Turkey sets exports record in football with 71 million euros in sales

Unusually, Turkish teams have become big exporters in football instead of importers. They earned 71 million euro in total in 2015 by selling their footballers abroad. This number is more than double that of last year's number. The Super League's teams mostly sold footballers to the Chinese and Middle East markets. Beşiktaş are leaders in footballer exports with 18 million euros. They sold Senegalese striker Demba Ba to China's Shanghai Shenhua club for 13 million euros and Atınç Nukan to Leipzig for 5 million euros. Fenerbahçe came second with 17 million euros by selling their Senegalese striker to Dubai's Al-Ahli. Bursaspor came third with sales of 10.5 million euros. They sold their French striker Cedric Bakambu to Villareal for 7.5 million euros and their youngster Enes Ünal to Manchester City for 3.5 million euros. With the other transfers, total sales reached 71 million euros.

Meanwhile, Premier League football clubs have broken the summer transfer window spending record, according to analysis from Deloitte. Clubs in the English top flight spent a total of 870 million pounds, up from the 835 million pound record set last year.

The transfer window opened on July 1 and closed on Tuesday. Manchester City was the biggest-spending club, agreeing to pay about 160 million pounds for new talent, which was a record for a single club. "This summer has seen another record level of transfer spending, as Premier League clubs continue to use increases in their revenue to invest in playing talent," said Alex Thorpe from the Sports Business Group at Deloitte.

"Total spending in 2015, across both the January and summer windows, is also a new record, reaching the 1 billion pound mark for the first time."

Increasing domestic and overseas broadcast revenue was the main driver behind rising spending on players, he added.

"Looking across Europe, Premier League clubs' gross and net spending this summer is more than double that of any other European league."