Leagues with the biggest net transfer spend in the last ten years | OneFootball

Football has always been a rapidly evolving sport but in perhaps the last decade, so much about the game's playing and business sides have developed for better or for worse.

One of the most tangible changes in the game clear to see is the figures players are bought and sold for during transfer windows, as well as the wages they get paid by their clubs.

There are a lot of clubs that now spend way more on players than they make back from transfers, but it is offset by massive television and sponsorship deals. That is not the case everywhere, and different economic factors decide how each league in the world performs in regard to net spending.

The CIES Football Observatory has released a demo-economic analysis of player transfers between 2014 and 2023, with one of the focus areas being positive and negative net spending of different divisions and how they compare to each other.

Which league has the biggest negative net spend over the past decade?

The Premier League has the biggest negative net spend / James Gill - Danehouse/GettyImages

There are no prizes for guessing which league across the world is currently spending way more on players than they receive for selling them. However, the second-placed league for negative net spend shows it takes a long time for these figures to really change.

The Chinese Super League comes second behind the English Premier League even though that competition's time of high-spending feels lifetimes ago. £1.65bn has been spent by Chinese Super League clubs in the given time frame but only £0.51bn made from player sales.

This is because they paid heavily inflated prices for many European stars and were never in a position to make that money back. There is also a lack of Chinese talent coming from the league into Europe or other parts of the world.

A similar situation explains the Russian Super League's position in the league. Not so long ago, a lot of money was being spent on players by Russian clubs but that bubble soon burst.

Below is the table for the ten leagues with the most negative net spending over the past decade, with the English Premier League posting some remarkable numbers.

Which league has the biggest positive net spend over the past decade?

Featured below are leagues renowned for producing superb talents who are then sold to teams in the divisions above, be that through great academies or a knack for spotting players from more obscure leagues at a very young age and then developing them further.

The likes of the Brasileirao, the Eredivisie and the Belgium Pro League are all turning profits as a collective over the last decade, as so many clubs in those leagues are used to seeing the bigger dogs coming in to sign their most exciting players.

Many of the best players in world football right now came through at or played for clubs in these ten divisions, then being sold for big profits to the leagues with a collective negative net spend.