As the most popular sport in the world, the charm of football goes without saying. This charm can be more concretely expressed if we carefully observe nine aspects including jersey trading volume, star player income, and the development of professional leagues in various countries.

1. Games watched by 3.9 billion people

The World Cup is the most representative event in football. The World Cup has by far the largest audience of any sporting event. According to data provided by FIFA, during the 2018 World Cup, 3.5 billion people around the world watched the game, including multimedia channels such as TV and the Internet.

In the final between France and Croatia, 517 million people watched the showdown. During the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, that number reached 3.9 billion. In 2006, the number of viewers of the World Cup final in Germany exceeded 700 million (television channel).

2. More than 1.5 billion euros in bonuses per year

In addition to the World Cup held every four years, fans can now choose to watch more and more high-level football matches, and the UEFA Champions League is one of the symbols.

As a European club competition with clubs from 54 countries, more than €1.5 billion in prize money is awarded and paid out every year. In fact, four of the top five prize money competitions are football events. They are UEFA Champions League, FIFA World Cup, Europa League, and European Cup.

3. Broadcasting rights of £8.1 billion over three years

A large part of the bonus mentioned above comes from the purchase and distribution of the broadcast rights of the event by media organizations in various countries.

The English Premier League is currently the world's most expensive sports TV broadcast rights transaction professional event. And this is not unrelated to its stable and high ratings, as well as strong commercial development.

Up to now, the Premier League has been broadcast in 212 regions around the world, and more than 5 billion viewers are watching live broadcasts of Premier League games in various parts of the world.

4. Over 50 countries' professional league system

Football professional league is the most numerous sports professional league in the world. And in general, football professional leagues can also promote the formation of other local sports professional league systems.

At present, more than 50 countries have established football professional leagues, a large part of which is the basis of local sports events.

5. £75m annual sponsorship deal

In addition to the competition itself, football is becoming more and more like a business. Sports equipment giant Adidas, in order to become Manchester United's jersey sponsor, needs to pay it a sponsorship fee of 75 million pounds per year, which is currently the largest jersey sponsorship contract in the world. And this price can buy a Boeing 737-800 airliner, and there is still a surplus.

6. High-income athletes

How much do professional players benefit from playing professionally? As can be seen from the list of the latest income list of sports players released by Forbes in 2018, football players Messi and Ronaldo ranked second and third in the annual income of sports players with US$111 million and US$108 million respectively.

7. Well-known and wealthy clubs

If we talk about the richest sports teams in the world, football clubs must be a big part of it. In the list released by Forbes, there are three football clubs in the top five of the overall list.

The three clubs are: Manchester United ($4.123 billion), Real Madrid ($4.09 billion), and Barcelona ($4.064 billion).

8. Powerful FIFA

Compared with other sports associations, FIFA is naturally unmatched. As the largest and most powerful federation in the sports world, FIFA currently has 211 national federations from all over the world and more than 6,500 professional clubs registered with FIFA.