How many shirts do Man United need to sell to pay for Ronaldo’s transfer

Ronaldo rejoins Man United

In one of the biggest stories of the transfer window, Cristiano Ronaldo rejoined Manchester United, a deal officially confirmed on deadline day.

In a shocking twist of events, Ronaldo was at one point set to join Manchester City, before United swooped in at the eleventh hour to bring their club legend back to Old Trafford, allegedly paying a fee of 15 million euros with the potential for a further 8 million euros in add-ons.

To make matters even better for the football romantic, Edinson Cavani agreed to give up the number 7 shirt to allow Ronaldo to return to his CR7 brand.

As a result, there were long queues outside the official store, with fans queuing up to represent their iconic player and his iconic number once more.

Can United profit on the transfer?

With big transfers of icons such as Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, it is often said that the transfers are ones clubs can profit on through shirt sales and image rights.

But how many shirts need to be sold for this to happen? Football finance expert Kieran Maguire took to Twitter to explain, using Ronaldo as an exanple.

He revealed that:

United get 7% on a £60 shirt which works out at £4.20 per unit. The cost of Ronaldo is £12m transfer fee (minimum) plus wages of £20m a year. Total cost £52m over 2 years. The club would have to sell 12.4m additional shirts to pay for his recruitment.

For context, in the 2018/19 season, Manchester United allegedly sold 3.25 million shirts, which if used as a benchmark suggests a maximum of around 7 million shirt sales across Ronaldo’s 2 year contract.

In short, it seems unlikely that the transfer will “pay for itself” in shirt sales