An autograph from Thierry Henry and his Arsenal shirt. Inserted in a beautiful keepsake box. Dorsal number 14. With your authentic, certified signature, above the 1, on a white background, to highlight. 849 euros. Another from Fernando Torres and Liverpool: 367 euros. Why does nostalgia sell, in the midst of Generation Z? Lamine Yamal does not sign autographs. Yes, photos are taken. But he does not sign his name. Lamine seeks for his firm to increase its value in the market.
When Maheta Molango was 9 years old, Sampdoria centre-forward Gianluca Vialli scored a legendary overhead kick goal against Arsenal at Highbury. The year was 1991. Thirty-four years later, that boy, who had become president of the Professional Footballers Association (PFA) – the English players’ union – confessed: “I would pay a fortune for a signed shirt of his. And I would have also paid, probably, since he is no longer here, to spend an afternoon with him and talk about what Sampdoria’s glory years were like.”
Vialli died at the age of 69, in 2023. That same year, at the age of 58, Trevor Francis died, known as “the million pound player” because he was the first British footballer for whom a million pounds sterling was paid for his transfer from Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest. Today a used shirt with his autograph sells online for 10,400 euros.
A cultural element that goes beyond the commercial
Maheta Molango was one of the guests at the recent World Football Summit held in Madrid. It is not surprising that it is precisely in England, the cradle of football, where they ask that amount for such a garment.
Molango explains that “it is a cultural element that goes beyond commercial matters.” “In England there are certain things that perhaps we don’t do in Spain, which have to do with the recognition of what someone has contributed (…) regardless of whether you like it more or less.”
That ancient culture by which “every year the King grants titles to people who are understood to have made contributions to society. That is why Alex Ferguson is “Sir Alex Ferguson”. In the United Kingdom a study was carried out – he continues – and a significant part of those surveyed stated that “they spent more money on following their club than on the well-being of their own family. So this phenomenon does not surprise me.”
At a global level, “we buy what makes football a special product,” he adds. “This almost religious link with football, with a club, with a shield, with the liturgy of football. It is what makes football a different product from others, because there is an emotional element.”
Exclusive Memorabilia, one of the platforms in the sector, offers a shirt signed by Zidane, Ronaldo Nazario, Roberto Carlos and Raúl. Era of the Galactics. 1,698 euros.
The director of the FC Porto museum, Mafalda Magalhães, agrees with Molango: football is “emotion”, a feeling that generates in people the desire to “have something that makes them remember”, for example, “a very veteran player from his childhood days”.
Central Sports Memorabilia UK is the “culprit” that Trevor Francis’ shirt is in a virtual window where it says, verbatim: “Match Worn and Signed England Shirt (England team, used and autographed) €10,404.69.” This company sells “personalized, unique and exclusive” sports collectibles with “certificates of authenticity” for each signed item they sell. They have a signed and framed Andrés Iniesta (FC Barcelona) shirt to which they have added two action photos and an engraved plaque that summarizes the highlights of his career with the club. For the entire pack they ask for 575 euros.
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Diversification and the catalyst of Covid-19
Molango, like many fans, would pay to spend an afternoon with his idol… and he is not far from being able to fulfill his dream thanks to AI. Several companies are developing deathbots, griefbots or thanabots that enable this interaction. This is achieved thanks to the digital footprint (or digitized, if it is before this era): interviews, videos and audio recordings, for example; combined with natural language processing (NLP) and speech synthesis. So the avatar learns to imitate the idol’s personality, speaking style, tone, and typical phrases.
This is an example that the world of football constantly seeks to reinvent itself to achieve new sources of income. According to Molango, the Covid-19 pandemic was the moment when the monetization strategy was accelerated, disconnecting income from what happens on the field: “perhaps that was the catalyst to innovate even more and think even more about how sources of income can be generated that are not linked to there being a live match.”
An example of this are the veterans’ matches, among which the Spanish “classic” stands out. The first Real Madrid Leyendas-Barça Legends was played on April 28, 2017. Three years before the pandemic. And it continues to this day, with increasing force. The most recent match was played on November 8 in El Salvador (2-0 in favor of Barcelona with goals from Saviola) and the next one will be played on November 22 at the Saitama Stadium in Tokyo, where Madrid players Raúl, Iker Casillas, Guti, Baptista and Pepe will face Barcelona players Puyol, Saviola, Giuly and Touré.
Carlos Prida, director of events at NSN, the organizing company of the Legends match that will be played in Tokyo between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, explains that nostalgia sells “because thanks to social networks, and this is the novelty, children, young people and obviously the most adults know, for example, who Iker Casillas is; all three generations know him.”
This reflection invites this type of match, like the one in Tokyo, to have a unique family atmosphere. There is also a head of the family with an economic status and in an adult age group who can pay for the tickets for the entire family. “Especially outside Europe, in Asia and America, above all,” in places where they have not been lucky enough to see world football stars like Iniesta, Puyol, Figo, Raúl or Iker Casillas live.
Definitely, the Legends tours are a “nostalgic” business that generates profits and, speaking of nostalgia, are reminiscent of David Beckham’s stardom at Real Madrid. A Beckham who, as the 2023 Netflix documentary about his life reflects, transcended sport to become a global icon, very similar to movie stars. While it is true that Legends matches are beneficial, they undoubtedly serve to help clubs build brand loyalty around the world.
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And the future?
Will there be anyone willing to continue paying those exorbitant amounts in exchange for t-shirts? Magalhães, a speaker at WFS, reflects on this: “many private collectors are thinking that by buying many shirts they are contributing to their personal wealth. Others are not, others really have that feeling of wanting to maintain a heritage that will later be preserved and given to their children.”
The fact is that all this “is violating that type of product too much,” he believes. And he goes home when he says that “the right place” to preserve this “material and intangible heritage of a city, a region, a club, is a museum.”
The FC Porto tour and museum are also an example of that source of income that nostalgia generates. For more than a decade, FC Porto has received around 280,000 visits a year from 90 countries, “which is a lot of people for a city like Porto, for a club museum,” explains its director.
“80% of our current audience is tourists. That is a kind of victory, because it is very difficult when you are trying to establish a club museum as an attraction “for people who come from outside, who do not have a direct connection with the club.”
In Madrid, the “Legends, The Home of Football” museum, inaugurated in 2023, has the largest collection of football objects in history in a seven-story building on Carrera de San Jerónimo, 2, next to Puerta del Sol. Both museums are examples of sports tourism in the aspect that makes money at the expense of the past and “a demonstration of the power of football and sports in general in the world,” concludes Magalhães.
With information from EFE
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