On the 31st of March, we were invited as panellist to discuss the Economics of Football an event organised in collaboration with the University of Manchester, the Bank of England, Discover Economics and the Financial Times Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign.

During the session, Sofia discussed how football can be used to understand key economic ideas in everyday life. She explained that major tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup are not only sporting events, but also major economic events, generating activity through tourism, broadcasting, sponsorship, ticket sales and wider effects on host cities and countries. She also discussed how ticket prices reflect demand and limited stadium capacity, why some matches are much more expensive than others, and what can happen when prices are kept artificially low, including black markets and resale. More broadly, she highlighted that economics changes the way we watch football: behind every match there are questions about demand and supply, opportunity cost, pricing, incentives, risk, labour markets and the wider social value of sport. However, one question from the audience stood out:

“Why do professional footballers earn more than nurses?”

It is one of those questions that immediately creates debate. Many people instinctively feel uncomfortable with the idea that a footballer can earn more in a week than a nurse earns in a year. After all, nurses save lives, while footballers play a sport. But why does this question create so much debate? Partly because people immediately think about fairness. Should someone working in entertainment really earn so much more than someone working in healthcare? At the same time, many people are also genuinely curious about why these enormous salary differences emerge in the first place. So how does economics explain this difference?

Wages are not necessarily determined by how socially important a job is. Instead, in many markets, wages are closely linked to the revenue a worker helps generate. Football today is not simply a sport. At the top level, it is a massive global entertainment industry. Millions of people around the world watch football every week. Fans buy tickets, shirts and subscriptions. Television broadcasters pay huge sums for broadcasting rights, while sponsors compete to associate themselves with successful clubs and famous players.

But this does not mean that all footballers earn these salaries. There are enormous differences within football itself. A player in a lower league will not earn anything close to the salary of a global superstar. Even within elite football, some players generate more commercial value than others because of their visibility, popularity, social media presence, image rights and individual sponsorship deals. In that sense, wages are not only linked to the team, but also to the economic value attached to a particular player as a brand.

It is also important to say that this pattern is much stronger in men’s football than in women’s football. Women footballers are also highly skilled professionals, but women’s football has historically received less investment, media coverage, sponsorship and broadcasting revenue. As a result, the revenues generated by the women’s game have been much lower, and this has translated into lower wages. This is changing, but the gap shows again that pay is not simply about talent or social importance. It is also shaped by the size of the market, media attention and commercial investment.

Economists often describe this using the idea of the “economics of superstars” (Rosen, 1981). This applies to celebrities and entertainers, such as Hollywood actors, musicians, tennis players and footballers, but the key idea is not simply fame. The key idea is that in some labour markets, earnings are highly concentrated among a small number of people at the top. Similar patterns can also appear in sectors such as finance, corporate law and senior management, where the highest earners receive disproportionately large rewards compared with others in the same profession. Small differences in performance, reputation, perceived quality or bargaining power can translate into very large differences in pay (Rosen, 1981; Terviö, 2009; Heywood et al., 2025).

In football, this helps explain why it is not enough to say that “footballers earn a lot”. Many professional footballers do not. The very high salaries are concentrated among a relatively small number of players who are seen as capable of generating exceptional economic value through performance, sponsorship, broadcasting value, merchandise sales and global demand.

Nurses, meanwhile, work in a completely different type of labour market.

Healthcare creates enormous social value, but nursing is organised very differently from labour markets where very high individual earnings emerge. Pay is not usually linked directly to the revenue one individual nurse can generate, and in countries such as the UK it is shaped by public funding, national pay structures, collective bargaining and competition across employers, regions and specialisms.

Competition matters too. Nurses can move between employers, regions, specialisms, or between public and private healthcare providers, and these outside options can affect wages and working conditions. However, there are many more trained nurses than there are elite footballers able to perform at the very top of the global game. Shortages can push nursing wages up, but nursing remains a much broader labour market where many workers can provide similar essential services. Elite football, by contrast, is a much scarcer labour market, where clubs compete intensely for a very small number of players who may significantly affect performance and revenue.

This means that nurses’ pay reflects how healthcare is financed and organised, as well as the supply of workers and the nature of competition in that labour market. It does not reflect the full social value of the work they do. That is why the comparison feels so uncomfortable: nursing is essential for society, but essential work is not always the highest-paid work in the labour market. This is where the distinction between market value and social value becomes important.

Market value reflects how much revenue an activity generates within a market. Social value refers to the wider contribution that activity makes to society and people’s well-being. The two are not always the same.

Whether that is fair? Well that depends, ultimately, economics cannot tell us whether wage differences are morally “fair.” But it can help us understand why these outcomes emerge.

And perhaps that is one of the most interesting things about economics: it helps explain many of the debates we encounter in everyday life , including earnings, football matches, and healthcare.

References

Heywood, J. S., Izquierdo Sanchez, S., & Navarro Paniagua, M. (2025). The Hollywood gender gap: The role of action films. Journal of Cultural Economics, 49, 459–485.

Rosen, S. (1981). The economics of superstars. American Economic Review, 71, 845–858.

Terviö, M. (2009). Superstars and mediocrities: Market failure in the discovery of talent. Review of Economic Studies, 76, 829–850.