What a sell-on clause actually pays the club that sold the player

Who actually gets paid, and how much

Transfer stories often carry a line like "with a 20% sell-on clause". It is a simple idea: the club selling a player keeps the right to a slice of whatever that player is sold for next. The money goes to the club, not to the player, and it is paid by the club that bought him.

The percentage on its own tells you almost nothing about the sum, because contracts differ on what the percentage attaches to. Some are written against the whole of the next fee. Others apply only to the buying club's profit, meaning the next fee minus what that club paid in the first place. The same 10% produces different money in those two cases. And what counts as profit is itself defined by the contract, so even that is not fixed.

A typical sell-on is triggered when the next transfer goes through. If the player runs his contract down and leaves on a free, no fee changes hands and the clause produces nothing. What exactly counts as a trigger depends on the wording, so this is not uniform either.

On what a normal percentage looks like, I am not going to put a number on it. I have not found the kind of contract-based evidence that would let me say what is standard. Instead, let us look at deals where the figures actually reached print.

Why a former club's sell-on isn't banned

Put like that, it sounds odd. A club has sold the player and walked away, so why is it still reaching into someone else's revenue? FIFA's rules draw the line clearly.

The regulations governing transfers (July 2025 edition) contain article 18ter, which prohibits clubs and players from agreeing that a third party may share in the compensation payable on a future transfer. It exists to stop third-party ownership, where investment funds bought slices of players' future transfer fees. The ban took effect on 1 May 2015. Agreements predating it could run to expiry but not be extended, and those signed between 1 January and 30 April 2015 were capped at one year beyond the effective date.

So why is a sell-on allowed? The answer sits in the definitions. A "third party" is defined as anyone other than the player being transferred, the two clubs involved in the transfer, and any previous club with which the player has been registered. A former club is outside that definition from the start, so holding a share of a future fee never falls under the prohibition.

Alongside it sits article 18bis, which bans contracts that let the counter club or any third party acquire the ability to influence, in employment and transfer-related matters, a club's independence, its policies or the performance of its teams. A former club simply holding a normal sell-on is not the problem. Attach machinery to that right which shapes who the player can be sold to, or whether he can be sold at all, and you are in article 18bis territory. Holding a share and having a say in the decision are kept apart.

Is it a share of the fee, or of the profit?

This is what moves the number. Put figures on it and it becomes obvious.

Say a club sells a player for €20m and keeps a 10% sell-on. A few years later the buying club sells him for €70m. If the clause is written against the total, the former club receives 10% of €70m, so €7m. If it is written against profit, the base is €70m minus the €20m the buying club paid, and 10% of €50m is €5m. Same percentage, €2m apart.

So in a real deal, can a reader tell which one applies? Take a case where Atlético de Madrid were the ones paying.

Rodri joined Atlético from Villarreal in 2018, for a fee reported as €20m plus €5m in variables. Villarreal kept a share of any future sale. A year later Manchester City paid Rodri's €70m release clause and took him to England.

That Villarreal collected roughly €7m from the move is reported consistently. What is not consistent is the explanation of what the €7m was made of.

Every version lands on about €7m. But on the point that decides everything, whether the clause bites on the total or on the profit, Goal and Plaza Deportiva say opposite things. AS refers to the percentage Villarreal held without ever putting a number on it, and simply splits the money. Goal and Plaza Deportiva cannot both be right, and the AS breakdown matches neither.

Neither Atlético nor Villarreal published the terms. I could not find a primary source setting out the basis of the calculation. So even with this many specific figures in circulation, what the 10% was calculated on cannot be established from outside.

Since it turns up inside those breakdowns, the solidarity mechanism is worth a word. FIFA's rules provide that, on a qualifying transfer, 5% of what is paid for that transfer, training compensation aside, is allocated to the clubs that trained the player between the ages of 12 and 23, in proportion to the years he spent registered with each. Each year from 16 to 23 accounts for 0.5% of the fee. Rodri was in Atlético's academy from the age of 11 until 2013, when a judgement about his physique made a route to the first team unlikely and he moved to Villarreal, where he turned professional. More than one club trained him, so that money splits several ways.

A contractual share and a payment fixed by regulation run on different logic. Report them as a single figure and the meaning of the percentage becomes harder still to see.

How Atlético's 50% of Samu turned into cash in under a year

In August 2024 Atlético sold Samu Aghehowa to Porto. He was still being listed as Samu Omorodion at the time. Some English-language coverage said Atlético had taken a 50% sell-on clause.

