£85 shirts, less than £1 an hour: who makes football's kits
The replica shirts sold for around £85 by Arsenal, Celtic, Liverpool and Real Madrid are stitched in Cambodia by workers on basic pay of less than £1 an hour.
That is the finding of a BBC Sport investigation published on 8 October 2026, which traced authentic shirts to two factories near Phnom Penh and obtained images from inside showing kits for those four clubs being made. BBC Sport
The factories are Bowker Garment Factory on the outskirts of the capital and Trax Apparel, about 10 miles east. Bowker employs about 3,400 people, most of them women. Trax employs 3,200 workers.
Staff typically work six eight-hour shifts a week. Five payslips seen by investigators listed basic monthly salaries of $210 to $220, or £158 to £166. That basic rate meets Cambodia's minimum-wage law.
Workers told investigators they handled up to 700 items a day as part of a production line. They described heat above 35C, shouting from supervisors when targets were missed and worries about electrical safety. The pace is relentless.
Neither factory is owned by Adidas. Both are listed as primary suppliers, which means they must meet the company's workplace standards. Adidas kits out eight of the 20 Premier League clubs.
Trax told the BBC its average monthly earnings range from $305 to $342, or £230 to £258. That is above the $210 to $220 basic pay shown on the payslips seen by investigators.
Research cited in the investigation broke down a typical £85 shirt. About £8.50 covers fabric, sewing and shipping, while £37.45 goes to the retailer, £16.25 to the manufacturer, £9.50 to marketing and £13.60 to VAT.
Cambodia's garment industry employs tens of thousands of people. More than 57,000 people produce Nike goods there alone, according to reporting by ProPublica, which has also documented years of workers fainting on factory floors. Researchers have previously said many global brands failed to improve workers' rights in Cambodia because supply chains lack transparency.
For fans, this changes what hangs in the wardrobe. A shirt is memory made into cloth. It marks a title, a trip to Wembley, a child's first game. What makes this stand out is the distance between that feeling and the conditions described at the start of the chain.
