The Denver Broncos have just been sold for $4.65billion.
At that price, a 20 per cent share of the NFL franchise is worth $930million.
But in September 1998, Broncos legend John Elway, then starting the process of leading them to their second straight Super Bowl win, had the opportunity to purchase a 20 per cent stake in his team for ‘just’ $36million.
The team’s then-owner Pat Bowlen offered to sell superstar quarterback Elway, then 38, 10 per cent of the franchise for $15million.
And he could get a further 10 per cent too — if he wrote off the $21million he was owed in deferred salary having reworked his contract to free up funds for the Broncos to sign better players at other positions to challenge for the Super Bowl glory he’d been chasing in vain since entering the NFL in 1983.
If Elway had taken the deal, that $36million investment would be worth close to $1billion today. But he didn’t want to give up the money due to him so decided against becoming a part-owner of the team he played for.
The deal proposed to Elway might be one of the most lucrative opportunities offered to a player being asked to give up money owed to him in the history of professional sport.
Almost a quarter of a century later and thousands of miles away in Spain, however, the situation facing Frenkie de Jong is certainly a world apart.
De Jong has been asked to forgo a payout to help Barcelona, ranked as the fourth-most-valuable sports team in the world by Forbes in 2021, fund a summer transfer spending spree that has already exceeded £130million.
The Netherlands international midfielder signed a two-year extension in October 2020, so is under contract at Camp Nou until the summer of 2026. That deal reduced his salaries for that 2020-21 season and 2021-22, with the outstanding €18million (£15.2m, $18.3m) to be made up across the next four years.
He is owed £15.2million by Barcelona in deferred wages but now the club have asked him to annul that revised contract and return to the terms of his old one.
Manchester United, meanwhile, had a bid for De Jong accepted almost a month ago but the issue of his unpaid wages — along with whether he wants to reunite with his old Ajax coach Erik ten Hag at Old Trafford, as well as rival interest from teams including Chelsea — is holding up a potential deal.
De Jong is not the only player who has been asked to forgo cash to benefit the Catalan club.
Barcelona have activated multiple economic ‘levers’ this summer to try to balance their books, which essentially means they have sold off the rights to money they expect to earn in future years to other businesses to generate enough income now to satisfy La Liga’s financial rules and afford to register the players they are signing.
Spain international defender Gerard Pique has also agreed to a second pay cut in as many seasons to help get those newcomers, who include Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha, Jules Kounde, Andreas Christensen, Pablo Torre and Franck Kessie, registered to actually play for Barcelona when the season starts this weekend.
But Barcelona are not the first example of athletes having to accept reductions in their contracted wages this summer to secure a move.
Back in the NFL, quarterback Baker Mayfield needed to swallow a $3.5million pay cut to secure a trade away from the Cleveland Browns because his new team, the Carolina Panthers, were unwilling to commit so much against the salary cap to sign him.
Mayfield was owed a guaranteed $18.85million for the upcoming 2022 season while with the Browns but will now only receive $15.35million, with his old team paying $10.5million of that and the Panthers only the remaining $4.85million.
The No 1 pick in the NFL draft just four years ago, Mayfield was between a rock and a hard place in Cleveland.
Baker Mayfield has had to sacrifice contracted earnings to move NFL teams this summer (Photo: John Byrum/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The Browns had already traded for Deshaun Watson of the Houston Texans to be their new starting quarterback and given him a five-year contract worth $230million. They also signed free agent Jacoby Brissett to be Watson’s backup, essentially rendering Mayfield, who had been their starter since he came into the NFL, a complete afterthought.
If Mayfield had dug his heels in and insisted on getting the $18.85million, he would probably have sat on the Browns’ bench all season and his earning potential would be significantly lower next summer when his contract expires, making him an unrestricted free agent.
The idea of asking a player or players to defer or cut their wages while the club concerned continues to spend big on other players feels uncomfortable, to say the least, and would certainly not go down well with the Professional Footballers’ Association — the players’ union in the English game — if it was suggested by a Premier League club.
“The club shouldn’t be bringing anybody else in, because they’ve already got liabilities and a player they’ve signed a contract with, who they need to be paying,” says Simon Barker, the assistant chief executive of the PFA. “In other countries, they don’t get anywhere near the protections that players in England get.”
During the 2019-20 season, the first campaign to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, players at Premier League and EFL clubs including Aston Villa, West Ham United and Southampton agreed to team-wide wage deferrals. But the PFA worked behind the scenes to ensure that money would be returned, even if a player involved moved on to another team. “We had our lawyers overlooking all of the agreements that were in place and making sure that they were watertight before the players signed them,” Barker says.
Provisions were made during those negotiations around two years ago to ensure that players in England would not end up in a situation similar to the one in which De Jong now finds himself.
“We put in a lot of clauses in the agreements to make sure clubs are not then going out (and spending), as it would seem at the moment,” Barker says. “Where they’ve got a number of other players coming in on big wages, when they already have liabilities to current players at the club, that can’t happen.
“On the provision of having a written agreement in place, if you were sold (after deferring a percentage of your wages), then all of that money would be paid back. It might take a period of time for that money to be repaid — for example, months after a player leaves a club, but yes, without a doubt (it would be paid back).”
A club asking a player to give up part of their salary is rare. A player voluntarily giving up money they are owed is rarer still.
When Willian left Arsenal in the summer of 2021, he decided to forgo the remaining two years of his contract, which would have paid him around £20.5million, to return to his boyhood club, Corinthians, back in Brazil.
Willian was set to earn roughly £240,000 a week if he had seen out his deal in north London but agreed a deal to leave on a free to rejoin Corinthians 14 years after he left them to play in Europe. He was on £72,000 a week instead at the Sao Paulo side before — a pay reduction of 70 per cent — before leaving this week. Arsenal are said to have been amazed by Willian’s decision to take the lower wage, especially as he had such leverage with the club committed to paying him for two full years.
“The players negotiate from a position that their contract is safe,” says Barker. “There was a player who used to play for Chelsea (in the early 2000s), Winston Bogarde, who was earning a lot of money at the time. He was earning about £40,000 a week, which was a lot back then. He was criticised and accused of only staying for the money. But he was happy to stay where he was and made himself available to play (though the managers rarely picked him).”
The issue of players not being paid by their clubs is a growing trend in football across the globe.
According to UK newspaper The Independent, the dispute resolution section at world-game governing body FIFA received a record 1,187 claims during the 2020-21 season, with the bulk of them being lodged by players against clubs.
In around 80 per cent of cases of a player disputing their pay cheque, the chamber rules in favour of the player.
The PFA has developed legislation that ensures players at English clubs are automatically entitled to those rights.
“Players often cite that it’s a factor for them to come to England, because they know that contract is going to be honoured,” Barker says. “It works for the players and works for the clubs in terms of being able to attract talent. Contract stability is very important.”
(Photo: James Williamson – AMA/Getty Images)
