The richest and arguably most prestigious of the world's Footy Leagues (and the fourth-richest sports league in generalnote ), and certainly one of the most high-profile sports events worldwide. While it is in no way financially comparable to the National Football League in the United States, the cultural grip it has is comparable without a doubt, and when compared to other Footy leagues around the world, the Premier League is far and away the richest despite their competition.
Despite the relatively small size of a lot of England's stadia compared to Europe note the quality of the English game is extremely high and total club revenue annually (as of 2022) is £4.8 billion!note The Premier League's revenue is the fourth highest anywhere in the world, behind the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NBA - and with its current £5 billion domestic television licensing deal, as well as its overseas media deals being worth at least as much (its U.S. deal alone is for roughly £2.1 billion over six years), it's only likely to get richer.
While The Football Association doesn't oversee the day-to-day operations of the Premier League, they still have influence over how it operates.
Structure
For those more used to an American sports league, the way the Premier League operates can be a bit different to get used to, as a typical footy league structure means there are no playoff spots that teams play for. It's as simple as being the team with the most points at the end of the season. However, coming close to first has its rewards as well. Here's a brief rundown of what each position can get you.- 1st place: League Champions, seeded berth to the UEFA Champions League group stages
- 2nd-4th place: automatic berth to the UEFA Champions League group stagesnote
- 5th place: automatic berth to the UEFA Europa League group stagesnote
- 6th-17th place: no reward (although do see below), but safety from relegation
- 18th-20th place: relegation to the Championship
In addition to these rewards, there is also money involved depending on placement, which is why making it into the top flight is so attractive for many smaller sides. There are also the two domestic Cup competitions, the winners of which will get automatic berths to the Europa League group stages (FA Cup, who get the higher UEL berth) or the Europa Conference League playoff (EFL Cup), though if they already have an equal or better European berth, the spot(s) revert to the league and are given to the best placed team(s) who hadn't already qualified for Europe, with the FA Cup spot given priority over the EFL Cup. And on top of all of this, if a team in the Europa League wins it or the Champions League, they gain automatic qualification to the Champions League, while the Conference League winners gain automatic entry into the Europa League, but due to fixed numbers of potential winners, the Premier League may only contribute a maximum of 5 UCL participants, 4 UEL participants, and 1 UECL participant.
Generally speaking, six teams are expected to dominate (though whether or not they actually do is a different story), known as the "Big Six". These are the six teams that generally find themselves in the top several spots at season's end, barring a slip or two. Despite this, however, the Premier League's midtable sides are more than capable of taking them to task on any given gameday, and several of these teams have been known to cause nightmares for the Big Sixnote . Not only that, but a trite but true dictum is that "there are no easy games in the Premier League" - if one of the top teams slacks off, then even relegation fodder have every chance of beating them. Another reason for this is that the Premier League, like all the British Leagues, has a reputation for being extraordinarily physically intense. According to data breakdowns, while there's technically more distance covered per match in the Italian Serie A, for high intensity activity, the Premier League is in a league of its own. Anecdotal evidence supports this, with players emphasising that the pace and physicality of play is unlike anything else in Europe, along with the referees being comparatively more lenient on hard physical challenges. All of this helps level the skill gap.
On the topic of relegation, unlike teams in some other leagues, such as, to an extent, Scotlandnote , relegation is assured at the end of the season; that is to say, there is no playoff between one of the teams coming up and one of the teams going down. This lack of a lifeline, as well as the money involved for staying in the league, generally means that there is an incentive for even the bottom-feeding teams to play their hardest, and it leads to some shock upsets, or some dramatic battles between the sides fighting for survival.
