1% of top footballers’ combined salaries could see annual £1.3m go to charity, figures suggest
Melanie May | 4 September 2017 | News
A donation of 1% from the combined wage of each Premier League teams’ most prolific scorers would bring over £1.3 million to charity a year, according to analysis from online ticket seller Ticketgum.com.
Following the news that two footballers, Juan Mata and Mats Hummels have signed streetfootballworld’s Common Goal pledge to donate 1% of their salary to charity, Ticketgum has released an analysis into how much the Premier League’s top goal scorers would give to charity if they also joined the cause.
According to Ticketgum the wage bills of all 20 Premier League Clubs are estimated to hold a value of £2 billion, with more than £1.2 billion spent in transfer fees within the Premier League alone. In its analysis, it identified the top goal scorer of each team, for the season 2016-17, and their subsequent yearly salary, before applying the 1% precedent set by Mata.
The top three players able to donate the most are:
- Sergio Aguero, at Manchester City – with 20 goals and an annual salary of £11,440,00: a 1% charity value of £144,400
- Zlatan Ibrahimovic, at Manchester United – with 17 goals and an annual salary of £11,440,000: a 1% charity value of £144,400
- Eden Hazard, at Chelsea – with 16 goals and an annual salary of £10,400,000: a 1% charity value of £104,000
Ticketgum suggests that players could donate their 1% to charities local to their team to help, for example, where government spending cuts are affecting education budgets, such as in Arsenal’s founding ground of the London boroughs of Islington and Highbury, or where homelessness is increasing such as in Bournemouth. A 1% charity value of £72,800 from Arsenal player Alexis Sanchez could help local education services for example, particularly if the rest of the team follows suit, while AFC Bournemouth player Joshua King’s 1% charity value of £5,200 could help a Bournemouth-based charity like Hope for Food.
Adam Taylor, a spokesperson from Ticketgum said:
“Football is known to be an iconic, team sport. As players work together to achieve greatness on the pitch, why should their commitment to charity be any different? With wages increasing at substantial rates, it would be unjust to negate the difference a 1% donation could make across the UK – and the world.”
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Photo by Peter Glaser on Unsplash
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.