Nearly a billion euros were spent in the Premier League during this winter transfer window, a new record, the British audit firm Deloitte reported on Wednesday the day after the closing of this supposedly secondary market. With 920 million euros, the English championship has almost doubled the previous record for a winter transfer window, established in 2017-2018 (486 million euros), before the Covid crisis.
Realized Wednesday evening at the end of the market, the transfer of Enzo Fernandez to Chelsea for an amount of 121 million euros – an absolute record for the Premier League – symbolizes this new outbreak. The London club is also the main responsible, with 370 million spent in January.
The total amount is thus almost three times higher than that of last year at the same time, according to the study of the sports branch of Deloitte. On Tuesday alone, more than 310 million euros were put on the table by English clubs.
Spending for this winter transfer window, however, remains below the record for all transfer windows combined, set last summer with some 2.2 billion euros. By combining the two markets for the season – summer and winter – Premier League clubs spent 3.1 billion euros in 2022-1923, again a record. By way of comparison, according to the same study, the English clubs are at the origin this winter of 79% of the expenditure carried out among all the five major championships.
Javier Tebas and “economic doping”
“By securing the services of top talent, (English) clubs hope to improve their performance, which will enhance the attractiveness of the Premier League and cement its position at the top of world football,” commented Tim Bridge, the principal study partner. However, he warned about the sustainability of this ultra-spending policy led by the half-dozen of the most prestigious clubs in the country.
In a tweet, Javier Tebas, the president of the Spanish League, whose championship is England’s main competitor in Europe, accused the Premier League of “economic doping”. “We hear about the power of the Premier League, but (…) it is a competition built on clubs which record losses of several million”, he judged.
Unlike the Premier League, the continent’s other four main leagues have been rather wise this winter. They “had a more limited purchasing power, in particular because of the drop in their TV rights and the pandemic, from which they are still recovering”, explained Calum Ross, the deputy director of the sports branch of Deloitte.