The money league: How lucrative TV deals have led to record transfers

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The Premier League is now the undisputed richest football league in the world and it’s all down to the lucrative TV deals which have taken over the game.

Back when the Premier League was introduced in 1992/93 the first TV deal was worth a measly £191m. That five-year deal worked out at just £3.18m per game with Sky showing 60 live games per year.

By the early 2000’s Sky were paying £1.2billion for a three-year deal which included 110 games per season – working out at £10.9m per match – while the latest contract with BT Sport and Sky is worth a staggering £5.1billion with the per game total now standing at £30.4m – almost 10 times what it was 24 years ago.

With so much money flooding in to the English game, it’s no wonder we’ve seen transfer fees rocket. We all thought the £8.5m Liverpool paid for Stan Collymore in 1995 was crazy money but that wouldn’t buy you a second choice left-back these days.

Man Utd have always been a financial super-power but the influx of TV money has seen them recent smash the world transfer record after splashing out almost £90m on Paul Pogba from Juventus.

Even the usual frugal Arsene Wenger has opened the purse strings this summer with the Arsenal boss spending close to £90m on big-money signings like Granit Xhaka, Shkodran Mustafi and Lucas Perez.

For more interesting facts and figures, check out this interesting infographic created by football odds experts Paddy Power, who have come up with this guide to Premier League TV deals:

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