Liverpool midfielder Raheem Sterling celebrates scoring the opening goal during an English Premier League match in January. PHOTOGRAPH BY OLI SCARFF/AFP/GETTY

The twenty-year-old Raheem Sterling is one of English soccer’s most promising prospects. Waving his right hand in the air through twists and turns, he torments rival defenses with his unpredictable runs. He plays for Liverpool, a club of great international prestige that is run by Fenway Sports Group, which also owns the Red Sox. Recently, Liverpool offered Sterling, who is currently earning thirty-five thousand pounds a week, a new contract worth a hundred thousand pounds a week (roughly $7.7 million a year). Sterling rejected it, and the soccer world has been buzzing ever since. Either Liverpool will have to pay him more or his agent will find someone who will. So how much is Sterling really worth?

There isn’t one simple answer to this question. Sterling is worth a different amount to every club that he might join, as well as to Liverpool, because his performance on the field would generate different returns for each of them. The tricky part is figuring out just how his goals, assists, and other contributions in the game might translate into cash.

Let’s start with the easy stuff. Liverpool and other teams in the English Premier League receive shares of broadcasting revenue every year that depend partly on how high they finish in the standings. Right now, with eight matches to go in the season, Liverpool sits in fifth place, on track to enter the Europa League, Europe’s second-biggest continental competition. Two other teams, Southampton and Tottenham, sit right behind Liverpool in the league table. Even if Liverpool replaced Sterling with another player of equal quality, it’s unlikely that the player would fit instantly and seamlessly into the squad. So if Sterling moves on, the club could fall to sixth or seventh next year. And if he moves to one of the four teams above Liverpool in the standings, Liverpool’s chances of moving up will decline as well. That’s important, too, because the top four teams qualify for the Champions League, Europe’s most lucrative tournament.

At the moment, betting markets suggest that Liverpool has a good chance of finishing fifth next season, too, with a lower finish slightly more likely than a higher one. These markets are already accounting for some chance that Sterling will leave, but what if he did? My calculations suggest that Liverpool’s goal difference for the season (goals scored minus goals conceded) would fall by two or three if he were replaced by another player similar in quality to the rest of the team’s wingers. That might well be enough to push Liverpool further down the standings. So let’s say that Liverpool, with Sterling, would have a twenty-per-cent chance of finishing fourth next season, a fifty-per-cent chance of finishing fifth again, a twenty-per-cent chance of finishing sixth, and a ten-per-cent chance of finishing seventh. Without Sterling, those probabilities might go from 20/50/20/10 to 10/40/30/20.

How much would losing Sterling cost Liverpool, then? After the 2013-14 season, the team that finished fifth in the Premier League received a “merit payment” of £19.8 million. Fourth place was worth twenty-one million pounds; sixth, £18.5 million; and seventh, £17.3 million. These figures are likely to be similar for next season. Given the changes in odds above, losing Sterling would lead to an expected drop of about five hundred thousand pounds in merit payments—a paltry sum relative to his salary.

Yet Liverpool would also see its expected revenues from European competitions drop, and by much more. The team finishing fifth in the Premier League is guaranteed a trip to the Europa League, which, based on a typical English performance in the tournament, might be worth six million pounds next season. But the team finishing sixth only makes the Europa League about half the time, and teams in seventh rarely do. Moreover, according to the probabilities above, Liverpool’s chances of finishing fourth—and, therefore, its chances of entering the Champions League, where it would probably net about fifteen million pounds—would fall by half. Over all, assuming little change in ticket and merchandise sales,

Liverpool might expect to earn £1.8 million less from European competitions next season than it would with Sterling on the team, placing the total cost of his departure at £2.3 million.

In Sterling’s absence, Liverpool might pay a replacement player something like fifty thousand pounds a week, a typical sum for an Englishman on a top team. The savings in wages would amount to £2.6 million—not far from the £2.3 million that Sterling would have added to Liverpool’s revenues. It’s almost a break-even decision.

Of course, Sterling might help the club to earn money in other ways. As his star rises, Liverpool might acquire more fans around the world and sell more merchandise. Also, starting in 2016-17, the Premier League’s broadcast revenue will be roughly seventy per cent higher, thanks to a new deal for British television rights. So the five-hundred-thousand-pound loss from merit payments might turn into eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds or more. Either way, these numbers suggests that the hundred-thousand-pounds per week offer to Sterling was close to fair value, at least for Liverpool.

This estimate assumes that Liverpool won’t make any other changes to its squad that would affect its competitiveness in the league. For instance, if the club were about to sign new players who would place it comfortably in fourth place for the foreseeable future, then Sterling might be more expendable. On the other hand, if Liverpool were strengthening its roster even more, enough to challenge for the league title—a prize that it hasn’t won since 1989-90, to the consternation of many fans—then Sterling and every other star in the club could become pivotal.

The big question is whether Sterling’s value to anyone besides Liverpool is greater than a hundred thousand pounds a week. Because he has two years left on his current contract, another club would have to pay Liverpool a transfer fee likely to be in the tens of millions, in addition to his wages. That might be too much, even for a club trying to take home the Premier League trophy, with its £24.7 million in merit payments and guaranteed entry to the group stage of the Champions League. But there are always teams with deep pockets like Real Madrid and Bayern Munich that depend on a constantly changing crop of stars for marketing, as well as for winning.

One thing is for sure: whoever pays Sterling’s salary next year and for the remainder of his contract will be taking a risk. He’s young, and no one knows for sure what kind of player he’ll be—assuming he’s healthy enough to play—in a couple of years. It may be some time before he’s established enough to command two hundred thousand pounds a week like Chelsea’s twenty-four-year-old Eden Hazard, or even a hundred and fifty thousand a week like Manchester United’s twenty-six-year-old Juan Mata. But Sterling is striking while the iron is hot, and right now his iron is the hottest one around.