Image is everything! Professional football players' visibility and wages, evidence from the Italian Serie A

Sport is one of the most popular forms of entertainment and its worldwide spread has turned athletes into icons who have economic impact and international visibility as global brands. In our paper we would like to show how marketing strategies in the sports industry, amplified by social networks, have put the athlete at the centre of media attention In the world of football, football players have come to play a key role, since their image is the face of their clubs, and this can affect the number of digital fans, that is, fans who are not bound to a club by constant passion but who can change team depending on the athletes that have been lined up. This could explain why the teams playing in the main football championships are offering higher and higher wages in the attempt to get hold of the best talents around. Based on a dataset with information about over 1,200 athletes who have taken part over five seasons of the Italian Serie A, we try to measure the impact of football players' popularity on salary-setting mechanisms, in the attempt to understand the impact of such variables on football players' athletic qualities and performance.