February 14 – While the Premier League clubs kept their hands in their pockets in the January transfer window, the winter sales window still saw its second highest spend ever at $1.46 billion.
It also registered a record for spending in women’s football but at a considerably more modest $2.1 million.
Perhaps of more significance is that there were a record 5,073 international transfers completed in the window, 4,716 in the men’s game, an increase of 0.6% on 2023.
The figures come from FIFA’s International Transfer Snapshot, and are drawn from FIFA’s Transfer Match System (TMS) that registers player movement.
The $1.46 billion spent in the 2024 January window, is 8.2% short of the record spending of January 2023.
“The majority of spending in men’s football originated from clubs based in Europe (77.9% overall), with clubs from France emerging as the top spenders with a total of more than $290 million, more than twice the amount they had spent in January 2023. in women’s football, the biggest spending clubs were from UEFA, accounting for 55.0% of the total,” said the report.
January spending by English clubs decreased sharply by almost 80% compared to their record spending in January 2023, but was still the second highest of any country.
Looking at the age range of players moving, 52.3% were aged 18 to 23 of the 752 international transfers that included a transfer fee, followed by players aged 24 to 29 (40.6%).
“These two age groups also contributed most significantly to the overall expenditure on transfer fees (63.9% and 31.4%, respectively). The highest average transfer fee of $2.4 million was agreed in the 393 transfers involving players aged 18 to 23,” found the report.
Europe still dominated player movement with 59.9% of international transfers including at least one club from UEFA. European clubs accounted for 77.9% of the worldwide expenditure on transfer fees and received more than 60% of these fees.
“Conmebol-affiliated clubs, with a total expenditure of $168.8 million and total receipts from transfer fees of $408.5 million, contributed 11.5% of the overall spending on international transfer fees and received almost 30% of the global total during the January 2024 window,” highlighted the report.
“This is the first time since 2017 that clubs from a confederation other than UEFA surpassed a 10% share of the global total in transfer fee spending during the January transfer window.”
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