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The Premier League’s 20 clubs are now so far ahead of most Europe in earning power they make as much as the top divisions in the continent’s 48 smallest nations combined, new official figures from UEFA show.

The European governing body’s annual ‘benchmarking’ report of financial health in the 54 member nations shows the English elite earned £3.3bn in the latest financial year for which figures are available.

This outstrips the combined income of the 597 top-flight clubs across Europe outside Germany, Italy, Spain, France and Russia. ‘By way of historical sporting context, these [lower-earning] countries have provided 20 different clubs that have won UEFA silverware,’ the report says.

Aggregate and average revenues: Relative club sizes by country

Chelsea lift the Premier League trophy - the league's clubs are now dominant financially in Europe

The huge finances allowed Manchester United to splash out £36m on unproven striker Anthony Martial

In other words, nations that could seriously aspire to produce winners of major trophies at continental level within the last generation or two are now also-ran minnows in financial terms. 

They include countries that have produced European Cup winners such as Portugal (Benfica, Porto), Netherlands (Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord), Serbia (Red Star Belgrade, then in Yugoslavia), Romania (Steaua Bucharest) and Scotland (Celtic).

The Premier League, fuelled primarily by massive domestic and foreign TV deals, is increasingly putting its rivals with the ‘Big 5’ nations in the shade in money-making terms.

In the year under review, UEFA show the English clubs’ combined income of £3.3bn was a billion and a half pounds larger than the next-best league, Germany’s Bundesliga (£1.8bn), and also way ahead of Spain’s La Liga (£1.7bn), Italy’s Serie A (£1.4bn) and France’s Ligue 1 (£1.3bn).

This in turn means the Premier League can afford to pay by far the highest wages in world football, which amounted to £1.9m to club employees in the financial year ending in 2014. 

The Bundesliga may have Bayern Munich, with Robert Lewandowsi (above), but they are a billion and a half pounds behind England

Real Madrid can still spend big money on high-profile players but other Spanish clubs cannot compete with the 10-time European champs

Below the likes of Barcelona, there are few clubs outside the Premier League who can match their spending

This worked out at an average of £95m per club, or 80 per cent more per club than Bundesliga clubs paid on average (£53m), 84 per cent more than Serie A clubs, 104 per cent more than La Liga clubs and 138 per cent more than clubs in France’s elite division.

In fact, only a few clubs outside England pay substantial salaries compared to the typical English club - Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, Bayern Munich in Germany, PSG in France and Juventus in Italy - and a middling Premier League club can now outstrip pretty much anyone else in ability to pay salaries.

The report also shows that Premier League clubs, for the first time, now outstrip Bundesliga clubs in commercial and sponsorship income, making an average of £45.4m per year each from these sources, against £43.9m per Bundesliga club on average.

English clubs can now beat almost anyone else on wages, enabling Palace's purchase of France midfielder Yohan Cabaye

Stoke also spent big this summer, bringing in Xherdan Shaqiri (right) as television money boosted the Premier League

The Premier Leagues now outstrips every other league in every sector of income: tickets, media income (mainly TV) and commercial and sponsorship income.

UEFA are keen to stress in the report how their Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules have contributed to more financial sanity across the continent as a whole. 

One key aspect of FFP has grabbed most of the headlines in recent years, the ‘break even’ requirement that means super-rich owners like Manchester City’s Sheikh Mansour and PSG’s Qatari royals cannot spend unlimited cash on their teams, regardless of losses. 

The likes of Dimitri Payet at West Ham and Jeremain Lens at Sunderland show the league's spending power

But a lot of the more worthy and mundane parts of FFP, such a paying bills on time, and limiting losses, mean club deficits have fallen by 70% across the continent, combined debt at clubs is down £840m, and more clubs are in profit. 

Wages continue to rise, but at a decreasing rate for the second successive year.

‘Following the onset of FFP, wage increases reduced to 4.3% in 2013 and 3.0% in 2014, the lowest rates of growth in the last decade and significantly outpaced by revenue growth,’ the report says.