Ronaldo

Just under three million Manchester United shirts were sold last season. As a case in point, let’s assume that Ibrahimovic helps sell an additional 300,000 shirts. A 10% increase is a very optimistic projection, especially considering Ibrahimovic is a Nike athlete and won’t be engaging in any Adidas promotional activities on his own. His image rights deal with United will almost certainly allow the club to feature him in Adidas promotional activities, as long as he appears with at least two other United players and the activity does not imply that Ibrahimovic is giving a personal endorsement to Adidas.

Additionally, while many United fans may choose to buy an Ibrahmovic shirt, over, say, a Chris Smalling shirt, a lot of those fans were already going to buy a shirt in the first place.

Let’s also assume that United’s royalty kicks in after three million shirts are sold, and the club receive a 15% royalty on each subsequent shirt sold. Assuming a price of £70 per shirt, that’s an additional £21m in gross sales from 300,000 shirts. Manchester United’s cut of that would be just over £3m. Now, £3m is not an insignificant amount, but it offsets less than 20% of what Ibrahimovic will likely cost the club this season (wages, agent fee, signing bonus, image rights deal).

So, at best, United are likely to see around £3m in additional revenue. While certainly not a paltry sum, it doesn’t come close to covering his costs, let alone help United earn an additional £50m. Put simply, there’s a reason why Adidas has earned more in the last six months than Manchester United, one of the highest-earning football clubs in the world, has earned in its 138-year existence.