REAL MADRID will spend £187m on Cristiano Ronaldo’s transfer fee and wages over the next six years but the club’s president, Florentino Perez, expects the 24-year-old winger will pay his own way. Perez expects payback to come partly in a measurable sense — shirts, posters, DVDs — but mainly from Ronaldo’s contribution to the wider growth in Real’s brand value. His faith comes from his time as president between 2000 and 2006 when his first galactico experiment led Real’s annual income to almost double from €150m (2000-01) to €292m (2005-06). Their income for 2008-09 is expected to be €400m-plus. Perez is gambling that Ronaldo, Kaka and other summer signings, will fuel that growth. The risk comes in the cost of hiring and paying them. The £187m for Ronaldo breaks down into a transfer fee to Manchester United of £80m, plus wages of £107m over six years. Ronaldo will be paid about £9.5m in his first year and this will rise by 25% in each subsequent season, up to £29m if he is still at Madrid in year six. These figures include image rights payments but are before tax, paid at 25%.

Real have given him more incentive to stay the longer his contract goes on, while discouraging would-be predators. The “Webster ruling” has changed the way clubs structure contracts for their prized assets and Real’s deal for Ronaldo is a prime example. Webster, a Scottish defender, invoked Article 17 of Fifa’s rules to “buy out” his contract in 2006 after three years, a move ratified by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The £80m Real will pay United only buys them three years’ service from Ronaldo, or the “protected period” of his contract. In other words, they will pay £26.66m plus wages each year for his services for the first three years, and his wages thereafter. He could leave Real after three years by paying them the next two years’ wages, but Ronaldo’s wages for years four and five combined are worth £41.7m, hardly a pittance.

How will he pay his way? “I’ve looked at the revenues related to David Beckham’s time in Madrid and conservatively he generated $300m over four years,” says Professor Simon Chadwick, a specialist in sports business strategy and marketing at Coventry University. “Some estimates for Beckham are double that. Ronaldo and Kaka can make Real more than £100m per year between them, which more than covers their fees and wages.”

Shirt sales and other merchandise aside, the money should flow in through new and increased sponsorship contracts with major corporations, wanting glory by association, and from tours like the one in 2004 when two games in Tokyo and Osaka featuring the Beckham-era superstars grossed €14.5m — seven times what other major teams could expect.

Real will also be able to command more television money and matchday income should also grow as crowds flock to an expanded 80,300-seat Bernabeu that had average league gates of 71,800 last season. As long as nobody breaks a leg, Real should be quids in.