The Athletic. The Athletic. Hello I'm Mark Chapman welcome to the Business of Sport podcast on the

Athletic as ever Max later with us will reflect on what was meant to be a

acquired summer transfer window because of COVID,

but has ended up being the most interesting four years. There's a lot to discuss here,

but particularly the maths, Matt.

Yeah, I sometimes think that the amount of chit chat and attention and

hysteria around transfers, I'm a bit grumpy about it to be honest. Is out of all proportion really with the wider game.

Certainly transfer deadline day, but I think I even have to admit that this was a significant and

interesting transfer window. Proper players moved, the spend was higher than expected, and I think the reasons it was interesting are because of the stuff we talk about every week that what happens on the pitch is really a result of how well run these companies are and who buys them and why they buy them and what they're trying to achieve and the and the trends in the game the commercial side the broadcast side and I think so much of what has happened over the last few weeks just absolutely is our bread and butter on this pod.

So I could I could take or leave the transfer saga and people being, you know, yeah, I don't know,

race to the airport and spotted at all this sort of stuff.

But you'll take a spreadsheet anytime, won't you? Yeah, I'll take a spreadsheet and I'll take a sort of chin stroking moment about what it all means.

So forget tracking private jets on radar systems or online and forget who's been seen in a restaurant in South Manchester

suburb. For Matt in particular it's all about spending and visas and post Brexit and all of those will come up in this podcast.

We'll be joined later on by the football agent Erkett.

So good, but first we're going to crunch some of these numbers that Matt likes so much.

We're joined by Tim Bridge, a director in Deloitte Sports Business Group, a company that provides a range of financial services to support organizations across the world.

So Tim, thanks for joining us. What's the most important thing to consider when we hear

Premier League spending tops 1 billion pounds.

It's a good point Mark, it's a really good point and I think when the transfer window kind of gains momentum,

I think everybody becomes obsessed by what's their own club doing or

kind of what's the value of a certain deal. But I think when you actually strip it all back, I think the

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