All of this adds up to a heavily-competitive league with teams that are rich and all are seeking to make themselves better by bringing in the best players possible. Teams such as Manchester City and Chelsea were originally known for being mediocre sides, but were taken over by new ownership, who revamped team facilities and finances and led to them taking a place in the Big Six. This allowed them to afford to bring in some of the best foreign talent while also setting up youth facilities to churn out youth prospects to sell or play as well, which only further added to the league's talent pool and competitiveness, and this in turn provided a major boost to the English National Team as well (also thanks to rules in European competitions mandating home-grown player quotas). It's not uncommon to see the English team field 11 players from Premier League sides, when in the past, you would often see players from other countries - whilestars like Harry Kane (Bayern Munich) and Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid) play abroad, and others follow them, this is usually after establishing themselves in England. And thanks to this talent pool, England are in the midst of a resurgence, making the 2018 World Cup Semifinals and the 2020/21 European Championship Finals, though they lost both.
Because of this feedback loop of generating talent to make the teams better, which also makes the national team better, it is clear that English football's fortunes, both at the club and national level, rest on the shoulders of the Premier League, and given the way things are going, it is safe to say the present and future are bright.
History of the League
In order to really grasp what a monumental achievement the Premier League actually is, you have to first get a grasp of the context around English footy when it was founded.By the end of the '80s, English football was in a bit of a state. Hooliganism was rife both at home and abroad—the French called it la malaise Anglaise: the English Disease. Liverpool fans had been blamed for the Heysel Stadium Disaster
in 1985 and English clubs had been banned from all European competition. Revenues and attendance were plummeting and many of the stadia were crumbling, poorly maintained or hopelessly old fashioned, this being one factor in the horrific Bradford City stadium fire of 1985. Tall fences were installed to stop hooligans from invading the pitch, but this practice was stopped after the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989, when 97 people* (most of them Liverpool fans) were crushed to death. note The best English players began moving abroad, mostly to Italy or Spain, which were seen as having the best leagues at the time.
There was some light in the gloom, though. England's national team made the top four in the 1990 World Cup, the same year in which the post-Heysel ban on English clubs in Europe was lifted. Manchester United promptly won the now-defunct European Cup-Winners' Cupnote in 1991. After the Hillsborough Disaster, Lord Taylor produced a report which forced all top-level clubs to make their stadia safer, more pleasant places to watch a game (done by removing any lawn seating entirely and having all seating be in chairs) and to take measures to clamp down on hooliganism. Slowly, attendances started to rise as parents began taking their children again, and "normal" non-violent fans were no longer put off.
Then into the mix came the dawn of satellite television, in the form of Rupert Murdoch and his Sky service (still the main British satellite broadcaster). Sky's presence and the increasing quality of the English game meant that TV revenue from football skyrocketed from £6.3m in 1986 to over £44m in 1988. The biggest clubs in the top division felt they weren't getting a big enough slice of the cake, and that The Football League, who had been organizing English football since 1888, weren't doing enough to help, so in the summer of 1991 they decided to break away and form their own league.
The Premier League debuted for the 1992/93 season with 22 members, while The Football League was left with the lower three divisions, now confusingly renumbered so that the second tier of English football would be "First Division". Promotion and relegation between the Premier League and the First Division was maintained, and fans didn't notice any immediate difference beyond the change of names and new logos. Later, a new sponsorship deal with the Football League muddied the waters even further, so that the tiers now read "Premier League -> The Championship -> League One -> League Two".
Money started to flow into the Premier League clubs thanks to Sky's TV revenues, while the number of foreign players began to increase dramatically, particularly after 1995, when a test case at the European Court of Justice established that footballers were not exempt from European Law regarding free movement of labour and services: any EU-citizen footballer could play at any EU club with no restrictions, and any EU footballer could move to another club freely once his contract was up. The case - known as the Bosman Ruling after Belgian player Jean-Marc Bosman who took the case to court - had a massive effect on football throughout Europe, but particularly in England where the Premier League rapidly became the richest league.
