Premier League clubs spent €4.6bn this summer, and Uefa says the market now runs at two speeds
Uefa’s latest transfer report puts English spending above the next eight European countries combined, and its finance chief calls the model fragile.
Sep 25, 2026
Premier League clubs spent an estimated €4.6bn (£4bn) on transfers this summer. Uefa’s European club talent and competition landscape report, released this week, says that figure is larger than the spending of the next eight biggest European countries put together.
The report reads like a warning more than a celebration. Andrea Traverso, Uefa’s finance chief, said the numbers point to “a growing polarisation of the market, with the emergence of a clear two-speed system”.
What English clubs paid per player
The gap shows up most clearly in the average fee. English clubs paid about €24m for each player they brought in this summer, up 8 per cent on a year earlier. In Europe’s other big leagues the average sat between €4m and €5m.
The spend also swallowed a bigger share of club income than it used to. Uefa puts this summer’s transfer outlay at 56 per cent of the 20 Premier League clubs’ annual revenue. Across the decade before Covid, that figure averaged 33 per cent.
The top end of the market has moved fastest. Summer 2024 produced 14 transfers above €50m, summer 2025 produced 23, and this window produced 35. Premier League clubs were behind 29 of those 35.
Much of the money stayed in England
Fees on transfers between English clubs rose 44 per cent to €1.55bn (£1.33bn), which Uefa says makes the domestic English market as large as the next five transfer flows combined.
Uefa measures the market in flows, meaning deals from one league to another. After England to England, the next biggest was the Bundesliga selling to the Premier League, worth €690m (£594m).
Why Uefa calls it fragile
Traverso called it “a more fragile model, with clubs increasingly dependent on continued market inflation and liquidity”. Many fees are paid in instalments over several years, so clubs are using money they expect tomorrow to cover players they bought yesterday. If transfer values fall or buyers dry up, he said, clubs carrying debt would be the ones exposed.
The timing is awkward for at least one of them. Manchester United released annual accounts this week showing overall debt still above £1bn, and that is with record revenue of £677.6m.
None of this is likely to slow the Premier League down soon, because its television money keeps paying for it. The question Uefa is raising is what the rest of Europe does when one league outspends the eight countries behind it combined, and what English clubs do if the buyers ever stop coming.