In the beginning of 2021, Goalunit, together with the Swedish Professional Football Leagues (SEF), initiated Project 500 with the aim to enhancing the competitiveness of Swedish professional clubs in Europe. The goal of the project has been to gradually increase Swedish clubs’ revenues from player contracts by 500 million Swedish kronor (SEK).
After several years of hovering around 300 million in sales, the Allsvenskan clubs set an all-time sales record in 2022. Preliminary figures indicate that 2023 is set to be at least as good.
The increase can primarily be explained by the underlying value in the clubs’ player squads, which collectively was 50 percent higher than in 2021. The underlying value is calculated by Goalunit’s algorithm and is based on age, playing time, position, and remaining contract length. It shows the resell potential of the squad.
There is still room for improvement, mainly when it comes to long-term planning of the player squads and talent development. When looking at the aggregated league level, the clubs in Allsvenskan are still a bit behind their more progressive Scandinavian rivals in Norway and Denmark, in terms of sales potential ahead of the upcoming transfer windows.
Data suggests that clubs surpassing their financial conditions do so because they excel in long-term planning of their squad, leading to increased profit from player trading and consequently greater leverage in their developmental efforts, continuously adding value to the team.
This is also the logic behind Goalunit’s approach.
According to Goalunit’s analysis, there are best practices among the leagues in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Portugal, while the leagues in Poland, Finland, Iceland, Greece, and Turkey have a lot of room for improvement.