In the mid-2000s, the Premier League overtook Spain's La Liga to become the highest-ranked league in Europe according to UEFA. However, resurgence from La Liga and Germany's Bundesliga, spearheaded by Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid, and Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, and underachievement from PL teams in Europe meant that there was a power shift. For the tail end of the Noughties and the first half of the 2010s, foreign clubs dominated Europe, with only Chelsea's win in 2012 showcasing England's success (and even then, it was considered a Cinderella win against a heavily-favored Bayern Munich). Complacency set in at several clubs: Sir Alex Ferguson left Manchester United and the team fell adrift somewhat, Arsène Wenger's Arsenal had settled into a perennial 4th place finish, and the Premier League, while still wildly popular, seemed to be on a slow fade. But then, in the mid-2010s, the unthinkable happened, which further boosted the popularity of the league, left dreams in the minds of the lesser sides, and caused the Big Six to scramble to keep their usual dominance, which caused England to finally return to their lofty heights of European dominance after a time. That event?
Because of this historic run, it became only more apparent that the league was wild and unpredictable. The Top Four morphed into the Big Six as Liverpool became a force again and Tottenham Hotspur entered the mix, and although in the ensuing several years Manchester City and Liverpool dominated the tables, the other four members of the Big Six finished all over the place, sometimes with teams such as Wolverhampton Wanderers or Sheffield United putting up a fight. By the 2019/20 season, with the COVID-19 pandemic, Leicester City were competing for a Champions League place, Wolves and Sheffield were fighting for Europa, and lackluster Arsenal were fighting just to finish in the top half of the table following an uncharacteristically-awful season. The following year, an injury-hit and exhausted Liverpool dropped off in January, ending up 7 points off the top 4 with 10 games to go, before managing to drag themselves back into a six-team dogfight for the last two Champions League places, while West Ham made a very unexpected tilt for the top four. Ultimately, some normalcy resumed with Leicester and West Ham dropping out of the Top Four, and Chelsea and Liverpool claiming the spots for their own, but West Ham continued to play well in the 2021/22 season, and the non-Big Six sides continued to snatch shock wins over the course of their campaigns, 2022/23 was a return to unpredictability that saw Arsenal emerge as a surprise contender, being predicted at the start of the season to be fighting to finish inside Top 4, and instead they comfortably staked their claim while their erstwhile Top 4 rivals Tottenham, Manchester United, Chelsea, and Liverpool all slid backward, leaving them alone to tilt with City, though they came up short as City pipped them at the end en route to an historic treble.
2023/24 saw excitement reign supreme once again. Arsenal dusted themselves off, made key acquisitions, and returned to battle again for the title, Spurs revitalised themselves under newcomer Ange Postecoglu, Manchester City made a few acquisitions to bolster an aging side off the back of their treble and a few of their elder players leaving, Liverpool rebuilt their midfield from scratch; and Manchester United and Chelsea broke the bank to bring in more key players, with their goals being Champions League or bust. What followed were nine months unpredictability. The title race turned into the tightest race in years, with Arsenal, Liverpool, and Manchester City all staying within a game or two of each other from the start, each team taking the lead for a few weeks and losing it, until the brakes began to fall off for Liverpool in late April, leaving it down to Arsenal and City once again. Spurs also shot out of the gate with an unbeaten run, before their form dipped and they slid into a battle for Top 4 against shock contender Aston Villa, who snatched victories against the top sides all season long and kept pace at the top as well, before sliding to bump shoulders with Spurs for 4th until Spurs slid back even further out of Top 4 entirely. Manchester United, however, stumbled their way through the season, too good to fall into midtable, but too bad to break into the Top 4 race. Chelsea, meanwhile, followed up the previous season's disappointment with an even worse one despite earning more points by virtue of seeing the team fail to win a Cup against an injury-ravaged Liverpool's academy players and regressing into being a one-man shownote . Despite this, they may still manage to end the season on a high note as European football might very well be on the cards for them if they can finish 6th or 7th and Manchester City win the FA Cup.
