$40 Million Players Dominate Record Premier League Transfer Window

Ahead of his move to Newcastle United, Nick Woltemade of VfB Stuttgart celebrates scoring against Eintracht Braunschweig at Eintracht-Stadion on August 26, 2025 in Braunschweig, Germany. (Photo by Ronny Hartmann/Getty Images)

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As the 2025 Premier League summer transfer window slams shut, all the headlines will about Liverpool breaking the British transfer record to sign Alexander Isak from Newcastle United.

But Alexander Isak was always going to be a big-money transfer. The real transfer trend can be seen by Isak’s replacement at Newcastle, Nick Woltemade, whose move from Stuttgart epitomizes the transfer fee inflation that has defined the summer 2025 transfer window.

Woltemade’s highlight reel looks incredible, it makes him look like a 6 foot 6 inch Lionel Messi. But he’s a striker who’s only played two full seasons in the Bundesliga and only has 14 Bundesliga goals to his name. Newcastle is signing Woltemade on his potential, but his transfer fee, which could reach $93 million, reflects what might normally be paid for the finished product.

Record-Breaking Transfer Window

According to Transfermarkt, Premier League clubs spent $4.1 billion in transfer fees this summer. That’s up from $2.7 billion in the summer of 2024 and $3.2 billion in the summer of 2023.

But despite Isak’s record fee, that spending hasn’t come from mega-deals like his move to Liverpool.

In fact, according to Transfermarkt, there were only four transfer fees of more than 80 million Euros ($93.6 mil.), of which one was Woltemade, which everywhere else reported was actually for a lower amount.

This compares to three transfer fees of more than 80 million Euros in the 2023/24 and 2021/22 seasons (including the winter transfer window) so the number of completely massive signings hasn’t really gone up.

Transfer Window Trends

However, the number of signings for between 30 million and 80 million euros ($35.1 mil. to $93.6 mil.) has skyrocketed.

In 21/22, there were 13 transfer fees in this bracket, in 23/24 there were 30, and this summer alone there were 42 transfer fees in this range. Breaking the data down further, the number of transfer fees in the 30 million to 40 million euro range (roughly $35 mil. to $45 mil.) has doubled since two years ago.

Many of those signings were from sides that finished mid-table last season such as Brighton and Hove Albion, who signed Greek striker Charalampos Kostoulas for roughly $40 million, or Nottingham Forest, who completed the deadline day signing of Dilane Bakwa for a similar amount.

The actual fees are often undisclosed, but the figures given by Transfermarkt show the clear general trend within the market, which combined with a relatively quiet transfer window last winter, has pushed this summer’s spending to new levels.

Transfer fee inflation has caused several pundits to say that fans should basically imagine a transfer fee from a few seasons ago and multiply it by 1.5 to determine whether the fee paid this summer is good value in today’s market. A $20 million player in 2023 would be a $30 million player today and a $30 million player in 2023 would become a $45 million player today.

In this context, Woltemade’s fee would be more in the region of $60 million, which is probably a bit closer to many fans’ and pundits’ valuation of him.

A lot of those $40 million transfer fees paid are for players in their early twenties who clubs believe will increase in value and hopefully be sold for fees of $90 million plus. But the number of players sold for $90 million plus isn’t increasing anywhere near as quickly as the number of players bought for around $40 million. This disparity could change the dynamic of future transfer windows and the way in which transfer fees are perceived.