THE hairline gap between professional sport and business is getting narrower all the time.

All talk of the experiences of people facing the credit crunch was suspended (for a while at least) when news broke last week of the transfer of one player from a British football club to a Spanish club for a jaw-dropping £80m fee. It’s a lot of money in anyone's book at any time – regardless of prevailing economic conditions.

And, like the scene in an auction room when the gavel has been struck, there are probably only two people who think it's been a good deal – those selling and those buying. The rest opted out for a hot towel before the deal was struck.

Real Madrid is well used to stepping up a gear on the pitch. This week, it has done it in the marketplace. Twice.

The swift deal to snap up Cristiano Ronaldo followed a £57m punt on another of the world’s best player/brands – Kaka. But how can Real afford to pay the reported £56m for Kaka and offer a world-record £80m for Cristiano Ronaldo? Real exists without the deep pockets of the type of billionaire benefactors now emerging elsewhere in European football.

It has topped the spending league for the past four straight years, despite being overshadowed in the Champions League by Spanish rivals Barcelona. Growing matchday revenues, increasingly shrewd and global marketing, healthy commercial income, and a groundbreaking domestic TV deal, have all catapulted the club to the peak of the Deloitte’s Football Money League this year.

Take out the word “matchday” and you could be talking about any consumer-facing business. But this is modern football. The TV deal is perhaps the key to the wealth in football.

Top-flight European football is not the only sport where money is currently doing the talking.

Tomorrow, the biggest business-disguised-as-sport road show of them all pitches up in Britain for Formula 1 Grand Prix at Silverstone. After six wins from seven starts, Jenson Button enters the fray as favourite for a home win. His overalls remain almost virginal white each time he sprays his Champagne. Other than his team name and that of his tyremaker, there are none of the emblems and sponsor logos displayed to the world when he goes about his business..

That’s because his fledgling team has no title sponsor. Each time it wins, it can hike the price it asks. Strange old sporting world, isn’t it?

MATT JOHNSON is chairman of Mando Group.