Cristiano Ronaldo : The Juventus Chapter | Fin

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legolegs

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So if someone showed you a picture of Michael Jordan, you wouldn't know him?

It's not about caring about basketball. You miss the point.
e: ok I'll admit I underestimated it a bit. Seems everyone of my friends can actually pick him out of a group of players and name him so I guess I can do that too.
 
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juggernaut1986

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So if someone showed you a picture of Michael Jordan, you wouldn't know him?

It's not about caring about basketball. You miss the point.
I have absolutely zero interest in Basketball. Of course, Michael Jordan is really famous. I've seen his pictures in the news but never seen him play. So yes, I'd probably not recognize him if I randomly bumped into him.
 

Snow

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People claiming to know which star is bigger than others, where do you live? If China and India know who Ronaldo is then he's the biggest. Doesn't matter if Europeans or Americans know who he is, they know every sports star anyway. It's what China, India and Africa know.

If Ronaldo is bigger than Beckham then he maybe is the biggest athlete in history in terms of how many people know him but it's impossible to say.
 

juggernaut1986

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People claiming to know which star is bigger than others, where do you live? If China and India know who Ronaldo is then he's the biggest. Doesn't matter if Europeans or Americans know who he is, they know every sports star anyway. It's what China, India and Africa know.

If Ronaldo is bigger than Beckham then he maybe is the biggest athlete in history in terms of how many people know him but it's impossible to say.
I don't know about China but Ronaldo is definitely more popular in India than Jordan. Beckham is on a different level though.
 

B&Wandmore

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I think it depends on how you define stardom. From an economic stand point, I think Jordan remains the number one among athletes. The commercial impact he had is more or less unprecedented and he is still said to be the one athlete that earned his partners the most. Jordan is still considered to be the most influential figure in Nike's rise to an international market leader. However, I agree that probably more people would recognize Ronaldo when shown a picture than Jordan or even Pele but this isn't the same as stardom. Nowadays, sports stars are simply much more present in the everyday life of the average person due to the development of the media and content is more easily available. I mean, there are probably more people currently who could identify the face of someone like Dele Alli or Paul Pogba than, say, George Best or Michel Laudrup but that doesn't mean that those weren't bigger sports stars.

You could probably place Ronaldo as third with only Jordan and Muhammad Ali clearly ahead of him. However, it is incredible difficult since there are still people like Tyson, Bolt, Beckham, Federer, Maradona, Pele or maybe even Schumacher (don't really know how popular he was outside of Germany, but here it was immense).
I also think that US sports people have kind of an unfair advantage. The Americans simply know how to market their stars, tell stories and give you the feeling that the whole world revolves around them (it is the same with the Super Bowle). Their sports stars simply have this certain Hollywood glamour. I don't think that any footballer comes close to the legends and the legacy associated with guys like Jordan or Ali, it is simply something else. Maybe Maradona with the whole D10S cult in Argentina, though.
That's also why Beckham was so popular around the world, I guess. Again, I can only speak for Germany but I've personally never seen a footballer getting as much media coverage as Beckham. I also think he is the most popular footballer among people who don't really care about the sport. Ronaldo may be more popular among football fans but outside of that target group my money would be on Beckham.
I do not know why one has to split the hair in 2 for a such a simple argument. Ronaldo is currently the most popular athlete on earth,no fecking Muhamed Ali or Jordan, or anybody else hence his commercial value. That is an easy to verify claim since there are dozens of researches that witness that.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/most-...-media-platform-has-1217-million-followers-18

Nobody is saying that all his social media followere will run to buy his shirts, but it is simply strange not to see a correlation between his social media following and his brand power.
 

B&Wandmore

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The thing is, if regular sports article retailers have margins of 30-36% and operational costs that lower these margins tremendously (although they also do E-Commerce) it is very optimistic to estimate a net margin of 40% of sale. In the article linked below the author mentions that although the gross profit margin of sports articles may be 37%, the net profit margin ranges between 0.8 and 1.5%. And you say that the net margin of Juventus Turin's shirt sales is even below the estimated gross margin for sports retailers in general. That is almost the definition of a very bold claim.

