They are setting a base. Not only can they increase avenues by which they show and make revenue in the future, they can also offset whatever they need to with contributions to women’s football, infrastructure, etc.
They could also just agree to pay the luxury tax fines. I mean, they pencil in nearly 200m in pic tax fines into their yearly budget for baseball.
The end result though is that people think they can’t buy out or move off these contracts if they need to, and that’s a mistaken assumption.
But the ideal, in the near and far future, is that your base of talent and pipeline is strong enough that if you have to spend massive amounts to get rid of a player or buy a particular player it will be fairly easy to do without ruffling feathers. You would t expect to be having to purchase 16 players two or three years from now certainly.
The City model shows this to be the case: now that they have the structure in place they actually spend relatively little compared to the image people have of them.
On Badiashile: yes, of course the money makes a difference. But they switched courses to him from Gvardiol REAL fast after Vivell officially assumed his role (like 2days?). Gvardiol is great, but Badiashile can be as well. If they hadn’t felt they were getting a similar level player they wouldn’t have switched so quickly.