Gareth Bale transferred to Real Madrid. Now you’re probably asking who is Gareth Bale, what is Real Madrid, and most importantly, why should I care?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/02/gareth-bale-real-madrid-spain

Gareth Bale is a Welsh soccer player who recently transferred from an English team, Tottenham Hotspur, to the Spanish giants Real Madrid, for the record-breaking fee of 140 million dollars. Yes – 140,000,000$. While it may seem easy to dismiss this fee as another example of the debauchery of modern soccer, the economics of the deal have serious repercussions on the sport as a whole.

Modern professional sport, especially a game like soccer, makes a large amount of its money off TV rights, sponsorship deals, and seats. Real Madrid, a team noted for breaking the transfer record numerous times, have benefitted greatly from this system, but are $687 million in debt, like many other teams including its greatest rivals, Barcelona. Transfer fees and players wages have inflated vastly since the 1990s, meaning only a small group of teams can “afford” (usually with enormous debt) to buy these players, while their smaller competitors remain shut out. This has led to an oligopoly of sorts in modern soccer, as well as a rising concern to the sustainability of such spending.