Football: the English transfer window is already breaking records
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The countdown stopped Thursday, August 25 at midnight, one week before the end of the transfer window. It is already time, however, to sanctify a record: with 1.5 billion pounds (1.8 billion euros) spent on player transfers, this off-season is the biggest spender in the history of the Premier League – the English football’s top division – according to Deloitte’s tally.
Darwin Nunez from Benfica to Liverpool (more than 100 million euros), Casemiro from Real Madrid to Manchester United (71 million), the double transfer of Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko from Manchester City to Arsenal (91 million) or Chelsea who enlists Marc Cucurella (71 million), Raheem Sterling (56) and Kalidou Koulibaly (40): pounds sterling have rained like never before in Europe this summer, erasing the previous record of 2017 (1.7 billion).
Record TV rights
It’s a fact: the Premier League is rich, much richer than the other major European leagues. According to another Deloitte estimate, the English Premier League should generate this season more than 7 billion euros in revenue, far ahead of its first pursuer, the Spanish Liga (3.7 billion). The windfall comes largely from TV rights, both domestic (1.4 billion this season) and abroad (1.8 billion), where the amounts have reached record levels.
This summer window follows two more constrained exercises due to the health crisis, during which English clubs still spent 1.5 billion euros (2020) and 1.3 billion (2021). “The level of spending observed during the summer transfer window signals that the economic model of Premier League clubs has recovered after the Covid”, confirms in a press release the deputy director of the sports business branch of Deloitte, Chris Wood.
Balance
According to the latter, however, clubs must “strike the balance between their desire to be competitive on the pitch and the need to protect their long-term financial stability and viability. Deloitte’s count lists 14 transfers over 35 million euros, to which must be added those of the former Lyonnais Paqueta to West Ham (60 million) and Isak to Newcastle (70 million), which have been completed after August 25.
Another major sale is about to be completed: according to “L’Equipe”, the Frenchman from Leicester Wesley Fofana is having his medical examination at Chelsea on Sunday, and could initial his contract on Monday. The transfer (82.5 million euros) could make him the most expensive defender in history if one of the various bonuses were to be activated. The current record is held by Harry Maguire, sold to Manchester United in 2019 for 87 million.
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