Newcastle help lower their wage bill by paying Joey Barton £675,000 for image rights
Oxygen thief midfielder is still raking it in
The frequency with which Newcastle Utd give the rest of the country a new reason to point and laugh at them is increasing at an alarming rate. The Sunday Telegraph provide the latest ammunition against the Toon club, with the revelation that since June 2007, they have been paying £675,000 a year for the image rights of Joey Barton. Yes, that’s the image rights of a vile criminal who uses other players’ faces as ashtrays:
Barton’s image rights payments – which work out at roughly £13,000 a week – are believed to be at least £200,000 higher than those of his best paid team-mates. While most high profile players receive just over 10 per cent of their basic salary, Barton, whose contract runs until 2012, is paid just over 20 per cent.
When a player signs for a club he has two options. Either he seeks to profit from selling his own image rights, or he lets the club use his image in exchange for an annual payment. This payment goes into the player’s ‘image company’, many of which are based offshore. Almost all players opt for the latter.
In news that is even more depressing than the fact that Guy Ritchie is still allowed to make films after Revolver, it has emerged that Barton earned £143,000 in image rights while serving a six month stint in prison for an abhorrent attack on a teenager outside McDonalds. Happy Monday morning everyone!
[Sunday Telegraph via Dirty Tackle]
1 response so far
Elliott Burton // June 16, 2009 at 11:27 am
Does that include everytime the police use Bartons image in a line-up? Cos Newcastle would be rolling in it!!
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