Another way to look at it: If you consider a price of 140€ and 520,000 sold shirts this would translate to a profit of 29 million. Why on earth would any club then sell their merahcndise license to their sponsors for a fraction of these prices? The truth is, they do it because the big sports article producers have the expertise, the economics of scale, the brand and the reach to do the job at a fraction of the price. Juve may profit from this deal but if it would be such a no brainer of a decision to do the merchandise yourself every club would do it. They probably are closer to 10-12 million per year than would you are implying.

But even if your claim of 40% margin would be true, this wouldn't even cover 30% of what Ronaldo allegedly costs Juve annualy. So the idea that the shirt sales alone compensate the costs are still completely naive, regardless of Juventus' special contract.



Come on. 500 million fans equals approximately the complete population of the European Union. It would mean that every 16th person on this planet would be a Ronaldo fan (infants, children, elders, women, people from countries not interested in football etc. included). I wouldn't even be sure if every 16th person in this world is interested in football at all (WCs aside) respectively involved enough to be supporter of a club yet to say an individual player.

Besides that, that Real sold 1 million Ronaldo shirts per year (source, by the way?) doesn't mean that he is the reason for these one million shirts were sold. If he would join my club, I sure as hell would get a shirt with his name on the back but I would've bought one anyway. Of course he positively affects the club's sales volume because he has lots of personal fans. But he also profited from playing for the most popular club in the world. If he would sign for Blackburn, you can be sure as hell they wouldn't sell the same number of Ronaldo shirts as Real did.
500 million is a good estimate nothing to come on, just google it, plenty of researches

40% on the net sale price of the shirts sold online directly by juve considering a 100% markup and around 20% costs (coming from the markup) it is perfectly reasonable and the benchmark of apparel companies that have to deal with, production, marketing and distribution (often thru phisical stores in large part) costs is not relevant
 

Zehner

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I do not know why one has to split the hair in 2 for a such a simple argument. Ronaldo is currently the most popular athlete on earth,no fecking Muhamed Ali or Jordan, or anybody else hence his commercial value. That is an easy to verify claim since there are dozens of researches that witness that.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/most-...-media-platform-has-1217-million-followers-18

Nobody is saying that all his social media followere will run to buy his shirts, but it is simply strange not to see a correlation between his social media following and his brand power.
It wasn't about who is currently the most popular athlete on earth, the discussion centered around the question who was the biggest sports star ever. So of course he is up against Jordan, Ali, Federer, Pele, Maradona etc. and those seem to have been more influential than Cristiano. And as you see in the Forbes list, there is quite a bunch of current athletes who earn more from endorsements than Ronaldo. It even seems like Beckham in 2012 (37m) had higher endorsements than Ronaldo in his best year (35m) despite inflation. It isn't even that important, nobody is denying how enormously popular Cristiano is (definitely number one among footballers).

500 million is a good estimate nothing to come on, just google it, plenty of researches

40% on the net sale price of the shirts sold online directly by juve considering a 100% markup and around 20% costs (coming from the markup) it is perfectly reasonable and the benchmark of apparel companies that have to deal with, production, marketing and distribution (often thru phisical stores in large part) costs is not relevant
As I said, you really think that every 16th human being on this planet is a Cristiano Ronaldo fan? I am not talking about knowing him, you claim that this many people are fans of him. If you take out elders above 50 and children below 5 you are probably close to every 10th person and that doesn't even exclude the vast majority of the world's population that isn't even interested in football at all. The 2014 WC final had approximately an audience size of 1.1 billion. Not even a 7th of the worlds population watched the world's biggest football event. Even if you double that in order to estimate the market volume of football you claim that every fourth football fan would be a fan of Cristiano Ronaldo. At least your common sense should tell you that this is bullshit. I think you have no idea of the numbers you are talking about.

And no, your estimation is not perfectly reasonable. Again, you are basically claiming that Juve's net profit margin is higher than the gross profit margin of sports article retailers (which also sell online, by the way). We are talking about a decrease from 30-37% gross profit margin to 0.8-1.5% net profit. Yes, if Juve counts completely on online sales their fix costs may be much lower but, do you really think the net profit per unit of Juventus Turin, a company which isn't even specialized on E-Commerce to say the least, is approximately 40 times higher than the ones of regular sports retailers? Come on. Nobody is denying that Ronaldo will make them lots and lots of money or that they profit from handling their merchandise autonomously thanks to him but 40% is just completely out of scope if you consider costs for marketing, logistics, personnel, infrastructure etc.
 
