Source Analysis - Fabrizio Romano

Verdict - Tier 1.5

Transfer Track Source Analysis · July 22, 2024

Fabrizio Romano is widely regardedm as one of the foremost sources when it comes to transfer rumor news. He has over twenty-one million followers on Twitter, over two million subscribers on YouTube, and millions more on TikTok and Instagram. Using his famous catchphrase “Here We Go!” after a transfer deal has been confirmed, he has been reporting on worldwide transfer news for over a decade.

Romano is considered a Tier 1 source when it comes to almost every club’s transfer news, typically only reporting when he is relatively certain that his information is correct. He does indeed report on a great volume of news from all around the world, covering clubs from Japan to the English fourth tier, from Sweden to Argentina.

However, we at Transfer Track believe that there is enough reason to put Fabrizio in an in-between tier, between Tier 1 and Tier 2: let’s call him a Tier 1.5 source. Here’s some reasons why we think he should be placed below other, higher-tier sources:

In many cases, Romano is known to write a great deal of his content in such a way that generates engagement rather than reporting new, true information. For example, he will tweet “updates” about a particular transfer saga that say little except that “negotiations are progressing”, but he tries to change the wording around to make it sound like breaking news. He does this because he relies upon an engagement-driven posting model in order to make a living

For those of you without much of a background in internet adveristing, an engagement-driven posting model generates revenue depending upon how many users click on your tweet/post/article. Advertisements are served to each of the users who click on the link, and these advertisers pay the publishers a given amount based on the number of views they get. The more views they get, the more money they make.

There are also cases where Fabrizio is likely receiving information from clubs and/or player agencies and is being paid to report on them. He sometimes even promotes them in the tweet itself! For example, in the following “exclusive” tweet where he reported Jorgensen’s transfer from Villareal to Chelsea, in which he explicitly credits the names of the agencies that gave him the information.

Although these practices do not necessarily make his reporting unreliable, it does indicate a lack of journalistic integrity that makes his information less valuable than if he did not depend on engagement to make a living.

Furthermore, Romano, unlike other Tier 1 sources, does indeed make some pretty major mistakes, although not very often. These mistakes usually occur when it comes to big transfer news, upon which Fabrizio thinks he can get a lot of engagement and gain a great deal of reputation if he can make the right call first.

For example, back in 2021, Romano reported that Manchester City were “really pushing” for the signature of Cristiano Ronaldo, and that Ronaldo was close to putting pen on paper for a deal with the Manchester giant. However, Ronaldo ended up joining inter-city rival Manchester United that season, and Manchester City later officially denied that Ronaldo was ever close to joining them.

Also in 2021, Fabrizio Romano claimed that it was “never in doubt” that Lionel Messi would sign a new contract with his boyhood club Barcelona. However, Barcelona could not afford to give him a new contract, and he soon signed a four-year deal with Paris Saint-Germain, who he originally claimed had “no chance” of signing the Argentinian superstar.

For a more recent example of a Fabrizio Romano mistake, take his reporting on the signing of Georgian striker Georges Mikautadze, who he initially gave a “Here We Go!” to AS Monaco, but he later ended up joining Olympique Lyonnais, as reported by Tier 1 source David Ornstein.

Although some may consider this to be harsh, we at Transfer Track believe that the label “Tier 1” should only be given to the journalists who report upon information that they know for certain to be entirely true and reliable – a sense of journalistic integrity, as it were. We believe that Romano, though he is right about an awful lot of things, lacks the same sense of journalistic integrity that other Tier 1 sources possess. We understand that he has to build and maintain engagement to earn his living working as an independent journalist, but because he sometimes chooses to sacrifice his integrity for clicks, we have to put him below other Tier 1 journalists in the ranking. With his consistent record of reporting news, however, we could not possibly put him in Tier 2, leaving him in a "Tier 1.5" category.