The resignation of Great Britain from the European Union (EU) was all over the news for the last couple of months. The “Brexit” was one of the trending topics, even during the European soccer championship last summer. We took a look at the News-Aggregator-Portal “SportBuzz” to visualize the trend: “brexit”, as a keyword in social media, was just as present as “em” and “football”.

But what are the actual effects of the “Brexit” on sports?

A closer look at the topics that were trending with the keyword “brexit” and were set in a sports context, showed that it was mostly upset  fans who were concerned about the state of the British football system.

The German news-sites kicker and reviersport reported, that there will be major problems if a club wants to sign a player from a foreign country. EU-players were able to transfer and play without any restrictions due to the freedom of movement for workers. Non-EU players however have to comply strict restrictions to receive a working permit to play in England. Among other things, the player has to compete in 30% to 70% of his countries international games over the last two years. Even top-tier players like Ron-Robert Zieler (Leicester City), Emre Can (FC Liverpool) or the Frenchman Dimitry Payet (West Ham) could not meet the requirements. According to Kicker, 332 players would be affected by the new rule. Although the Kicker assumes that the rule would not be applied retroactively, so that the current players could remain in their contracts -, but transfers would be more difficult in the future.

According to the Guardian and the Telegraph, other sports like cricket, rugby and boxing have similar rules as well. Sports like tennis or athletics, where the athletes usually just need a visitors-visa to compete in matches or run in meetings are not affected by the “Brexit”, according to the Telegraph.

The “Brexit” is going to affect the images of the English leagues though. Sky quotes FA-Commissioner Richard Scudamore: The result would be “contradictory to the culture and openness of the league”. Gary Liner had two words for the results and posted his emotions on Twitter: “Bloody Hell!”

But almost all English sports have to be suffering from the significant depriciation of the British pound which has lost value to ALL (!) currencies in the world within one day (i.e 10% to the US-Dollar). Therefore, transfers of foreign players who are paid in Euro or Dollar, are going to be way more expensive.