Article · 2026-09-14

Finnish football transfer fees: a closer look

Hyvä Suomi! A new transfer record, and it didn't come from nowhere: players aged 23 and under have taken a bigger share of the minutes every season since 2019.

What we keep coming back to is why the fees are still lower than in Scandinavia.

Our read is that it's less about how much money is in the league and more about what it's spent on. The average new contract in Veikkausliiga runs 18 months. In Scandinavia it's 33 to 35.

Eighteen months of wages buys a season of football. It doesn't buy an asset. So by the time a Finnish club has done the hard half of developing someone, there isn't much left to sell, and the price reflects that.