$48.5 billion spent on football player transfer fees over last decade: FIFA report

More than $48 billion was spent on professional football player transfer fees over the past decade, a report from FIFA reveals.

The sport’s governing body tracked international transfers in the men’s game during the 2011-2020 period. It’s the most comprehensive review on record of transfers across the globe.

The report confirms that transfer market activity increased steadily over the past decade.

From 11,890 transfers conducted in 2011 to a peak of 18,079 in 2019, a total of 133,225 international transfers and loans of professional players took place.

The transfers involved 66,789 players and 8,264 clubs across 200 FIFA member associations, underlining football’s role in the global economy.

Brazilian nationals moving to foreign clubs topped the list with 15,128 transfers, followed by Argentinian (7,444), British (5,523), French (5,027), and Colombian footballers (4,287).

European clubs lead transfer fee spend

During the last decade, the number of clubs conducting international transfers grew by more than 30 percent, from 3,167 in 2011 to a peak of 4,139 in 2019. The list of the top 30 clubs in terms of transfer fee spending was made up solely of European clubs: England (12 clubs), Spain and Italy (five each), Germany (three), France and Portugal (two each), and Russia (one).
Those 30 clubs alone spent a total of $22.8 billion on transfer fees, representing 47 percent of the global total over the decade.

Rising football agents’ commissions

As identified by FIFA in its ongoing reform of the transfer system, the report also confirms a sharp decline in solidarity contributions, with the 2020 amount ($38.5 million) mirroring that of 2011 ($38 million).

FIFA expects the launch of its Clearing House will help enforce training compensation and solidarity payments up to an amount of approximately $300 million per year. The decline in training compensation payments is in stark contrast to the number of commissions paid to agents, which increased from $131.1 million in 2011 to $640.5 million in 2019. A total of $3.5 billion was paid for agents’ commissions in international transfers over the course of the decade.