REVEALED: English clubs spent £219MILLION on agent fees in 2023 – making up lion’s share of a record £696m outlay… with Saudi giants contributing £67m

• Only Italy’s total came close to England as the ‘biggest spenders by a long shot’ 
• In November, agents won their fight against FIFA’s new cost cap in England  
• ‘There’s no bigger waste of time!’ What is the point of the Club World Cup? It’s All Kicking Off

Football clubs in England and Saudi Arabia fueled spending on player agents in international transfer deals to a record £696 million this year, FIFA said on Thursday.

FIFA noted ‘isolated cases of service fees even surpassing £7.8m,’ though the football governing body lost a key court ruling in London last month which threatens its global regulations that seek to limit how much agents can be paid from deals.

Agents across Europe have brought legal cases against FIFA and national soccer federations to block the rules which were intended to take effect worldwide in October.

The project is stalled in England, which FIFA’s latest research showed still dominates the multi-billion pound soccer player transfer market.

FIFA said English clubs were ‘the number one spenders by a long shot’ in 2023 with combined spending of more than £219m on agent commissions in transfers between two clubs in different countries. Money from player transfers between two clubs in the same country do not count in the FIFA numbers.

FIFA have reported that England are the runaway leaders in money spent on service fees

The last two transfer windows have seen a flurry of big money moves, such as Moises Caicedo’s £115m signing for Chelsea

The total spend on agents was up 42 per cent on 2022 and more than one third from the previous peak of £513m in the pre-pandemic year of 2019.

Italian clubs spending £90.7m was the only other collective national total close to nine figures.

Saudi Arabian clubs spent £67m on agents in a state-backed recruitment program to boost its domestic league with hires such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and Karim Benzema.

FIFA did not specify details of individual transfers, though said in 224 cases the agent service fee was at least £784,000, and those deals accounted for nearly 69 per cent of the total spend.

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The Saudi Pro League entranced a number of superstars to join their budding league this summer (Neymar Jr pictured) 

In most deals, agents were paid fees of £7,846 to £784,600, FIFA said.

Clubs in North and Central America collectively spent £4.23m across 20 transfers, and African clubs spent less than £156,900, FIFA said.

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