PL still on top?
©TM/IMAGO
When it comes to the age-old debate over which of Europe’s top-flight leagues is the very best, football fans often turn to success in the Champions League or Europa League as a handy yardstick by which to compare each division. After all, football is all about winning trophies and few pieces of silverware can rival the majesty of the European Cup. But the continent’s top leagues not only compete on the pitch over the course of the regular season, but also do so off it all year round. And at Transfermarkt we like to keep tabs on the manner in which the tectonic plates beneath each top-flight seem to be shifting from one year to the next. To do this, we add up the market values of each player in the top five leagues to produce the overall market value of each division. And once we have that, we can then deduce which of Europe’s major competitions is rising and falling compared to the rest. So let’s take a look at which major European league gained the most market value over the course of 2024.
To no great surprise, the top European league that gained the most market value in 2024 was none other than the Premier League. At the start of the year the English top-flight’s collective market value stood at a staggering €10.9 billion and over the course of the last 12 months that figure has increased by +€733.3 million to an ever-more impressive €11.7 billion. This, undoubtedly, is due to most of the clubs in the division adding market value to their squads. Although five Premier League sides actually lost market value this year – most notable among them being Manchester City, who lost €99.5m in squad market value in 2024 – the vast majority gained overall squad value. This was largely due to promoted clubs like Southampton (+€104m in 2024) and Ipswich (+€197m) joining the league and seeing their average player market value rise, but we also saw a number of big hitters like Liverpool (+€100m) and Brighton (+€119m) also add market value to their squads this year. The Premier League’s rise in market value also now means that the gap between it and the next most valuable league in Europe continues to grow, with the English top-flight now worth €6.5b more valuable than LaLiga.
Despite losing ground to the Premier League, the Spanish top-flight did well to add significant value to its overall market value in 2024. Following the latest LaLiga market value update, the league itself has seen its overall market value increase by an impressive €660.7m over the course of 2024. This, to no great surprise, is due to Kylian Mbappé joining the league with a current market value of €160m, as well as a number of players at Real Madrid and Barcelona soaring in market value over the course of the last 12 months. Whether it be Lamine Yamal (+€120m in 2024), Vinicius Jr (+€50m in 2024), Pau Cubarsí (+€68.5m) or Arda Güler (+€30m), the two Spanish giants undoubtedly did more than their fair share to try and keep LaLiga at pace with its English counterparts. Elsewhere, Serie A was close behind LaLiga, with its overall market value rising by €584m, due in part to Juventus (+€188.5m), Atalanta (+€161m) and Inter Milan (+€88.5m) enjoying good years and offsetting what has been a 12-month period to forget for Napoli (-€102m). In stark contrast to the big three leagues, the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 only saw modest improvements in overall market value, with the German top-flight gaining just €178m and Ligue 1 seeing a largely insignificant increase of €71m.
