Wage vs. Performance: The Case of the EPL

Abstract

Soccer has always been a very subjective game, something that requires careful watching in order to fully grasp the beauty of it. However, the beauty is not shallow, and goes deeper than what a viewer might see just from watching. Beyond the pitch is a qualitative analytical study, very numbers driven, to explain why there is such a gap in wages from players who appear to be at the same level, talent-wise. I look at a variety of factors including where players come from, where they play, statistics for the 2017-18 season for players separated by position, as well as create an index in order to rank them amongst each other. The results will show that, because of transfer fees, hype, and the fact that viewership of the English Premier League is at an all-time global high, the primary factor determining a player's wages is where the player transferred from, and if the player is an English native or comes from a very small team, the determining factor is performance. The implications are that there is an imbalance among the players, where some players are overlooked for large wages simply because their name isn't big enough and recognizable, even though they perform at the same level or better than their counterparts on the field.