Dr. García del Barrio’s first paper was “An Economic and Media-Based Revaluation of Professional Footballers at the 2010 World Cup”, which he wrote in collaboration with Javier Reguart from Merit Social Value. The paper comprised an economic and media-based valuation of the footballers who took part in the 2010 World Cup, and also included rankings and comparative analyses of players and teams.

The results were generated using the MERIT methodology of assessing media-based value in professional football. Generating the results involved continuous monitoring of more than 5,000 footballers over the course of three seasons, taking into account hundreds of thousands of news articles in media outlets around the world and data gathered from several million webpages.

Perhaps the most relevant result, Dr. García del Barrio explained, was the significant revaluation experienced by the footballers who participated in the 2010 World Cup. A statistical analysis concluded that the estimated fair value of those players rose by an average of 20.7%; this result was further corroborated by applying regression analysis techniques, which concluded that half of this rise could be directly attributed to the players’ participation in the 2010 World Cup.

Dr. García del Barrio also highlighted the increase in the estimated value of the members of Spain’s national team, the winners of the 2010 World Cup; their worth rose by 39.23%, of which a little less than half could be directly attributed to their involvement in the tournament. These calculations were also based on an analysis of media value consolidated over time, which revealed that between 14.7% and 21.0% of their increased value was due to winning the World Cup.

His second paper was “A Media-Based Estimate of Footballers’ Fair Transfer Value”, which he wrote in collaboration with Francesc Pujol from the Department of Economics at the Universidad de Navarra. Dr. García del Barrio began this second talk by explaining the workings of ESI (Economics, Sports and Intangibles), the methodology he used to produce the paper. ESI allows for the valuation of intangible talent in sport by calculating results and rankings on the basis of two aspects: media-based value (i.e. the attention paid by the media to a particular footballer or institution) and popularity (i.e. the level of interest the player arouses in fans and the general public). Media-based value is measured by the number of appearances in the press and other media outlets, while popularity is measured by the strength of the player’s presence on the Internet. He then went on to describe the process for estimating the player’s transfer value. 

In conclusion, Dr. García del Barrio’s investigations have shown that a player’s media profile has a significant impact on his value in the transfer market.