The wealth of the Premier League is having an increasing effect on other European leagues. Often highly priced transfers bring a welcome stream of income, but the standard is getting worse. Even in top leagues such as that of Spain it is becoming more and more difficult in terms of salaries to compete with almost all the Premier League clubs and even some in the Championship.
The wealth of the Premier League is having an increasing effect on other European leagues. Often highly priced transfers bring a welcome stream of income, but the standard is getting worse. Even in top leagues such as that of Spain it is becoming more and more difficult in terms of salaries to compete with almost all the Premier League clubs and even some in the Championship.
The last team in the Premiership earned almost twice as much as the champions of France last season. Anderlecht in Belgium has a budget for the season of around €45m (£32m). The bottom team in the Premier League gets €100m just from television rights. The Belgian television deal splits just €70m across 16 teams.
Premier League clubs have spent £2.605bn importing players since January 2011. That means they need to spend just £400m in the next month and they will have spent all of the £3bn television deal just on bringing players from abroad.
Most of that money has gone to seven countries: Spain, Holland, France, Italy, Germany, Portugal and Belgium. £619.2m went to Spain, £335.8m to the Netherlands and £327.5m to France.