Football club salary data for academics

What is Capology?

Capology is a football finance database built to bring transparency to a notoriously opaque industry: what players actually earn and how clubs actually spend. It relies on a network of people directly involved in contract negotiations, alongside news publications from around the world, and where those sources fall short, algorithms fill the gap using more than 20 variables including age, position, and time since a player's last contract.

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What academic researchers should know about Capology's football salary and finance data

On Dewey, Capology contributes two datasets. Professional Football Salary Data covers the five biggest leagues in the world (Premier League, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, Serie A, and La Liga) plus their second divisions, MLS, and the Women's Super League and Championship in England, with every first division carrying at least 10 seasons of coverage and every second division at least 5. Salaries are base pay estimates only, reported in both gross and net terms across Euro, British Pound, and US Dollar based on current exchange rates, with country specific tax modeling built in to handle the fact that England reports salaries differently than Italy or Spain. Professional Football Club Financial Data covers club accounts from 2013 to present across the major leagues, giving researchers the club side of the same financial picture.

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Why academic researchers choose Capology on Dewey

Player level football salary data is hard to get at any real scale, and harder still to compare across countries that report pay differently or tax it differently. Capology's gross and net conversion, done through consultation with international tax professionals, means researchers can build genuinely comparable wage measures across leagues rather than working around currency and tax quirks themselves. Paired with WageScape's broader labor market data, Capology's football salaries can anchor research questions that compare wage structures in a highly visible, data rich labor market against wage dynamics in the wider economy.

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Capology academic research ideas and use cases

Labor economics and sports pay determination research already has a track record with this exact data. Economists including David Butler matched Capology's salary data with performance statistics for 260 goalkeepers across the five biggest European leagues, published in European Sport Management Quarterly, finding that clubs pay goalkeepers based on team outcomes and ball distribution rather than individual defensive workload alone.

Wage discrimination and nationality premium research has also drawn on Capology directly. A 2024 study in Sports Economics Review used Capology salary data for the Premier League and Serie A to find an 11 to 15 percent pay premium for South American players, then tested whether that premium was driven by new signings or showed up in attendance and team performance.

Club finance and Financial Fair Play research can use the club financial statements dataset to study how revenue, spending, and compliance with league financial rules relate to sporting performance across the Big Five leagues.

Gender pay gap research can use the newly added Women's Super League and Championship salary coverage alongside the men's leagues to study how pay structures and determinants differ between men's and women's professional football.

Migration and labor market research more broadly can use Capology's cross-league, cross-currency salary panel as a rare window into how a single, highly mobile global labor market prices talent differently by country and league.

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