LOOKING AT THE
What is driving stunning transfer spending?
PARIS
ARECORD-BREAKING transfer window has seen the likes of Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City and Barcelona spend hundreds of millions of euros so far on new players.
With all the major European leagues except Spain closing for business yesterday, AFP Sport takes a look at how, and why, clubs are splashing such large amounts of cash.
The close season’s two biggest spenders so far have been Manchester City, taken over by Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour in 2008, and Paris Saint-Germain, who have been the beneficiaries of Qatar’s billions, fronted by Nasser Al-Khelaifi, since 2011.
The exact worth of these two men is hard to calculate, as they come from wealthy royal families and are in essence representatives of their oil- and gas-rich countries.
But both have piled money into their respective clubs.
City have been one of Europe’s biggest spenders since stunning the Premier League with a €42million (RM212 million) signing of Robinho on transfer deadline day in 2008, while PSG rocked the entire football world by paying a world record of €222 million to sign Neymar from Barcelona this summer.
The money does not just come from the Middle East though – Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich started the new breed of billionaire foreign owners when he bought Chelsea in 2003.
The Chinese are starting to take a slice of European football too. Businessman Li Yonghong took out a €300 million loan to buy AC Milan, but was still able to spend €40 million on signing defender Leonardo Bonucci from Juventus in July.
The most stunning move of the close season came when PSG paid Neymar’s release clause to prise the Brazilian playmaker away from Barcelona.
The move came after the start of a diplomatic crisis in June that saw countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut off diplomatic relations with Qatar and impose trade and travel bans.
For Qatari Al-Khelaifi to spend €222 million on Neymar, plus a possible €180 million on Monaco youngster Kylian Mbappe, sent a “strong signal to the world of sport” and is a “challenge” to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, according to political analyst Andreas Krieg of King’s College London.
The Premier League is football’s bastion when it comes to producing eye-popping figures, and its £5.14-billion (RM28 billion) TV rights deal has given English top-flight clubs extremely deep pockets.
The last deal was agreed in 2015, and saw Sky pay £4.2 billion for five of seven TV packages, with BT Sports buying the other two.
That groundbreaking agreement was worth 71 per cent more than the previous rights deal in 2012.
BT announced after the auction in 2015 that it would be paying £7.6 million for each live game.
TV rights for Spain’s La Liga went for a comparatively small three-year deal worth €2.65 billion, while rights for France’s Ligue 1 are worth €748.5 million a year.