It stopped being a football event some time ago.
Watch the coverage. Watch the rolling tickers. Watch the broadcast graphics. Watch the dedicated Sky Sports presenter standing in the rain outside a training ground waiting for nothing. The transfer window is now content, produced with the expectation of attention, and the attention itself shapes which transfers happen and how they are announced.
A signing is not announced when the player is signed. It is announced when the club's social media team calculates the optimal engagement window. The launch video is pre-shot. The player's first interview is pre-scripted. The reveal is a marketing campaign.
This is fine. This is what modern sports do. But the press treats it as journalism, and that is where the framing falls apart.
Real journalism would investigate the agent. Real journalism would interrogate the third-party ownership. Real journalism would ask why a club is willing to spend €80 million on a player they did not have on their list eight months ago. Real journalism would track the financial sustainability of the windows themselves.
Instead the press functions as the unpaid marketing arm of the clubs. It amplifies announcements. It speculates on rumours that the agents themselves planted. It treats the window as theatre.
The football is incidental. The product is the window. The press knows this. They just do not say it out loud.