Abstract
This article will focus on the different factors determining the wage of professional football players, based on the 20 footballers with the biggest salaries in the world during the season 2010-2011.
It presents an estimate of the remuneration equation after taking different factors into account regarding the players and their clubs.
This approach is different from the previous ones by its attempt to put the function for the remuneration of a football player into shape. It highlights the fact that if one of the reasons for the gaps between salaries can be due to the players' abilities, the biggest part is still due to unaccountable characteristics such as the strengthening of the image of the club towards media.
The salary equation is tested via a simple linear regression which shows that the clubs tend to pay more a football stars embodying a "brand", one of the keys to the success of sports as a show business that generates marketing potential. The clubs give more consideration to the capacity of the superstars to increase their earnings (sponsoring, merchandising, TV broadcasting rights, ticket sales, etc.).