Fourteen leagues, one price scale

The median Premier League player in the study is valued at €18M, 3.3 times the next league, Serie A (€5.5M). In 9 of the fourteen covered leagues the median player sits below €2M, the edge of the Emerging tier.

League is Model A's largest single input on average across all players: it moves an estimate by ×1.96, up or down.

Each league contributes between 256 players (Superliga) and 555 (Premier League): those valued while at a club in the league, with at least 450 minutes in two years. Leagues outside these fourteen are not modelled at all.

Model B leaves league and club out. On held-out players it misses by more in every one of the fourteen leagues. The difference is widest in Premier Liha: a mean absolute error of 1.011 log units without league and club, 0.330 with them.

In 6 leagues, observed values sit above Model A's held-out estimates on average; in 8 they sit below. The spread runs from +0.064 (Ligue 1) to −0.076 (Premiership).

These are averages over hundreds of players. A single player's residual is far noisier: a typical held-out miss is ×1.50 either way.

A selected population: fourteen European first divisions, chosen for data coverage, valued by Transfermarkt in one season. Not the global market, and not evidence about how any league prices players.