Transfer Optimization in Professional Football: A Total Cost of Ownership Decision Framework Adapted from Industrial Procurement

Despite record revenues across European professional football, many clubs consistently report negative annual results. Player transfers represent the single largest controllable cost driver, yet investment decisions are rarely evaluated through a rigorous economic lens: the headline transfer fee dominates deliberation while salary obligations, injury exposure, and player-attributable revenue contributions receive little systematic attention. This paper proposes a holistic investment decision framework for professional football by adapting the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) concept from industrial procurement. The framework treats players as capital assets and integrates further financially relevant dimensions into a net economic metric assessed over the contract period and discounted to present value. We illustrate the framework using the 2025 transfer of Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen to Liverpool FC (initial fee approximately EUR 118 million, £100 million), which also draws on age-based market value forecasting and probabilistic injury risk assessment among its inputs. The analysis highlights economic dimensions beyond market-price-based evaluation. By applying the framework, total costs in the base case are approximately 1.6 times the headline fee in present-value terms, and the illustrative scenario range spans approximately EUR 80 million. Statistical and machine learning market value models can inform specific framework inputs rather than functioning as alternative valuation approaches. The approach is designed as a decision-support tool especially for the interface between sporting directors and CFOs, enabling transfer candidates to be evaluated on a comparable economic basis.