Opinion | Right field: Too much oil is spilling into game

Going green is a great idea. Imagine the implications for the global oil cartels if everyone suddenly decided they wanted to drive an electric car. What a wonderful world it would be, in theory at least. But practicality is another matter. Electric cars are more expensive and time-consuming to charge and even with imminent technological advances, reliable industry intelligence predicts that oil will remain the dominant transport fuel in 2030 and beyond.

So you can exhale fans of Paris Saint-Germain. Your oil-fuelled success seems destined to last because going green in sports still means one thing: spending more money. A survey released last week by SportingIntelligence and ESPN revealed which professional teams spend the most on their players. At the top of the list were French football team PSG, who spent US$227 million on payroll with an average salary at US$9.1 million. Eight of the top 10 teams were European football clubs with the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees coming in at number five and nine respectively.

PSG are only 44 years old and a little more than 10 years ago they were not only flirting with relegation but extinction as well because the financially strapped club had accumulated more than US$30 million in debt. But Middle East oil money salved the wounds and after buying a controlling interest in the club for €50 million (HK$430 million), Qatar Sports Investments spent a lot of money on players and the silverware followed with three straight league championships as well as a quarter-final berth in this year's Champions League.

Unsavoury as it may seem, there appears to be no stigma associated with oil money in football. After all, the soul of football had been sold long ago. Russian oil money bought the 2018 World Cup, while Qatar oil bought the 2022 World Cup and nothing that Fifa can do or say will change this fact. Never mind that much of that oil money is propping up non-transparent, often despotic regimes because that is exactly what Fifa is. And long-suffering fans of PSG, Manchester City or Chelsea hardly care where the money to make them great came from because most sporting tycoon's have a few skeletons in their closet anyway.

Two of the top three payrolls clubs, PSG and Manchester City, are oil teams. However, a case can be made that three of the top four big spenders are in reality sucking at the oil trough as FC Barcelona enter the last year of a deal that it has come to regret. With an annual payroll of US$202 million and average player spending of US$8 million, Barcelona are No 4 on the list, which seems like quite an achievement considering that it is publicly owned by 155,000 "socios", or members. The soul of the anti-establishment Catalans is their beloved football team and there has long been an inherent sense of pride that the space on Barcelona's jerseys was not, nor ever has been, a corporate billboard. But that changed in 2010 when the team signed a five-year deal for US$200 million with the Qatar Foundation to give them naming rights on their iconic jersey.