Show me the money: McIlroy's career Slam, Salah's salary & astronomical agents' fees
Three big stories from the past week have much to tell us about sport's relationship with money, from The Masters to Anfield to the minutiae of agents filling their coffers
Rory McIlroy’s win at The Masters on Sunday was an epic piece of sporting drama, from his wobbly start in the final round to being five strokes clear after 10 holes to being in a tie for the lead after 16, to that shot on the 15th, to more heroics on the 17th and then a bogey at the last.
He eventually prevailed at the first hole of the sudden death play-off against Justin Rose to win his first green jacket, handed to him (below) by last year’s Masters winner, Scottie Scheffler.
Today we’ll get into all of that and how historic it is that McIlroy has finally completed the career Slam, with analysis of some potential repercussions of his victory.
But in a change to Sporting Intelligence’s normal format of doing one story comprehensively per post, today I’m going to look at three.
Two other significant money-related tales from the past week have piqued my interest. First, Mo Salah’s new contract at Liverpool. Second, the publication of agents’ fees paid by English football clubs between February last year and February this year, a period including the transfer windows of summer 2024 and January 2025. The sums are eye-watering.
One of SI’s founding aims was to try to make sense of sport's relationship with money. Today’s stories each tell us something about that, with original data to accompany each.
Looking at McIlroy’s landmark win, I’ll consider:
Where it places him in golf’s pantheon of all-time greats.
What the numbers from the full history of all four Majors tells us about the likelihood of him going on to add more Majors at his age.
Whether McIlroy should now enter the conversation as a legitimate contender to be considered among Britain’s greatest sportsmen, and if so why.
The finances of his win, and where it places him in the all-time earnings lists in golf; and how his hero Tiger Woods rocket-boosted earnings for everyone in golf when he became the game’s greatest star.
On Salah’s new contract, I’ll ask whether it’s likely to be good value, or a costly mistake, and use two specific measurements to make the case.
On the payments to agents, I’ve gone back 10 years to find the agent spending of a collection of major clubs over the past decade in that time, and will explore what they’re spending it on.