Commercial No Current status Online | Launched September 2015 | |
Website footballleaks2015.wordpress.com | ||
Football Leaks is a website that reveals transfer fees, wages and contract information about notable footballers. The website has been described as the football version of WikiLeaks.
Contents
Leaks
The website reveals transfer fee, wage and contract information about famous footballers, and was begun in September 2015. Its first leak was about third-party agreements between FC Twente and Doyen Sports, which led to the KNVB banning Twente from European football for three years. They leaked that AS Monaco paid €43 million, rather than around €60 million as had been estimated. The website also revealed that when Neymar signed for FC Barcelona, he received an €8.5 million signing fee, and now earns €77,000 a week and has a buyout clause of €190 million (£152 million). A leak revealed that Gareth Bale's transfer from Tottenham Hotspur to Real Madrid was over €100 million, more than the €96 million the club had paid for Cristiano Ronaldo. The website also revealed that Ronaldo earned €1.1 million for doing a photoshoot with Mobily. The website has also leaked that James Rodríguez's transfer from Monaco to Real Madrid was €75 million plus €15 million in additional clauses.
In January 2016, it was claimed that Football Leaks was being investigated by the Portuguese authorities over claims of blackmail and extortion. In February, Liga de Fútbol Profesional President Javier Tebas blamed FIFA for the leaks of contract details of three La Liga players. In April 2016, the website announced that it was temporarily ceasing its leaks.
In December 2016, Der Spiegel and other partners at the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network (L'Espresso (Italy), Le Soir (Belgium), NRC Handelsblad (Netherlands), The Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism / TheBlackSea.eu (Romania), Mediapart (France), Politiken (Denmark), Falter (Austria), NewsWeek (Serbia), El Mundo (Spain), The Sunday Times (UK) and Expresso (Portugal)) began to publish information about tax avoidance by several football stars. Some of the information was collected by Football Leaks. On 5 December, El Mundo revealed a judicial decree from Spanish judge Arturo Zamarriego that prohibits EIC from publishing information until "the legal investigation of its obtaining".
Creators
One of the creators of Football Leaks conducted an interview with Der Spiegel in February 2016; he used the pseudonym John during the interview.