David Beckham's business acumen

David Beckham started the year with a joke aimed at his wife, Victoria Beckham, about the docuseries of Netflix about their marriage: the former footballer, his wife and in-laws celebrated New Year's Eve with a dinner at the Ritz in London, which David defined as “very, very working class”, laughing at one of the best moments of the Netflix documentarywhen Victoria tried to equate the origins of the two families.

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And, in part, by laughing at his own relationship with money. When Beckham hung up his shirt a decade ago, he also revealed that he donated his entire salary from his final footballing career to a Parisian children's hospital. In total, around four million euros for his last five months with the Paris Saint-Germain shirt. A gesture as generous as it was powerful: Beckham, in 2013, was such a great extra-sports figure that the four million euros were just a tenth of what he pocketed that year in sponsorships: almost 40 million euros in 2013. A decade later, Beckham can boast that he has lost none of his fascination with brands, even after the criticisms that have been leveled at him over the years. Even after the criticism rained down on him for his role as ambassador of the World Cup in Qatar and of the emirate itself (a ten-year contract worth 150 million euros, with eight years of residual duration), Beckham has not lost his fascination with brands: In the last financial year alone, David Beckham earned almost 85 million euros between sponsorships and revenues from Netflix for the documentary that bears his name (also co-produced by one of his companies, Studio 99).

Although with this volume of income it seems easy to say that the Beckhams could easily be billionaires just thanks to the brands that support them, David and Victoria Beckham's own holding company, which usually shows a summary of their accounts every year, makes clear the gap between revenue and profits. In the last financial year, despite the luck, the former footballer made a pre-tax profit of 11.5 million euros, blamed on a “sharp increase in operating costs.” The previous year, for example, with only half the revenue, Beckham had earned almost 20 million euros in this sector.

The holding is also one of the main supporters of Victoria Beckham's brands, which continues to deliver bittersweet news: it has earned more than 65 million euros, but is still at a loss (3.6 million euros, the lowest in recent years) and requires annual capital injections from the couple (eight million euros). But, like her donation at the end of his period at PSG, these figures are a small thing in the fortune of the star and the Spice Girl.

Because the Beckhams have already brought assets of over 450 million euros since the end of the player's career. And embellished with one of the best sports deals of all time. And, curiously, thanks to one of the a priori least interesting football markets for a player who wants to become very, very rich: the American one. Before moving to Paris Saint-Germain, David Beckham accepted an offer that no one understood at the time: spending the last five years of his career with the Los Angeles Galaxya team in a nearly new league whose annual television rights at the time weren't even enough to pay his salary.

But Beckham negotiated two clauses that would be unthinkable today: the first is that he would take a percentage of all his team's earnings. All. Tickets, shirts, food at the stadium, rights… Everything. An agreement that earned him more than 220 million euros in five years. If this move seems brilliant, the next one is directly unrepeatable: after his departure from the Galaxy, Beckham would have had the possibility to join one of the teams of that league in the future for just over 20 million euros.

The team chosen in one of the subsequent extensions wasInter Miami, which Beckham bought for the amount agreed upon at the time, becoming the owner of a franchise that was worth almost 600 million euros at the time of purchase. And that the big purchase of him (Leo Messi) catapulted to a valuation of one billion euros. If tomorrow the former footballer decided to sell his team, not only would he be an undisputed billionaire: he would have earned 50 times his initial investment.


Source: Vanity Fair

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