Full breakdown of football shirt costs as England fans buy fake £12 kits over official £85 version
The full breakdown of the cost of football shirts have been revealed, as more and more people are choosing to buy fake kits over real ones ahead of the Euros.
Football fever is really ramping up ahead of Euro 2024 kicking off tomorrow (Friday 14 June), with Germany taking on Scotland in the opener.
England will kick their campaign off against Serbia at 8pm on Sunday (16 June), and many fans will be sporting their brand new kits during the game, whether that be at the stadium, in the pubs, or in their homes.
However, an increasing among of the replica kits you'll spot these days are actually fake.
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While everyone wants to get behind the Three Lions to push them all the way to the coveted Euro final yet again, some don't want to fork out the £80 needed to buy an official kit.
So, fans have started to do something to get around this problem - they still buy kits, but they aren't made by the official manufacturer.
Though they may be a lot cheaper, purchasing fake kits raises other issues, as the FA state that buying counterfeit items damages their investment into grassroots football: "Without the income generated from commercial activity such as sponsorship, licensing and merchandising, this would not be possible.
"Our aim is to protect football fans and protect and enhance those monies that we can reinvest back into the game."
A spokesperson from Which? also told the BBC that it is 'illegal' to sell fake items in the UK, and by funding these criminals, you 'could be very well funding crime like terrorism or slavery.'
As the cost of club and country kits continue to increase every few years, fans have started to wonder why, but it looks like their questions have been answered.
German sports marketing expert, Dr Peter Rohlmann, revealed the breakdown of earning from each football kit sold to the Mail On Sunday.
The financial details behind selling a football kit is more complex than you'd think, as it's not as black and white as half of it going to the club and half of it going to the manufacturer.
Disclaimer: This isn't the set price for an England football shirt in particular, but these are generally the costs that dictate the price of a shirt.
An average footy top nowadays costs £80, but it actually only costs £8 to make, according to Dr Rohlmann, which covers materials, labour and transportation, with manufacturing usually happening in Asia.
Then, when a unit is sold, the retailer (which is often the club itself), takes £26.40, with the manufacturer taking £23.47, VAT counting for £13.33, and the club earning a £4.80 license fee on each shirt.
In addition, £2.40 of the sale goes to marketing purposes, while the remaining £1.60 goes towards local distribution.
The breakdown shows that the club or country will likely prefer to sell the kit directly, whether that be through the official website or in official stores, to get the most amount of money from the sale.
The exact figures can vary depending on contracts between kit providers and clubs, as there may be additional annual payments made.
It's not just clubs that rake the cash in from sales though, with the biggest kit deals raking in up to hundreds of millions of pounds over multi-year periods.
Clubs benefit more than countries from kit sales, usually releasing three new kits every season along with new training gear, casual wear and other merchandise.
The biggest kit deal in the country belongs to Manchester United, who have a deal with Adidas that earns them a handsome £90 million per year for 10 years, starting in 2025 - up from their previous contract worth £750 million from 2015-2025.
An FA spokesperson said: "The FA is a not-for-profit organisation and any sales of counterfeit England shirts diverts money away from investment into English football, including important funding into the grassroots game."
Joshua Nair