Max Kilman’s £40m move from Wolverhampton Wanderers to West Ham United was one of the biggest Premier League transfers of the summer. But it wasn’t just Hammers fans who celebrated the move. Non-league side Maidenhead United were also celebrating the significance of the move.
With a little advance planning, clubs further down the football pyramid can get a piece of the action from a major deal, and the money can be life-changing. In addition, Kilman has offered hope to young footballers in non-league football, and the Hammers defender has shown that buying time and moving up the pyramid at a less frenetic pace can pay off in every way.
Kilman left Maidenhead for Wolves in 2018 for a reported £40,000, with Magpies inserting a clause into his contract guaranteeing a percentage of future transfer fees. It was a gamble that may never have paid off, but Maidenhead proved right.
Football clubs rarely reveal the details of their financial dealings, so there has been much speculation about how much of West Ham’s £40m spending they will get. The figure of 10%, or £4m, has been widely reported, but whatever the amount, it will change the way Maidenhead operates for years to come. Chairman Peter Griffin has revealed that the money from the deal could make the club fully professional for the first time.
“From our perspective, we were offered the full amount we were entitled to, but if he had not moved we would have received zero,” he told the Maidenhead Advertiser earlier this summer.
“(That’s) the difference this money can make. The money coming into us will help secure Maidenhead United’s first team, the women’s team, all the community work we do, the infrastructure schemes. It’s given us a really big boost into the future and if we didn’t have it, the National League finances would be terrible. They’re getting worse every year.”
A strong example
“It sends a really positive message,” football finance expert Rob Wilson told ESPN. “You can say to the next National League player, ‘Here’s where you can go to League One or the Championship and then you can get promoted to the Premier League. There’s a path. You can say to young players, ‘Here’s where you can work hard, here’s where you can develop and grow.’ It encourages even the smallest clubs to put a lot of effort into youth development.
“Then, if that player earns big money, the club’s income could double with a future transfer clause. For some, that can mean the difference between a steady profit and a loss. For Maidenhead, it’s a fantastic reward for all the hard work they’ve put in with that young player. And for football as a whole, it’s just a really good news story in terms of player development.”
Maidenhead may have been a huge success, but they are not the first club to reap the rewards of a well-thought-out transfer deal.
Ollie Watkins, England’s hero in the Euro 2024 semi-final against the Netherlands, remains a figure of praise at Exeter City. The striker earned the club around £3.5m (15%) of his £30m move from Brentford to Aston Villa in September 2020, having left Exeter for the Bees in 2017.
Maidstone enjoyed a similarly successful spell in 2010, when Chris Smalling, aged 20 and playing Ryman League football for the club, moved from Fulham to Manchester United, creating a significant influx of money for a club that was struggling to pay its players’ wages.
Barnsley received more than £7m when former academy product John Stones moved from Everton to Manchester City for £47.5m in 2016, while Queens Park Rangers received £12.25m when winger Raheem Sterling joined the Etihad from Liverpool for £49m the previous year. Meanwhile, the £15m fee Jordon Ibe received from Anfield to Bournemouth in 2015 helped Wycombe Wanderers pay off a £1m debt owed to their former owners.
But if you thought all that money was coming in at once, think again. Scott Twine’s £4m move to Burnley from MK Dons in the summer of 2022 netted Swindon Town around £1m. The club’s then technical director Sandro Di Michele highlighted the practicalities of receiving money from such a deal, telling the Swindon Advertiser: “If you look at how most transfers are structured these days… clubs are so smart that the idea of a club paying a lump sum up front doesn’t really happen or is very rare.”
poker game
Former Premier League manager Phil Brown will be hoping to secure promotion to the fifth-tier National League with Kidderminster Harriers when they ask for it for the first time this season. He has seen it all during his managerial career, and he told ESPN that future transfer clauses can sometimes make or break a deal.
