Move over Gareth Bale - football analysts predict the world's first £100m transfer will happen soon

Lucrative new Premier League TV rights deal will keep forcing transfer fees up

Experts predict Gareth Bales' £85m transfer fee could soon be eclipsed (GETTY IMAGES)

Gareth Bale may have just been sold for a world-record £85m, but the first £100m transfer will happen in the next few years because of spending power of the Premier League, according to leading analyst Dan Jones of the Sports Business Group at consultants Deloitte.

His prediction came after more than £630m was blown in this transfer window by Premier League clubs, eclipsing the previous record of £500m spent in 2008 and a 29% increase on the equivalent figure of £490m last year. A whopping £135m was splashed out by Premier League clubs on deadline day alone, including the £42.5m transfer of Mesut Ozil from Real Madrid to Arsenal, and Marouane Fellaini’s £27.5m move to Manchester United.

Bale's transfer from Tottenham was £5m more than the £80m Real Madrid paid United for his new team-mate Cristiano Ronaldo in 2009.

“Obviously you need the right player to be on the market for that to happen. A lot of things came together for the Bale deal as they did for Ronaldo four years ago,” Jones told BBC Five Live.

“But for the right player, a player who has an amazing World Cup or European championships, I could definitely see it happening in the next few years.”

Alex Thorpe, a consultant at Deloitte told the BBC that said Premier League clubs were unlikely to reduce their spending in future windows because of the money coming in from the latest £3bn TV rights deal.

He said: “This is the first year that Premier League clubs will benefit financially from the league’s new broadcast deals; each club getting a share of the extra £600 million of revenues in 2013/14 alone.

“Testament to the impact this is having is in the scale of Premier League gross spending, as well as the gulf in net spending between the Premier League and other European leagues.”

The Premier League spent nearly £300m more than Spain’s La Liga or Italy’s Serie A in the window, who both totalled £335m, and an incredible £400m more than teams in the German Bundesliga, who spent £230m combined.