Porto's own wording is different. Porto are a listed company, so significant transfers come with a filing to the securities market. The document dated 23 August 2024 says the club acquired the player's sporting registration rights and 50% of his economic rights for €15m. The contract ran to 2029, the release clause was €100m, and Porto also held two non-obligatory options to buy a further 15% of the economic rights for €5m each.

So are a sell-on clause and a stake in economic rights different things? Both amount to the former club receiving part of whatever money the player generates later, which makes them look alike. Nor can you separate them by asking whether they can be cashed in before the next sale, because a sell-on can be bought out too. Southampton attached a clause reported at somewhere between 15% and 25% when they sold Gareth Bale to Tottenham in 2007, and in 2008, in financial trouble, gave it up for around £1.5m and a young Spurs goalkeeper. When Bale left for Real Madrid in 2013, what Southampton had signed away was worth close to £20m.

Even so, the two cannot be treated as synonyms. In FIFA's transfer system, a sell-on fee with its percentage is one of the defined payment types a club records, sitting alongside the fixed fee and the release clause. What Porto disclosed was a different shape: acquiring 50% of the economic rights, with a path to buying more. The same word gets used loosely, but that does not make the contracts underneath it the same.

Porto began by using the options in the original contract. In May 2025 they exercised the first, taking 15% for €5m, and from 30 June 2025 they held 65%. In July they exercised the second, another 15% for €5m. That is as far as the original contract went, leaving Porto on 80%. They then reached a separate agreement with Atlético for the remaining 20%, at €7m.

What Porto committed to pay Atlético for those rights came to €15m plus €5m, €5m and €7m: €32m in total. Profits on player sales feed straight into a club's accounts, and they register in UEFA's financial rules too, where they can widen the room a club has for player-related spending. The mechanics of that sit in the squad cost ratio.

I think this was a sound piece of business in structural terms. Holding a stake means a large return if the player kicks on, but no guarantee that you can turn it into cash at the number you had in mind. A €100m release clause is only worth something if somebody turns up willing to pay it. Converting an uncertain share into a settled sum is a defensible call.

As a supporter, though, it stings a little. You want to watch the promising ones in your own shirt, and keeping a stake would at least have let you follow his rise on the balance sheet for a while longer. Being right about a deal and getting to see what you wanted to see are not the same thing.

For the record, Samu was injured against Sporting on 9 February 2026. Porto announced an anterior cruciate ligament injury to his right knee the following day, and said on 18 February that surgery had gone well. None of that settles the question of a decision taken seven months earlier. What was on the table at the time was a fixed sum and an unknowable future.

Three things a sell-on is not

Transfer coverage throws a lot of similar terms around, so it is worth separating them.

A buy-back clause lets the selling club repurchase the player at an agreed price. A sell-on is about receiving money; a buy-back is about getting the player back. They point in opposite directions, and both can sit in the same contract.

Solidarity contributions and training compensation come from the regulations rather than from a negotiation. As above, solidarity goes to the clubs that trained a player between 12 and 23 on a qualifying transfer. Training compensation is not linked to the fee at all: it is calculated from category-based training costs and the years of training involved, and it arises on a player's first registration as a professional or when he moves between clubs of different associations before the end of the calendar year of his 23rd birthday. On later moves, only his immediately previous club is due it, and only for the time it actually trained him.

Add-ons are extra money inside the same transfer, released when agreed conditions are met. Unlike a sell-on, which waits for the next sale, they turn on appearances and team results. I have written about transfer add-ons separately, with Atlético examples.

And as we have seen, a stake in economic rights gets called a sell-on clause as well. Rather than chasing the label, look at what the percentage attaches to and on what terms it can be brought to an end.

What to check when you read "a 10% sell-on"

Three questions, then, when a percentage appears in a transfer story.

Who receives it. The previous club, or the one before that? More than one club can be holding a separate share.

What it attaches to. The whole of the next fee, or the buying club's profit? Plenty of reports never say. If it is not there, treat the sum as uncalculated rather than assuming the obvious reading.

How and when it ends. Does it wait for the next transfer, or is there a route to being bought out at a price already agreed? With Samu, part of that route was in the original contract and the rest was settled later.

Beyond those three, the view usually stops. There is no blanket obligation to publish a transfer contract in full. The occasions when the terms do become visible are limited: a market filing from a listed club, or a dispute whose published decision sets out what was agreed. The information exists; it is just not pointed at the public. Sometimes, as with Rodri, the figure survives in three incompatible versions and stays that way.