Currency exchange kick in the goldenballs for Beckham

David Beckham is unlikely to be feeling the pinch of the slump in the US dollar's currency exchange rate. But the amount of money it could be costing him – around £47,000 each week – vividly illustrates how far the dollar has fallen this year.

In January 2007 the BBC called David Beckham "the 275-million dollar man" as it announced his transfer from Spain's Real Madrid to LA Galaxy in the US. At the currency exchange rates of the time, they calculated he would earn £128 million over the course of his five-year contract.

Currency exchange rates: a bad year for the dollar

According to the BBC's figures, Beckham will earn around $55 million dollars a year – a basic salary for playing football, plus sponsorship and merchandising deals and a share of the Los Angeles club's profits. As currency exchange rates stood in early January (according to the Financial Times), that translated to wages of just under £550,000 a week.

Less than a year later, the currency exchange rates have changed so dramatically that Beckham will now be lucky if the same dollar salary can be exchanged to £503,000 a week – still a staggering amount, but £47,000 less than it was in January.

Of course, a man who makes money all around the world (and is unlikely to have his US salary paid directly into a British high-street bank account) is pretty well protected from the ups and downs of currency exchange rates – what is bad for Beckham in one currency will be good for him in another.

Importance of currency exchange rates

But as an illustration of the change in the dollar's currency exchange rate, and the effect it can have when converting sterling into dollars or vice versa, David Beckham provides a stunning example.

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