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B&Wandmore

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It wasn't about who is currently the most popular athlete on earth, the discussion centered around the question who was the biggest sports star ever. So of course he is up against Jordan, Ali, Federer, Pele, Maradona etc. and those seem to have been more influential than Cristiano. And as you see in the Forbes list, there is quite a bunch of current athletes who earn more from endorsements than Ronaldo. It even seems like Beckham in 2012 (37m) had higher endorsements than Ronaldo in his best year (35m) despite inflation. It isn't even that important, nobody is denying how enormously popular Cristiano is (definitely number one among footballers).



As I said, you really think that every 16th human being on this planet is a Cristiano Ronaldo fan? I am not talking about knowing him, you claim that this many people are fans of him. If you take out elders above 50 and children below 5 you are probably close to every 10th person and that doesn't even exclude the vast majority of the world's population that isn't even interested in football at all. The 2014 WC final had approximately an audience size of 1.1 billion. Not even a 7th of the worlds population watched the world's biggest football event. Even if you double that in order to estimate the market volume of football you claim that every fourth football fan would be a fan of Cristiano Ronaldo. At least your common sense should tell you that this is bullshit. I think you have no idea of the numbers you are talking about.

And no, your estimation is not perfectly reasonable. Again, you are basically claiming that Juve's net profit margin is higher than the gross profit margin of sports article retailers (which also sell online, by the way). We are talking about a decrease from 30-37% gross profit margin to 0.8-1.5% net profit. Yes, if Juve counts completely on online sales their fix costs may be much lower but, do you really think the net profit per unit of Juventus Turin, a company which isn't even specialized on E-Commerce to say the least, is approximately 40 times higher than the ones of regular sports retailers? Come on. Nobody is denying that Ronaldo will make them lots and lots of money or that they profit from handling their merchandise autonomously thanks to him but 40% is just completely out of scope if you consider costs for marketing, logistics, personnel, infrastructure etc.
I am not sure how you define fans. If we are talking about all the people that know him and are following or looking for news involving him or influenced in some way or another, I think that it is perfectly possible that there are half a billion of these given the fact that he has well over 300 million followers just on his social media channels.

With regards to the margin on shirts I explained my point, you are comparing apple with oranges and that does not make sense, it is becoming boring so we will agree to disagree on that one
 

Zehner

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I am not sure how you define fans. If we are talking about all the people that know him and are following or looking for news involving him or influenced in some way or another, I think that it is perfectly possible that there are half a billion of these given the fact that he has well over 300 million followers just on his social media channels.

With regards to the margin on shirts I explained my point, you are comparing apple with oranges and that does not make sense, it is becoming boring so we will agree to disagree on that one
He has 123 million on Facebook, by far the biggest network. You are referring to total followers, not unique followers. That's a gigantic difference. And "being influenced in one way or another" is definitely a completely different thing than "being a fan". I'm being influenced by so many things in one way or another I am not a fan of simply because I cannot really evade them. I am also interested in Ronaldo news, obviously, but I am definitely no fan of him or anything like that. Being a fan is about identification and dedication not just superficial interest. That's like saying a United fan being interested in what Liverpool does means he is a Liverpool fan, too. Again, just for comprehension: 500 million equals every 16th person in this world and probably 25% of the relevant target group. That's ridiculous.

And no, I am still not comparing apple with oranges. You are the one claiming that an absurdly high net profit margin 40 times higher than the industry average is realistic just because Juve could primarily be selling onlin so if anything you would be in the position to prove this claim. By the way, in apparel retail the net profit margins of online sales are estimated to be even lower than those of the offline retail because of many additional operational costs, primarily related to returned goods. Anything above a net profit margin above 15% would already be a sensation for Juventus. 15% on a 140€ shirt by the way would mean the break even point is at 285,000 shirts considering the 6 million they would get from adidas. If football clubs would have such a high net profit margin on shirts you can bet that all the top clubs (who sell over one or even 1.5 million annually) would sell autonomously. Your estimations don't make sense.
 

