Everton the highest payers when League football kicked off in 1888

 Because they were the best-supported club, Everton had been able to attract Nick Ross from Preston North End. It is believed that he was being paid £10 a month, twice what other top players were receiving at £1.25 a week, or 25 shillings. This was around 25 per cent greater than the average working wage, considerably less than what the top players earn today, but as playing football for a living was much better than working down the pit or a dusty factory, few players would have bemoaned their luck.

Other Earning Opportunities

Although there was no corporate sponsorship of football in 1888 – the first competition to negotiate a sponsorship deal was the League Cup ninety-four years later – some players did benefit from the growing commercial appeal of the game. Ross’s teammate George Dobson was an agent for R. Mercer of Bolton, who was famous for manufacturing football goods for many years.

Another Evertonian, Frank Sugg, was even more successful. The international cricketer, who was a brilliant all-round sportsman who also took part in weightlifting, swimming, shotput, billiards and rifle shooting, opened a sports shop in Liverpool with his younger brother Frank in 1894. 

Over the years, more shops were added and although the brothers split commercially in 1927, they both remained in business until they died within days of each other in 1931. The final link with the business[es] only came to an end in January 2001 when it was announced that ‘Sugg Sport is to close its eleven sports stores with the loss of 118 jobs’.