Spain110,150,00

089,120,00

0 2,975,00065,960,0

00

-29,300,0

00238,905,0

0047,781,0

00 2.71%

Germany 32,210,000 4,300,000

-15,405,00

035,890,0

00

-13,590,0

0043,405,00

08,681,00

0 0.46%

Italy 28,615,000

-33,650,00

0-

59,36,00029,306,5

003,514,00

021,849,50

04,369,90

0 0.28%

France 7,600,00062,500,00

0-

68,50,00011,715,0

0021,750,0

0096,715,00

019,343,0

00 1.70%Netherlands 45,958,000

47,005,000

22,140,000

10,925,000

8,010,000

134,038,000

26,807,600 6.18%

Argentina 29,825,00028,245,00

033,259,50

067,470,0

0074,428,0

00233,227,5

0046,645,5

00 n/a

Portugal 46,720,00011,700,00

064,080,00

062,730,0

003,650,00

0188,880,0

0037,776,0

00 12.68%

28

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