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With all this biggest sportsstar discussion, I did some googling and found out that Ronaldo has the 3rd most amount of followers on instagram only behind Instagram's account itself and Selena Gomez. The article is from a while back and he was 12mil followers behind Selena Gomez. I checked now and he's behind just 3mil so it looks like he'll have more soon. I know that amount of social media followers is only part of this discussion, but I thought that was pretty impressive when you consider he's got more than the likes of Beyoncé or Justin Bieber, who are global popstars.

The first ex-footballer who was on that toplist was Beckham at 35 which I thought was pretty impressive too when you consider he only started his instagram account after his playing carreer.

With this I'm not saying that Ronaldo is bigger than Jordan, Ali or any of the others names in a historical sense when talking about biggest sportsstar. I was just impressed with what I saw and wanted to share it here.
 

Theodore

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With all this biggest sportsstar discussion, I did some googling and found out that Ronaldo has the 3rd most amount of followers on instagram only behind Instagram's account itself and Selena Gomez. The article is from a while back and he was 12mil followers behind Selena Gomez. I checked now and he's behind just 3mil so it looks like he'll have more soon. I know that amount of social media followers is only part of this discussion, but I thought that was pretty impressive when you consider he's got more than the likes of Beyoncé or Justin Bieber, who are global popstars.

The first ex-footballer who was on that toplist was Beckham at 35 which I thought was pretty impressive too when you consider he only started his instagram account after his playing carreer.

With this I'm not saying that Ronaldo is bigger than Jordan, Ali or any of the others names in a historical sense when talking about biggest sportsstar. I was just impressed with what I saw and wanted to share it here.
So, Selena Gomez is the most popular footballer ever, or...?
 

Ishdalar

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You guys can read a little to put the Instagram, Twitter or Facebook follower numbers into perspective

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/business/media/instagram-bots.html

Dovetale, a four-person software company Mr. Schmidt co-founded in 2016, has devised a range of tactics to identify large numbers of fake accounts that follow popular Instagram personalities. It then packages that information for marketers, who are increasingly skeptical of the audience numbers that often determine how much money social media stars can command from advertisers.
And you will think "why would Ronaldo want to buy fake followers". Well, he probably doesn't want that, but it doesn't stop the people that create the bots from following him and maybe even post in his photos to gain exposure, measuring the popularity of something/someone for their social media followers is one of the most dumb things I've ever read, if someone thinks Messi, Kourtney Kardashian or Kendall Jenner are more famous than Real Madrid at an international level, then that person just wants to believe that.

No one can reason with someone that WANTS to believe something.
 

RemJ

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While social media followers isn't a reliable source to measure popularity, it does provide a bit of insight.

"Juventus" youtube channel had about 760K subscribers on July 10th, they have about 1140K now. An increase of 50% subscribers in less than 10 days since the signing of CR. Staggering numbers and this signing will provide a lot of exposure to both Juventus and Serie A worldwide.

While Serie A is a top 4 league, it's no where near EPL and La Liga in terms of worldwide popularity. The same is the case with Juventus, while extremely succesful domestically their worldwide presence is not as big as you'd think. CR's signing will help both causes. This signing is a masterstroke IMO.
 
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B&Wandmore

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He has 123 million on Facebook, by far the biggest network. You are referring to total followers, not unique followers. That's a gigantic difference. And "being influenced in one way or another" is definitely a completely different thing than "being a fan". I'm being influenced by so many things in one way or another I am not a fan of simply because I cannot really evade them. I am also interested in Ronaldo news, obviously, but I am definitely no fan of him or anything like that. Being a fan is about identification and dedication not just superficial interest. That's like saying a United fan being interested in what Liverpool does means he is a Liverpool fan, too. Again, just for comprehension: 500 million equals every 16th person in this world and probably 25% of the relevant target group. That's ridiculous.

