Premier League football clubs spent a record £870m during the summer 2015 transfer window which closed yesterday, while total spending on new player signings for the year hit £1bn for the first time according to Deloitte
The firm’s analysis shows summer spending was 4% up on the previous record of £835m set last summer. Premier League clubs concluded player acquisitions totalling around £90m on deadline day. The equivalent deadline day figure in the summer 2014 was around £85m.
Manchester City recorded the highest ever gross spend by a Premier League club in a summer transfer window, spending around £160m on new talent this time around.
The four Premier League clubs competing in this season’s Champions League - Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City and Manchester United - had a combined gross transfer spend of some £340m this summer transfer window, representing around 40% of the aggregate gross transfer spend by all the Premier League clubs..
Overall, the Premier League spend on new talent dwarfed that of its continental rivals. Across the other ‘big five’ top divisions of Europe, the next highest spending league was Italy’s Serie A, with a gross spend of £405m. La Liga in Spain was next with a gross spend of £400m, followed by the German Bundesliga with £290m and Ligue 1 in France with £220m.
Premier League clubs’ net transfer spend of £460m, being the net amount that flows to overseas clubs (£410m) and Football League clubs (£50m), was above the previous record of £410m set last summer.
Deloitte calculates that since the introduction of the transfer window system, gross player transfer spending has exceeded £7.3bn, with over 80% of this being spent in summer transfer windows.
Alex Thorpe, senior manager in the sports business group at Deloitte, said: ‘With all 20 of the Premier League clubs now ranked in the top 40 globally by revenue, we have seen clubs across the league compete successfully in the market for international talent. Premier League clubs’ gross spending on players from overseas clubs this summer totalled more than half a billion pounds.
‘Looking across Europe, Premier League clubs’ gross and net spending this summer is more than double that of any other European league. The driving force behind this is the growth and distribution mechanism of the league’s broadcast rights.’
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