A new financial reality is reshaping European football: playing in the Premier League now carries a price tag of its own. The average fee paid for a player transferred between two Premier League clubs this past summer reached £39.4 million — nearly double the £20.2 million spent on signings arriving from abroad.

Kieran Maguire, professor of football finance at the University of Liverpool, has a name for it: the Premier League tax. The gap reflects how dramatically English clubs have changed the way they do business — and how much that is beginning to worry the rest of Europe.

A market reshaped from within

The clearest sign of this shift is in the volume and scale of high-value domestic transfers. Deals worth £40 million or more doubled in two years: from 13 in the 2024-25 window to 27 this summer. Within that, the number of such deals struck between Premier League clubs trebled — rising from six to 18. By contrast, deals of the same value with continental clubs climbed only from seven to nine.

Maguire explained to BBC Sport that one driver is the way clubs outside the traditional Big Six now recruit internationally early, developing overseas players into Premier League-ready talent before the top clubs move in. Carlos Baleba is a vivid example: Brighton & Hove Albion signed him from Lille three years ago for £23 million and sold him to Manchester United last week for £70 million.