And no, I am still not comparing apple with oranges. You are the one claiming that an absurdly high net profit margin 40 times higher than the industry average is realistic just because Juve could primarily be selling onlin so if anything you would be in the position to prove this claim. By the way, in apparel retail the net profit margins of online sales are estimated to be even lower than those of the offline retail because of many additional operational costs, primarily related to returned goods. Anything above a net profit margin above 15% would already be a sensation for Juventus. 15% on a 140€ shirt by the way would mean the break even point is at 285,000 shirts considering the 6 million they would get from adidas. If football clubs would have such a high net profit margin on shirts you can bet that all the top clubs (who sell over one or even 1.5 million annually) would sell autonomously. Your estimations don't make sense.
This is becoming ridiculous. If juve buy a shirt for 50Euro and sells it online for 120 what do you think is the operations cost for juventus besides the ecommerce website and the email marketing and some fee for the company who manages the shipping?
Juve signed the new contract with Adidas in 2015 and its direct merchandising sales grew from less than 5 million to almost 20 millions in 2017 and the cost of sales grew to less than 9 milion, on top of that for sure you have some additional costs like shipping and some marketing that (photo, graphic desgners, email etc). but to claim that you have to sell 300000 shirts to break even is just ridiculous, fixed cost are minimal and many of them like the website and social media are shared , it is not reasonable that a gross margin of 50% becomes less than 15% for such a setup.
 

oneniltothearsenal

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With all this biggest sportsstar discussion, I did some googling and found out that Ronaldo has the 3rd most amount of followers on instagram only behind Instagram's account itself and Selena Gomez. The article is from a while back and he was 12mil followers behind Selena Gomez. I checked now and he's behind just 3mil so it looks like he'll have more soon. I know that amount of social media followers is only part of this discussion, but I thought that was pretty impressive when you consider he's got more than the likes of Beyoncé or Justin Bieber, who are global popstars.

The first ex-footballer who was on that toplist was Beckham at 35 which I thought was pretty impressive too when you consider he only started his instagram account after his playing carreer.

With this I'm not saying that Ronaldo is bigger than Jordan, Ali or any of the others names in a historical sense when talking about biggest sportsstar. I was just impressed with what I saw and wanted to share it here.
This really shows how using social media followers is a bit silly. I had to Google Selena Gomez as I had never even heard of that person before.Despite the social media, I bet more people around the world know Beyonce than Selena Gomez (Gomez might be the most well known among the 12-24 age groups but I bet none of my friends my age have any clue who she is.
 

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This is becoming ridiculous. If juve buy a shirt for 50Euro and sells it online for 120 what do you think is the operations cost for juventus besides the ecommerce website and the email marketing and some fee for the company who manages the shipping?
Juve signed the new contract with Adidas in 2015 and its direct merchandising sales grew from less than 5 million to almost 20 millions in 2017 and the cost of sales grew to less than 9 milion, on top of that for sure you have some additional costs like shipping and some marketing that (photo, graphic desgners, email etc). but to claim that you have to sell 300000 shirts to break even is just ridiculous, fixed cost are minimal and many of them like the website and social media are shared , it is not reasonable that a gross margin of 50% becomes less than 15% for such a setup.
First of all, they won't buy it for 50 and sell it for 120. The gross profit margin is probably around 35% which would mean that they still pay 94.25€ for a shirt they sell for 145€. By the way, the sales also include kids shirts which are much cheaper (around 85€).

Generally, clubs monetize their shirts through trading their sales licensing and merchandise to their equippers, in this case adidas, which produce the shirts and then sell it either directly or through resellers (stores, E-Commerce platforms etc.). Juve's situation is unique. They don't simply replace adidas in the value chain but force themselves between the equipper and the customers/resellers since they do not produce the goods autonomously but buy it from adidas. This alone means their profit margin is much lower than it would be for adidas, also because they have less experience and scaling effects compared to such a gigantic corporation.

So what are the other operational costs then? First of all, a good proportion of their shirt sales go through resellers since only a fraction buys it directly from the club. They thus have to their their profit margins with these companies. Then you have the personnel and logistics which are probably the biggest cost factor. You still need workers to package and send the goods, manage the warehouses and so on. Juve also needs a much bigger infrastructure since all these logistics would usually go through adidas which means greater depreciations which would also have be broken down. Then you have to deal with the returns, one of the biggest scalability burdens of E-Commerce, especially regarding clothing. You also have to pay for the shipment and the marketing like you already pointed out.

Besides that, of course the break even point is at 285,000 considering a profit margin of 40% if you consider that Juve had opportunity costs of 6 million due to renouncing the licensing deal. Simple maths. I didn't even consider that a good proportion of these shirts will not be sold for 145€ but 85€. And since the net profit margin will most likely be a lot closer to 10% than 40% the break even point will probably be at a considerably greater mark.

