A Game of Two Halves: Premier League Transfers, Summer 2012

LONDON, September 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

- Premier League transfers and their social media effects

Spending in football always sparks great debate, both between fans of the beautiful game, and those who can't quite understand what all the fuss is about. With the Premier League 2012 summer transfer window having closed on Friday, infographic design agency infogr8 have created a revealing visualization , in collaboration with sports fan engagement company WePlay showing some of the summer's biggest transfers involving English teams, the spending of the English clubs, and the effect all of this has had on the Twittersphere.

     (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120903/559252 )

With more than £475m spent during this transfer window, some clubs have spent big on revamping their squad and acquiring the best footballing talent from around the globe. The two biggest transfers saw Belgian Eden Hazard and Brazilian Oscar make their way to West London to join Champions League holders Chelsea, who forked out more than £55m for the pair. Both Manchester clubs - City and United - also made big-money acquisitions, City spending £37m on bolstering their squad on transfer deadline day alone.

These transfers have also had an interesting effect on the world of Twitter and social media, revealed with the insight of Kred , a social media analysis site which uses data and influence measurement to identify influential people in different interest communities.

With a plethora of the world's biggest and best names in football now avid 'Tweeters', the infographic shows what effect their transfers have on their number of followers. Perhaps the most striking example of this is in the case of Mousa Dembele, who moved across London from Fulham to Tottenham Hotspur for the fee of £15m. Though the Belgian international may not have anything like as many followers as the likes of Robin Van Persie or Eden Hazard, his number of followers went up by nearly 350% in the 24 hours after his transfer.

The infographic also gives us the opportunity to really put the figures into perspective, and see how much was spent and received by each team during the transfer window. Unsurprisingly, five of last season's top six finishers were at the top of the spending table; Chelsea the biggest spenders with just shy of £80m invested in new players, while only six of the 20 Premier League teams ended up making money from their transfers, Spurs bringing in the most with £57.5m made through sales (though only £1.5m profit) as some of their star players headed for foreign shores.

Though the spending in this transfer window may not have reached the dizzying heights of four years ago, a total approaching £500m shows that clubs will still do anything to procure the prodigiously talented players.

(N.B. Figures of transfers and totals vary depending on sources and medias. This can be due to add-on fees, extra payments and conflicting figures released by different clubs.)

We Play is a new London based Fan Engagement Agency, helping sports brands and entities build engaged, retained and loyal fan bases using social media.

SOURCE WePlay