“It’s like a card game, a big game of poker,” he said. “Could it be a sticking point for a transfer? Absolutely. If you’re a third club like Maidenhead and you’re waiting for a transfer to go through, the other clubs involved know full well that the huge clauses will drive up the price.
“If a club knows they have to pay £4m for a transfer, naturally the price goes up. But at the end of the day, it’s market forces. If a club really wants the player, they’ll pay that. And if a club wants the money, they’ll take the offer. But if you’re signing a player with a significant clause in the future, you might choose to keep that a secret at the early stages of the negotiation. Of course you have to be open about it, but you have to make sure the club is 100 per cent interested in the business before you put all your cards on the table.”
hedge your bet
This clause is a tool in every smaller club’s revenue-generating toolbox, but as Portsmouth sporting director Rich Hughes explains, some clubs take a more flexible approach than others.
“Some clubs have a standard clause that they don’t seem to deviate from, and that can often cause a bit of friction in the negotiation process,” he told ESPN. “But most successful clubs will have a flexible approach because they can provide security and vary the initial fee. For example, some clubs will allow the clause to vary on a sliding scale depending on the outlay. If the initial fee is £0, a 40% clause might be inserted, if it’s £100,000, it might be 20%, and if it’s £200,000, it might be reduced to 10%.”
For an 18-year-old moving from the National League to the third-tier First Division, that percentage may translate into a relatively small financial win. But as Killman shows, when a player suddenly finds great success, that small percentage can suddenly translate into a huge salary.
“For our club and the lower league clubs, the money that can be generated through these sell-on clauses makes a huge difference,” Brown said. “It means the club can continue to invest in youth development, bring in new coaches or build new facilities. We have 14 pitches at our training ground. I went from Bolton Wanderers to two and a half with Big Sam (Oladys)!”
The clause guaranteeing a portion of the future transfer fee can be used to make money even before a player leaves, and the club’s top brass are prepared to take a small hit to potential future profits by cashing in early. Brown said the former Southend United chairman sometimes used this approach to ensure players’ wages were paid on time.
“If the clause is worth £100,000, then as a chairman you might be prepared to negotiate with the club for £50,000 or £25,000 when the player breaks into the first team,” he said. “The club who ultimately pays the clause knows how much the player is worth because they have seen the player play every day. By paying the clause early, the club makes a one-off payment but saves millions of pounds in the long run. When you are playing in the lower leagues, cash is king.”
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Insurance policy for cannons
While the smaller clubs further down the pyramid stand to benefit most from futures clauses, the Premier League’s biggest clubs will also look to use the current contracting arrangements to ensure they remain relevant into the future.
Wilson said: “Manchester United have inserted a clause of up to 50 per cent into the contract of defender Willy Kambala (who signed from Villarreal and is believed to be worth £9.7m including add-ons).”
“They have to move players for their own development and benefit, but those players are still incredibly valuable to the club. Manchester City have made an entire industry out of it (Jadon Sancho, Pedro Porro and Romeo Rabia are just three examples of players who left the club and raised money through subsequent transfers). It’s basically an insurance policy. Clubs are afraid of losing highly rated players and want some kind of protection should they become huge stars.
“You can get egg on your face and that’s not a good look for anyone. A futures clause basically means you hedge your bets and say, ‘Look, we can’t guarantee this player enough first-team minutes, so we’re going to send them to a club further down the pyramid.’
“They let him go but they kept this huge clause. For a smaller club who finds that gem, the opposite happens. Twenty per cent of £500,000 in a transfer fee may not seem like a lot of money for a club to give up, but when a transfer deal is multi-million pound, it can add up really quickly.”
Maidenhead know better than anyone how quickly those zeros can pile up. Kilman made just 34 appearances for the Magpies. But what once seemed an innocuous move to Wolves could ultimately turn out to be one of the most important moments in the club’s 154-year history.
If clubs were previously unsure about the benefits of future transfer clauses, they are very likely to be convinced now.