And it is not reasonable that a gross margin of 50% becomes less than 15%? The gross profit margin of apparel retailers goes from almost 40% down to 0.8-1.5% (according to more optimistic studies, it is closer to 8%). Nothing unrealistic with that at all.
 

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So, Selena Gomez is the most popular footballer ever, or...?
I was not talking about just footballers. I was talking about overall instagram followers, so that covers every instagram out there. THAT is what I thought was interesting because Ronaldo's not only the most followed footballer, but likely he's soon to be the most followed person overall.

Amount of followers is also not the same as being 'popular'. People might follow a controversial figure, just to see what this person is up to. I bet not every Trump follower on Twitter is a fan of his for example.

This really shows how using social media followers is a bit silly. I had to Google Selena Gomez as I had never even heard of that person before.Despite the social media, I bet more people around the world know Beyonce than Selena Gomez (Gomez might be the most well known among the 12-24 age groups but I bet none of my friends my age have any clue who she is.
It's not silly to use social media followers as ONE of the measures in a bigger picture, but it indeed would be silly to use it as the ONLY measure.

Just like you don't know Selena Gomez, I am sure there are Selena Gomez fans who don't know Ronaldo either. I am 32 and I know who she is even though I am not a fan nor do I follow her.
 
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Peyroteo

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Difference being that Juve do not have their kit deal structured the same way as other clubs and that their shirt sales have vastly improved overall with Ronaldo coming in. While it obviously won’t pay for his full transfer, it won’t be an insignificant amount of money either.
 

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Difference being that Juve do not have their kit deal structured the same way as other clubs and that their shirt sales have vastly improved overall with Ronaldo coming in. While it obviously won’t pay for his full transfer, it won’t be an insignificant amount of money either.
I haven't read anything about how it's structured. Also if they have sold 500K shirts already, it doesn't tell full story. We can only know after a year when you see how many extra shirts are sold.
 

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First of all, they won't buy it for 50 and sell it for 120. The gross profit margin is probably around 35% which would mean that they still pay 94.25€ for a shirt they sell for 145€. By the way, the sales also include kids shirts which are much cheaper (around 85€).

Generally, clubs monetize their shirts through trading their sales licensing and merchandise to their equippers, in this case adidas, which produce the shirts and then sell it either directly or through resellers (stores, E-Commerce platforms etc.). Juve's situation is unique. They don't simply replace adidas in the value chain but force themselves between the equipper and the customers/resellers since they do not produce the goods autonomously but buy it from adidas. This alone means their profit margin is much lower than it would be for adidas, also because they have less experience and scaling effects compared to such a gigantic corporation.

So what are the other operational costs then? First of all, a good proportion of their shirt sales go through resellers since only a fraction buys it directly from the club. They thus have to their their profit margins with these companies. Then you have the personnel and logistics which are probably the biggest cost factor. You still need workers to package and send the goods, manage the warehouses and so on. Juve also needs a much bigger infrastructure since all these logistics would usually go through adidas which means greater depreciations which would also have be broken down. Then you have to deal with the returns, one of the biggest scalability burdens of E-Commerce, especially regarding clothing. You also have to pay for the shipment and the marketing like you already pointed out.

Besides that, of course the break even point is at 285,000 considering a profit margin of 40% if you consider that Juve had opportunity costs of 6 million due to renouncing the licensing deal. Simple maths. I didn't even consider that a good proportion of these shirts will not be sold for 145€ but 85€. And since the net profit margin will most likely be a lot closer to 10% than 40% the break even point will probably be at a considerably greater mark.

And it is not reasonable that a gross margin of 50% becomes less than 15%? The gross profit margin of apparel retailers goes from almost 40% down to 0.8-1.5% (according to more optimistic studies, it is closer to 8%). Nothing unrealistic with that at all.

First of all says who? The cost of Juve apparel is less than half the sales income and that is the only official data that can be taken from the P&L that is published

Secondly and this is really the last time I will try to explain my point. The 40% I have made reference to is on DIRECT SALES only which are mostly done via the website and the directly owned stores that are 3, That is why it does not make sense to compare the margins of Juve with those of sport apparel companies that have a much heavier infrastructure and brick and mortar distribution for a big portion of their sales and that is what you keep doing.
Anyway I do not need to convince you when there will be official data I will post them. Suffice it to say that the Juve ecommerce site has been down several times due to the amount of orders and the last two lifestyle collections launched after the rebranding were sold out. Today they launched the third one.

