A study by researchers at the University of Lüneburg and the Rockwool Foundation has revealed that the inflation of market values for football players in the Bundesliga has come to a halt. Since summer 2024, the market values have decreased by 2.1 percent, while consumer prices have risen by 1.3 percent. In the previous twelve months, consumer prices had increased by 2.2 percent, but player values only increased by 0.3 percent. According to the researchers, this development is the first since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are witnessing a stark contrast to the explosion of market values seen up until 2019” said Lukas Tohoff, who worked on the study. In that year, market values rose by 23.5 percent, while consumer prices only increased by 1.4 percent. The study used a comparison group of 198 players, consisting of the 11 most expensive players at each of the 18 clubs in the first league.
“We can only speculate about the reasons for the end of inflation” said co-author Mario Mechtel. “This could be due to the stagnant television revenues since 2020. Or it could be related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has reduced ticket revenues at the stadiums. Or it could be due to individual highly valuable players being sold abroad.” The performance of Bundesliga clubs in international competitions could also be a factor.
The market prices of footballers had plummeted sharply since the beginning of the pandemic, decreasing by 15.4 percent in 2020, while consumer prices rose by 0.5 percent. Between 2005 and 2019, the market values of Bundesliga players had quadrupled from 800 million euros to 3.5 billion euros. Since then, the market value of the players included in the study has fluctuated around the 3.5 billion euro mark.