Professional clubs paid around nine billion euros in football player transfers in 2022/23, the second highest ever, according to a report released this Monday by the Football Observatory (CIES).
Above this 9.12 billion euros, only the 9.7 billion euros for the 2019/20 seasonwith the month of January of this year setting a new record for the winter period of the world market, confirming a trend of rising prices that has only been ‘slowed down’ by the years of the covid-19 pandemic.
Over the past 10 years, inflation has risen to 116%, including conditional clauses, and 90% without clauses, a “jump” that proves the growing weight of amounts paid under predetermined conditions or targets.
The document prepared by CIES shows that a footballer who cost a million euros in 2013/14 would now be exchanged for just over two million.
The report looks at the last decade of professional football globally and points to constant inflation in the prices paid to trade footballers, with particular influence from the English league as the ‘engine’, responsible for 2022/23 40.2% of the invested value. This is a significant increase compared to the 25.4% average representing market share of responsibility between 2013/14 and 2019/20, confirming the dominant influence of the Premier League.
Prices paid by English clubs are also higher than others, and inflation is most notorious in this league, with an annual increase of 12.6% compared to 8% for the rest of the market.
On average there has been an increase of 9% per year over the past ten years, a value that has fallen during the two seasons affected by covid-19, and is returning to the upward trend this season.
The types of players with a more notable price increase include centre-backs (12.5%), full-backs (11.1%) and young talents (12.8%), i.e. under the age of 21.
Source: DN