 

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So if someone showed you a picture of Michael Jordan, you wouldn't know him?

It's not about caring about basketball. You miss the point.
I know him only because of Space Jam in my childhood. This is the only reason.


I believe i can fly ...
 

11101

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People claiming to know which star is bigger than others, where do you live? If China and India know who Ronaldo is then he's the biggest. Doesn't matter if Europeans or Americans know who he is, they know every sports star anyway. It's what China, India and Africa know.

If Ronaldo is bigger than Beckham then he maybe is the biggest athlete in history in terms of how many people know him but it's impossible to say.
Basketball is big in China but it was still all largely closed off when Jordan was playing. Yao Ming is the big name there.

Football is fairly popular, Messi and Ronaldo are the two names everyone knows.
 

Zehner

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First of all says who? The cost of Juve apparel is less than half the sales income and that is the only official data that can be taken from the P&L that is published

Secondly and this is really the last time I will try to explain my point. The 40% I have made reference to is on DIRECT SALES only which are mostly done via the website and the directly owned stores that are 3, That is why it does not make sense to compare the margins of Juve with those of sport apparel companies that have a much heavier infrastructure and brick and mortar distribution for a big portion of their sales and that is what you keep doing.
Anyway I do not need to convince you when there will be official data I will post them. Suffice it to say that the Juve ecommerce site has been down several times due to the amount of orders and the last two lifestyle collections launched after the rebranding were sold out. Today they launched the third one.

Last try.

1. My sources say that the profit margin on online sales in the apparel industry is in fact lower not higher than the profit margin on offline sales because of returned goods and required marketing expenses.

2. Even assuming the profit margin was at a ridiculous 40% on online sales, that every shirt was sold online and all of these were for adults (which means a price of 145€) the break even for opportunity costs of €6 million would be at 285,000 sold units. That's not an opinion, it's a mathematical fact you refuse to believe. So even with this absolutely overly optimistic assumption in mind you see that shirts sales are not even close to being as profitable as you want them to believe. Shall I compute the break even point for Ronaldo's wages and proportioned transfer fee based on your estimations?

3. Many, many of the shirts Juve sells are through resellers (offline and online) and offline sales. You can't just ignore all the brick and mortar stores around the world selling football shirts which still make up a huge proportion of the general sales.

4. In the apparel industry, the gross profit margin shrinks from 40% to under 10% because of operational costs that Juve also encounters. They do not have any advantage over regular retailers here, not at all, so it totally makes sense to compare them.

Your argumentation is basically "Well, Juve sells the majority of shirts online so there are no costs besides those related to the online presence, a little bit of shipment and marketing" which is totally naive if you have any idea regarding how this industry works. Especially considering that Juve is a comparably small company without experience, economies of scale, global networks and so on in a sector completely dominated by natural monopolists.
 
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Sky1981

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Ronaldo is a superstar signing. The extra income generated indirectly by having a player of his calibre is sometimes forgotten.

Shirt sales is only a sweet bonus, global brand, advertisement, club appeal, new young fans turning to juve due to ronaldo, etc. Would pays off in the longer spectrum of the deal.

Wasn't such a bad deal even at 33.
 

B&Wandmore

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Last try.

1. My sources say that the profit margin on online sales in the apparel industry is in fact lower not higher than the profit margin on offline sales because of returned goods and required marketing expenses.

2. Even assuming the profit margin was at a ridiculous 40% on online sales, that every shirt was sold online and all of these were for adults (which means a price of 145€) the break even for opportunity costs of €6 million would be at 285,000 sold units. That's not an opinion, it's a mathematical fact you refuse to believe. So even with this absolutely overly optimistic assumption in mind you see that shirts sales are not even close to being as profitable as you want them to believe. Shall I compute the break even point for Ronaldo's wages and proportioned transfer fee based on your estimations?

3. Many, many of the shirts Juve sells are through resellers (offline and online) and offline sales. You can't just ignore all the brick and mortar stores around the world selling football shirts which still make up a huge proportion of the general sales.

