Wage costs of "Big five" professional football leagues in Europe 2017-2019, by league

The statistic shows the wage costs of the ‘big five’ European professional football market from 2016/17 to 2018/19, collectively exhibiting an increase of almost one billion euros between the 2017/18 season and the 2018/19 season .

England

The English Premier League constitutes the highest level of professional football in England. The Premier League comprises 20 football clubs and was formed in 1992, following decision to break away from the Football League, which was originally founded in 1888. Of the so-called “Big-Five” leagues in Europe the Premier League generates the highest revenue with around 5.2 billion euros of revenue in the 2018/19 season. The wage spend of English Premier League football clubs increased by 11 percent from 3.2 billion euros to 3.6 billion euros in the 2018/19 season The growth in wage spending within the English premier league exceeded the revenue growth leading to an increase in the wage revenue ratio from 59 percent to 61 percent.

Spain

The “Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División”, more commonly known as La Liga, is the men's top professional football division of the Spanish football league system which like the English Premier League is contested by 20 teams. Despite the previously large wage growths observed within the La Liga football clubs the 2018/19 season exhibited a substantially reduced wage growth of only three percent from a wage cost of only 2033 million euros in the 2017/18 season to 2093 million euros in 2018/19. This was in large part due to the reduction of wage spends at Real Madrid following the transfer of Cristiano Ronaldo to Juventus in July 2018. This reduction in the wage cost growth has resulted in a decrease within the wages to revenue ratio from its 15 year high of 66 percent in the 2017/18 season to only 62 percent in 2018/19.

Germany

The Bundesliga is the highest level of professional football in Germany. The league was founded in its current format in 1963 and is comprised of 18 teams. Within the 2018/19 season Bundesliga clubs increased their wage expenditure by seven percent leading to a slight increase in the wage to revenue ratio of the Bundesliga clubs to 54 percent despite an increase in revenue during this period from approximately 3.8 billion euros in 2017/18 to over 4 billion euros in 2018/19. Although this ratio is the greatest observed within the Bundesliga since for almost ten years no other ‘big five’ league has recorded such a low wage to revenue ratio in the past 20 years.