Someone else's opinion.
http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/soccer/b...selling-Torres-shirts-is-like-?urn=sow-316727
Chelsea find that selling Torres shirts is like printing money
By Brooks Peck
Spending £50 million on a great striker with bad hamstrings sounds ridiculous and horrifying and worthy of your rants about the awfulness of modern football. But is it really that crazy if simply slapping his surname on your club's shirts is almost guaranteed to at least make all of that money back? Forget trophies and scoring titles, it's all about the merchandising.
Here are the initial figures (from The Mirror):
Chelsea's record £50million signing Fernando Torres is already king of the shirt sales – outselling his *Liverpool replacement Andy Carroll by 250 jerseys to one.
Demand for Chelsea's new Torres home shirts are currently 40% higher than when he arrived at Anfield three years ago, according to suppliers.
Shirt sales for the Kop’s other new striker, Luis Suarez, are 380% more popular than Carroll replicas, but are still trailing behind Chelsea’s Spanish signing by 30 to one.
The last two seasons, Torres has led the Premier League in shirt sales -- even beating out Cristiano Ronaldo in 2008/09, while scoring fewer goals and winning nothing. And judging by the fact that sales of his Chelsea shirts are up 40 percent compared to his first season with Liverpool (he sold the third most shirts that season), it sounds like they're already well on their way to bringing buckets and buckets of Torres money.
Speaking of Ronaldo, Torres' comparable popularity is another sign of his Zuckerberg-like money-making potential. As of April 2010, the player that cost Real Madrid £80 million had already generated an income of about £100 million in part by selling 1.2 million "Ronaldo 9" shirts in Madrid alone (repeat: only in Madrid, not counting the ones sold everywhere else in the world).
Of course, Chelsea will have to share these profits with Torres himself and they still have to pay his wages, but it's safe to say that that £50 million spent on Torres will be a much smaller figure come this time next year. So the next time you get yourself worked up over a mind-boggling transfer fee, just stop and think about the merchandising potential. Then stick your head in the nearest toilet and flush it until the next match begins.