Record after record: Premier League invests as much as the rest of the top leagues combined

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Primarily because of the Premier League’s spending spree, investments of football clubs worldwide exploded again in the transfer summer of 2022. At €4.55 billion, the top 5 leagues spent almost €1.6 billion more in the transfer market than last summer. Covid 19-related revenue losses are slowly disappearing; in the summer of 2019, before the pandemic, clubs in the top leagues were still investing €5.5 billion.

A new record was set by the clubs in the Premier League. With €2.25 billion invested in new players, the English top flight broke its own spending record from 2017, when the 20 first division clubs signed 140 footballers for €1.62 billion. For the same number of signings, the Premier League spent around €630 million more this year. The English clubs, who are mostly financed with the help of foreign owners and investors as well as earning significantly higher revenues from media rights, invested roughly as much as the Spanish LaLiga, Italian Serie A, German Bundesliga and French Ligue 1 combined – and €900 million more than last year.

All of the top 5 leagues recorded an increase in spending compared to 2021, with the Bundesliga’s being the smallest. The transfer investments of German first division clubs rose from €425 million to €484 million. In the ranking of the highest spending leagues, the Bundesliga slipped from third to fifth place, surpassed by Ligue 1 (€555.9 million) and LaLiga (€505.7 million). Serie A (€749.2 million) remains in second place. While the Liga Portugal recorded the biggest transfer plus with €261.5 million, the Premier League predictably provided for the biggest minus, a whopping €1.36 billion. By comparison, LaLiga ranks second behind the English top flight with a transfer deficit of just €52.4 million.

Transfer window: Chelsea biggest spenders - Ajax receive the most money

The highest spenders of the summer transfer window also stood out on Deadline Day: With the arrival of striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang for €12 million and the loan of Denis Zakaria for €3 million, Chelsea increased their record spending to €282 million. The day before, the Londoners had announced their most expensive signing in 2022, Wesley Fofana, who joined the club for €80.4 million. In the history of football, only Real Madrid spent more money in a single summer in 2019 (€325.5 million). The Blues certainly need reinforcements. After a mixed start to the season, Chelsea only sit tenth in the Premier League with seven points from five games.

Minus of €227m Chelsea's transfer balance in 2022/23 Click here for overview As expected, the ranking of the highest spenders is dominated by English clubs. The entire top five are from the Premier League, and in the top 15, ten clubs are based in England.Manchester United signed the most expensive player of the summer, Brazil international Antony, who arrived from Ajax for €95 million and also helped the Red Devils to spent more than ever in a single summer transfer window with €238 million. Seven English Premier League clubs also set new club records: West Ham, Tottenham, Nottingham Forest, Wolves, Newcastle, Leeds and Brentford. In addition, five clubs also made a new record signing.

Due to the fact that the Premier League has significantly more money available than other leagues and even clubs from the lower regions of the table can outbid top foreign clubs in some cases, transfer fees are on the rise. Either the competition for certain transfer targets is fierce or English bidders have to dig deep into their pockets for their absolute top target, as Manchester United did in the case of Antony. If Ajax would probably have been satisfied with €80 million in the last few years, they now know about the desperation of the Old Trafford club. For United, it is more damaging in terms of image than financially to have added another €20 million with add-ons to their previous offer. The Amsterdam club collected the most money this summer with €216 million, but were unsettled because of the huge number of offers arriving and some of their players going on strike.

Club by club All summer transfer in the Premier League at a glance Click here for overview United’s city rivals and current titleholders Man City, meanwhile, acquired the services of Erling Haaland, the most valuable signing of the transfer summer. Valued at €150 million, the top scorer, who scored nine times in his first five league games for the Citizens, left German side Borussia Dortmund for only €60 million thanks to an exit clause in his contract. While last summer only 18 footballers switched clubs for a transfer fee of €30 million or more, 39 players did so in 2022, more than twice as many. A total of 16 players broke the €50 million mark.

21 new signings: Nottingham Forest break transfer records

Nottingham Forest also set further records after their return to the Premier League. The Reds paid almost €162 million in transfer fees, which puts them in fifth place in the worldwide spending rankings. Among others, Forest paid an initial €29.5 million for Morgan Gibbs-White, the highest transfer fee in the club’s history. The club thus surpassed AS Monaco as the newly-promoted club with the highest transfer spending in history. The Monegasques had invested €160.7m in their squad in the 2013/14 season.

Forest head into the Premier League season with a lot of new faces. The club from the East Midlands signed 21 new players, a record in English football. In the top 5 leagues, only newly-promoted Serie A sides AC Monza and US Cremonese are ahead after adding 23 players each. These numbers also include permanent signings after loan spells, however. Their approaches have not been crowned with success so far: Monza and Cremonese sit at the bottom of the Serie A table and are the only teams still without a single point after four match days. Forest are in 15th place with four points after five matchdays.

After picking up just one point from their opening seven games last season and sitting at the bottom of the Championship for 35 days, promotion via the play-offs was rather unexpected despite the turnaround under Steve Cooper. A number of last season’s top performers were only on loan and returned to their parent clubs, with others having left Forest for different reasons. Major additions on the transfer market were therefore inevitable. However, no one in the business expected the team of ambitious owner Vangelis Marinakis to invest that much. The traditional club is back and means business.