€647m spent and counting - could this January transfer window break records?

Last 10 years analysed 

The January transfer window will draw to a close on Monday and while it perhaps hasn’t been a chaotic month of unexpected transfer news, there have certainly been some huge deals that have gone through in the last four weeks. Whether it be Mattéo Guendouzi’s €28 million move from Lazio to Fenerbahce, Conor Gallagher’s €40m return to the Premier League, Lucas Paquetá departing West Ham for €42m or indeed Antoine Semenyo’s eye-watering €72m move from Bournemouth to Manchester City, we have certainly seen plenty of mammoth fees being paid around Europe. But how busy has this window been compared to previous ones and could break any records? We’ve dived into the Transfermarkt archives to find out and some of the numbers may surprise you.

When we tally up all the money spent by clubs in Europe’s top five leagues since the turn of the year, it comes out to an incredible €647m spent on new players. That figure is, somewhat surprisingly, €39m higher than what the same group of clubs spent between January 1 and January 29 last year. And, as we can see in the table above, it happens to be the third highest spending spree by Europe’s elite clubs in the last 10 years. However, while it’s not far off the €659m that was spent in 2020, it is considerably far off the truly remarkable sum of €789m that was spent in the first 29 days of 2023. However, that’s not to say that this year’s window hasn’t got enough time to break some records. Last year between January 29 and the end of the window clubs spent a remarkable €1.04 billion on new signings.

When we take a closer look at which clubs are spending the most money this year, it also makes for some very interesting results. At the point of publication, a remarkable 54 percent of the money spent on new players by clubs in Europe’s top five leagues has come from the Premier League. The English top-flight tops the billing with €349m spent on new players so far this month, with Serie A in a distant second with €157m spent on new players. The Bundesliga then follows on €76.3m, followed by Ligue 1 (€49.2m) and LaLiga (€13.7m). And when we take a look at the three highest-spending of the five leagues over the last 10 years, it also points to where the spikes in spending have come from in specific years.

For example, the aforementioned and rather unprecedented spending spree in January 2023 was almost entirely fueled by the Premier League. That year, the English top-flight accounted for an incredible 78 percent of all transfer fees paid from January 1 to January 29 and that shopping bill of €583m is comfortably the highest for any of Europe’s top five leagues in a January window in the last 10 years. However, as we can see from the graph above, other leagues have also had their moments too. In January 2024, Ligue 1 splashed out €231m on new players, which Serie A is currently on the cusp of surpassing its previous record set in 2020, as it stands just €15m off the €172m it spent in January 2020.