Power players: Can Premier League transfer spending keep breaking records?

**Rahul Tandon** (0:00)
It is the world's richest football league, okay, soccer, for our American listeners, and it's just spent almost $4.7 billion on new players. We are, of course, talking about the Premier League. It generates around $13.5 billion of income every year. To put that into perspective, it is comparable to the entire annual agricultural output of England. Its international broadcast revenue equals the rest of the UK television sector combined. So this week on Power Players, we are looking at the spectacular rise of the world's richest football league and asking, is it sustainable? Welcome back. I'm Rahul Tandon here in the UK.

**Will Bain** (0:43)
And I'm Will Bain. Not in the studio next to Rahul. Normally, that would be a bit of a shame, but I'm on holiday actually in the west of France where the sun is beating down Rahul on my Airbnb at the moment. I've got to say, if this could be a trend for power players in the future, it wouldn't be a bad one.

**Rahul Tandon** (1:00)
Bonjour to you. I don't know if you've been like me, Will. I have spent the last 48 hours on my phone, scrawling to see who my beloved Leeds United are about to sign. Will is for his sins in Aston Villa. If you had $100 million, who would you spend it on?

**Will Bain** (1:16)
At this point, anyone really, but given Aston Villa's summer, although it's been a chaotic end, hasn't it? I mean, no one has made more sales or more buys than Villa. Actually, they probably sum up this week's topic really well, don't they, Rahul? Because if all the kind of little add-ons that go into these transfer fees come through, Villa will have spent more than 300 million pounds on players and brought in 300 million pounds on players. Absolutely kind of extraordinary summer. And they are kind of one of the, I guess the kind of epicenters of, let's be blunt about it, the British papers, haven't they? Been using words like madness, crazy. Football's always been big money, but the reason we kind of thought this was interesting last week is it just feels a bit, almost like we've kind of crossed the Rubicon a bit.

**Rahul Tandon** (1:58)
It does. It seems like we're entering a new era and help make sense of all the madness. We always have a guest on the programme. And today it's Christina Philippou, Associate Professor in Accounting and Sports Finance at the University of Portsmouth. The numbers that we're talking about here, almost $4.7 billion. Has that surprised you in this transfer window, this period of time when teams here in England and across Europe can actually go out and buy new players?

**Christina Philippou** (2:26)
It's actually not that surprising, given the sort of numbers that we've been seeing from how much money they're making.

**Will Bain** (2:34)
I mean, what do you think? I don't think I've seen as much of a backlash to the spending, because, right, the Premier League has been this behemoth, hasn't it? Since 1992, in pure business terms, it's been one of Britain's, like, greatest success stories, hasn't it? The kind of revitalisation of its top football league into an entertainment product to rival Hollywood or streaming or anything else, but language like crazy, madness, even vulgar. Have you felt a bit of that this window?

**Christina Philippou** (3:01)
I think the numbers are really big, and then when you start comparing them to other sectors, given that, you know, sport in many ways kind of sits in the entertainment sector, I think that's where a lot of those kind of words start to creep in on, but ultimately it's a very successful business, like you said, it started a long time ago. It's been a very good business strategy compared to some of its competitors, you know, it's reaping the benefits.

**Rahul Tandon** (3:28)
It is, and I spend a lot of time in India, and the view there is incredibly different. I had to go out and do, I remember this a couple of years ago, what we call a Voxbox, go and talk to people in India about what they thought about Britain, when they thought about Britain, what was top of the agenda for them, and it was the Premier League, it was Manchester United, it was Liverpool. So people in Asia, I think, in particular, see this as an incredible success story. Let's just remind some of our listeners, who may not have followed it as closely as Christina, me and Will have, about some of the biggest transfers that we've seen this summer.

**SPEAKER_4** (4:02)
Manchester City, they were busy on deadline day, landing the Chelsea midfielder Enzo Fernandez for 125 million pounds. That's a City Club record.