The Premier League is becoming the Super League

A few seasons ago, club football was about to take a drastic shift as Real Madrid president Florentino Perez had devised a plan to have a separate league with a fixed number of football clubs.

The big six clubs from England and a few of the big clubs from the other top-five European leagues apart from Paris Saint-Germain.

Their feeling and desire were that they weren't getting enough money from UEFA for participating in their Champions League or Europa League and it was not financially fair for them.

Fast forward to the summer transfer window of 2022, and we can see why Perez wanted the Super League so badly.

Most of the Premier League clubs can afford to spend big money while the other leagues, especially La Liga with their strict wage cap rules have suffered to buy or even register their existing players. 

We have seen Barcelona have to sell 25% of their television rights, for the first time in their history to a tertiary company, to afford players, after suffering losses during the pandemic and being over a billion Euros in debt.

The Premier League's revenue from television and commercial deals, plus third-party ownership of clubs has meant that they are able to spend over double that of the other clubs in the top five leagues. 

The spending of the top five leagues this summer 
The Premier League clubs spent over 2.2 billion Euros on transfers this window whereas La Liga spent 505 million Euros, the German Bundesliga spent 484 million Euros, the Italian Serie A spent 749 million Euros and the French Ligue 1 spent 553 million Euros.

In other words, the Premier League spent more than double that of the other leagues on players.

In terms of net spend, with player sales in mind, the Premier League is even further ahead, having spent over 1.3 billion Euros on players while La Liga spent 52 million Euros, Bundesliga made a profit of 44 million Euros,

Serie A spent 3.5 million Euros, and Ligue 1 also made a profit of 45 million Euros. 

Eight of the top ten expensive players this window have been brought by the Premier League.

Only Aurelien Tchuameni (who went to Real Madrid for 80 million Euros) and Matthijs de Ligt (who went to Bayern Munich for 67 million Euros) are the two players in the top ten that didn't go to the Premier League. 

As things stand, only Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and PSG have spending power outside the Premier League.

Whereas in the Premier League Newcastle, West Ham, and even newly promoted Nottingham Forest have spent in excess of 100 million Euros, along with the big six of Machester City, Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham.

Even though the pandemic is over and fans are back in stadiums to give clubs the sort of revenue they were getting before the pandemic, the finances of the Premier League clubs mean they can afford to buy and spend which only a few other clubs can do outside of it.

This summer window paints a clearer picture of why Perez wanted the Super League - so that the top clubs from other leagues could also compete with the Premier League in the long term.

At this rate, the gap between the Premier League and other leagues, in terms of spending, will continue to grow.

The Premier League is becoming the Super League.