TM history 

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Cristiano Ronaldo has discussed them, international courts use them as a benchmark, and within the football industry, they have become a worldwide accepted measurement for player evaluation. The Transfermarkt market values celebrate 20 years of existence. A good reason to look back to the beginnings of the market values. We have caught up with Transfermarkt founder and CEO Matthias Seidel and head of international, as well as one of the early members of the team, Christian Schwarz.

Back in 2000, Seidel founded Transfermarkt.de as a hobby. Today, it is an online sports site with the world’s most extensive football database, with 5.6 million users, and a global player with 27 successful international domains from the United States to Indonesia. “As a big fan of Werder Bremen living in Hamburg, I was looking for a way to stay up to date with Werder news and rumors,” Seidel said. “Back in 2000, not all media companies were online, and staying up-to-date with the latest football news wasn’t easy. With that in mind, I had an idea to create a community to share the news I needed. That’s why I founded Transfermarkt.de.”

Very quickly, the platform created by the Berlin-native formed the TM-Community that became the main pillar and foundation of Transfermarkt’s success today. Market values were built on that foundation just a few years later. The generation of the now 55-year-old Seidel was obsessed with football manager games. “In those games, the problem often was that you wouldn’t know who to buy for your squad,” Seidel said. “The most important parameter was always the price. As a derivation from that, I initially created market values for those players. We worked with several sources and always monitored the transfer fees—those were our initial, careful first steps. Since October 2004, market values have been firmly established in the player profiles on Transfermarkt. But to this day, it isn’t supposed to be an attempt to predict transfer fees.” 

Transfermarkt’s current head of international Schwarz was one of the original community members and has helped develop market values over the last two decades. “You can’t forget where Transfermarkt was at the time,” the 40-year-old said when asked about when market values were still in their infancy. “It was a pure hobby project. We had zero relevance, but we tried to do our best. This community-driven assertion of everyone involved to completely and realistically reflect the market was the foundation of the professionalization of the coming years.” 

Brazilian star Ronaldinho from Barcelona was the most valuable player in 2004, with a market value of €50m. Real Madrid’s Ronaldo and Arsenal’s Thierry Henry followed, with a market value of €45m. In Michael Ballack from Bayern Munich, only one player from Germany was in the top 25 at the time. 

“You could see where the business was going,” Seidel said when observing the development of the market values in the coming years. “In the last 20 years, the mechanics, the entire business surrounding the game, has become way more about finances. Of course, the market values mirror the development in professional football too.” Today, the market value analysis is a structured instrument that uses several variables to meet the market requirements, as leagues are updated several times a year. 

“The basis is the market value analysis in which users discuss and exchange arguments,” Schwarz said. “We follow those arguments and have colleagues from all over the world, who support us and deliver important information. Internally, a team coordinates this entire process from the TM-HQ,” added Schwarz. Around 200 leagues worldwide have regular market value updates based on significant communication and coordination. Today’s path to the market value results isn’t comparable with those in the founding years, TM’s head of international points out, highlighting that the market is changing year by year. 

“For example, the age of a player is a factor,” Schwarz said. “The further you look back, the more you realize that older players generated much higher transfer fees back in the day. Nowadays, talent status is a much bigger factor in determining the market value—the transfer fee and actual performance stats aside. Countless other factors have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. What is the level of the club? What status is the league of the buyer or seller? What is the current supply and demand in a certain position? And so on. Nationality, too, can play a role, how often a player is injured, and even the character can be an aspect. There are countless factors that are being debated as part of the market value definition and have to be taken into account. That’s why it is so much fun to debate about them. The most important thing is that we look at every player individually while also considering other players of the same league he is playing in and how that compares to other leagues. Only then can we create a good foundation for our market values.”

Several curious anecdotes highlight that market values are no longer just a plaything created in Hamburg-Wandsbek but an important benchmark in world football. Pretty much daily, stakeholders of the football business, whether players, sporting directors, managers, or coaches, contact Transfermarkt directly about market values, often because they want to influence or because they are unhappy with their valuations. 

“Once, one of the player’s fathers came to our office to complain about the market value of his son,” Seidel said. “It ended in a long discussion about the background of our market values. It was Mesut Özil’s father.” Cristiano Ronaldo contacted Transfermarkt on Instagram a few years ago to discuss his market value. An Italian court once used the market values from the Transfermarkt database to settle a dispute between two clubs. Borussia Dortmund cite the market values in their annual report, Real president Florentino Perez has mentioned TM squad values and sporting directors use them as the basis of contract talks, etc. 

“You can really see the significant role market values play for single actors to the world’s biggest clubs,” Schwarz said. “They are always being observed and taken seriously in one form or another. Our relevance within the football business is based on the fact that we have done a good job over the last 20 years. I am proud of that, especially as I know how much work is behind it and how many people are involved with all their passion, giving their hearts and souls.” Schwarz is also optimistic about the future. “We haven’t reached our full potential yet. We want to reach even more people, integrate more users, especially internationally, and generate even better market values.”

Transfermarkt founder and market value inventor Seidel added: “I never thought we would have this sort of relevance when we started the project. The market without Transfermarkt market values would be unthinkable today.”