After two years of growth, the footballing world witnessed a decline in the expenditure on transfers in 2024. According to numbers presented by SafeBettingSites.com, football clubs spent a total of €10.96 billion on transfers in 2024. This amount represented a decline of 10.5% from the amount of money spent on transfers last year.
Spend on transfers reduced to €10.96 billion in 2024
Now that the summer transfer windows are over globally, one can analyse the ongoing trends in transfer expenditures in football. According to the latest analysis from CIES, football clubs spent a total of €10.96 billion during 2024. This figure includes the money spent on transfers in both winter and summer transfer windows.
The money spent on transfers in 2024 represents a significant downturn from what was spent in 2023, as clubs had spent around €12.24 billion on transfers last year. Thus, the transfer expenditure witnessed a decrease of €1.28 billion, or 10.5%, in 2024.
A look at the past data from 2015 onwards informs that the global transfer spend increased from €5.88 billion in 2015 to €9.99 billion in 2019. The growth was gradual, with the exception of 2018 when the transfer spending took a dip from the previous year.
COVID-19 hit the footballing world in 2020, and the clubs were financially incapacitated. Understandably, the transfer expenditure took a hit, and the spending on transfers dropped by almost 25% to €7.51 billion. In 2021, the spending further decreased by 20.2% to €5.99 billion, almost down to the levels of the expenditure in 2015.
However, the footballing industry rebounded from the pandemic in 2022, and the expenditure on transfers rocketed to €9.34 billion, indicating an increase of 56%. A further increase of 31% followed in 2023 as the clubs globally spent a record total of €12.24 billion.
Unexpectedly, the global transfer market took a hit in 2024 as clubs decided to be more cautious with their money this year. As stated above, the spending on transfers dropped by 10.5% to €10.96 million this year.