4. In the apparel industry, the gross profit margin shrinks from 40% to under 10% because of operational costs that Juve also encounters. They do not have any advantage over regular retailers here, not at all, so it totally makes sense to compare them.

Your argumentation is basically "Well, Juve sells the majority of shirts online so there are no costs besides those related to the online presence, a little bit of shipment and marketing" which is totally naive if you have any idea regarding how this industry works. Especially considering that Juve is a comparably small company without experience, economies of scale, global networks and so on in a sector completely dominated by natural monopolists.
ok mate believe what you prefer, when at the end of the year the figures will be in we will see what they say.
 

SirAF

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I thought the myth of shirt sales had been well and truly busted in here ages ago?
 

Scarlet_Emperor

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If he wins the CL with Juve, he's THE GOAT and should be ranked ahead of Pele, Maradona and Messi.
Why??? It's like Juventus had never been a respectable team to accomplish this fate before Ronaldo signed up there. IMO, Portugal winning the EURO'16 with that squad would still be a greater achievement for his career.
 

Colombian Mancunian

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I’m sure he will win a treble with Juve, and at least to more Ballon D’or. Messi at his peak was better than Ronaldo, but right now he is declining while CR7 is doing good, although playing more centrally due to reduced speed.

He conquered England and Europe with United.
He conquered Spain and Europe with Madrid.
He will conquer Italy and Europe with Juventus.

I’m not sure if he is the GOAT, but for me is in top five.
 
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charlton66

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I’m sure he will win a treble with Juve, and at least to more Ballon D’or. Messi at his peak was better than Ronaldo, but right now he is declining while CR7 is doing good, although playing more centrally due to reduced speed.

He conquered England and Europe with United.
He conquered Spain and Europe with Madrid.
He will conquer Italy and Europe with Europe.

I’m not sure if he is the GOAT, but for me is in top five.
What is almost unbelievable to me is that by the time he's finished he could have won every domestic honor in England, every domestic honor in Spain and every domestic honor in Italy with a Champions League to boot with three different teams. In addition he could also end up with most International goals by any player all time (currently 2nd - 25 more to get to number 1).

It also wouldn't surprise me that after he's done all that he's goes back to Portugal and wins every domestic honor there too.
 

amolbhatia50k

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He might not be United's greatest player ever, but you can definitely make a case for it. What you can't do is to simply brush it off with a arrogant "just no".
You can. It's a no.
 

amolbhatia50k

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I think it's a really smart move from Ronaldo. Juve are a proper elite team that's only tended to be beaten to the CL in recent years by teams that have Ronaldo and Messi and are generally a tad better. He moves to a league where Juve are the dominant force and he can possibly ease up a little which also works given winning Serie A wouldnt be a big achievement in his favour anyway. That leaves plenty in the tank for the CL which it appears is in Juve's near future. You often see teams fail a few times or come close to winning a trophy before finally winning it. Juve seem at that sort of juncture in their journey. And in football terms he suits them too. They have good wide players, a great hole player and are strong in most areas.
 

SwansonsTache

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Does he relegate Dybala to the bench?

Cheeky bid? They might need some euros now that Ronaldo is bringing home two trillion a week there.
 

Daysleeper

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I’m sure he will win a treble with Juve, and at least to more Ballon D’or. Messi at his peak was better than Ronaldo, but right now he is declining while CR7 is doing good, although playing more centrally due to reduced speed.

He conquered England and Europe with United.
He conquered Spain and Europe with Madrid.
He will conquer Italy and Europe with Juventus.

I’m not sure if he is the GOAT, but for me is in top five.
Ronaldo is declining as well, he only plays well 3 months out of the year now
 

Daysleeper

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Why??? It's like Juventus had never been a respectable team to accomplish this fate before Ronaldo signed up there. IMO, Portugal winning the EURO'16 with that squad would still be a greater achievement for his career.
Exactly

United and Madrid are some of the biggest clubs in history, Juventus are the biggest Italian club. It’s not like he’s dragging sub par teams by himself.

Will be interesting to him in CL without the best midfield in the world behind him. Not to say Juventus aren’t already a great team even before Ronaldo joined.
 
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