All of this competition led to the English teams reasserting their noughties dominance in the Champions League in 2017/18, with all five English teams reaching the Champions League Last 16 (Manchester United finished outside the top four, but reached the group stage by winning the Europa League), a feat unprecedented in UCL history, and all but Chelsea winning their groups outright, with Liverpool ending up as defeated finalists. Things got even better the following season, as EVERY English side in a group stage reached the last 8 of either the Champions League or Europa League. This led to the first all-English Champions League final in a decade (between Liverpool and Spurs, which Liverpool won, having pulled off an improbable comeback in the semis against Barcelona from 3-0 down), which had been preceded three days earlier by an all-English Europa League final between Chelsea and Arsenal (with Chelsea thrashing Arsenal 4-1, having got to the final after a penalty shootout). This meant the Premier League had provided all four European finalists, something never seen before. Then, in 2020/21, the league promptly provided three of the finalists, as if to prove that this wasn't just a one-time thing. However, in 2023/24, five out of seven English sides made it to European knockout stages, the odd ones out being Manchester United and Newcastle United, who both finished bottom of their groups and were bounced out of Europe entirely. All five remaining teams made their respective competition's quarterfinals, but four of the five teams leftnote were all eliminated there, leaving Aston Villa as the lone English team left in a European competition. This could have a tremendous impact on England's coefficient, as with the new Champions League format, the Top 2 countries by coefficient receive an extra Champions League spot, and England are in danger of losing out to Germany and Italy, leaving their 5th placed team stranded in the Europa League rather than enjoying the riches of Europe's biggest stage.
In more controversial recent history, April 2021 also saw the announcement that Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, and Tottenham Hotspur would be joining a European Super League, alongside AC Milan, Inter Milan, and Juventus from Italy, and Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Atlético Madrid from Spain. Said league would essentially function as a replacement of the UEFA Champions League, but the founding members would never find themselves cast out of the league due to poor performance. The ESL got off to a poor start when three clubs rumoured to have places set aside for them—Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund (both Germany), and Paris Saint-Germain (France)—ruled themselves out. Immediately following these announcements, massive outrage and backlash from the governing bodies, other clubs, and supporters alike ensued, with many criticising the league and its members for what has been perceived as a blatant attempt to ensure none of its members ever lose their way into obscurity due to poor performance, but also because the league was to be capped at 20 teams, making entry very exclusive with at least 12 slots already permanently taken, and effectively ensuring the sheer amount of money and branding at the top level would drown out lower leagues, making miracle stories like the Leicester City title impossible. Within 48 hours of the backlash, Chelsea and Manchester Citynote both announced they would be withdrawing. The other clubs followed soon after, effectively killing the new league, much to the delight of detractors. It was incredibly short-lived, and the general reaction from the public seems to be "Let Us Never Speak of This Again," and the outcry from fans even boiled over to the point where several owners or club executives were forced to reevaluate or step down entirely, such as Ed Woodward of Manchester United. Perhaps most tangibly, the Kroenke family, owners of Arsenal, completely turned around fan opinions in the seasons since, going from widely despised to widely supported.
The 2022/23 season saw a drastic change in the way the season unfolded, due to The World Cup taking place in Qatar in November and December to avoid the punishing desert climate during summer months. Fixtures were extremely compressed and were even further thrown into disarray following the death of Elizabeth IInote . In preparation for the major match congestion, rule changes were approved to allow for an additional two subs on the bench and five total subs (in no more than three windows, not including half-time) to allow clubs to rotate players. This is all without mentioning the effect of Cup competitions and European matchesnote on an already tight schedule as well. If ever there was a season to force the conversation about match scheduling, this would be it, but it does not seem that any permanent changes are incoming despite that season's high crunch.
Finally, in a major shakeup to the league's current financial model, a non-binding vote was held in late April 2024 that saw sixteen out of twenty Premier League club ownersnote approve a new model to replace the current "Profit and Sustainability Rules" model. As television revenue is each team's primary source of income, the team with the lowest television revenue values will have a multiplier yet to be determined applied to their television income, and the final result will be the maximum amount of money that can be spent in a given season, both summer and winter windows. This will apply to every piece of player-related transfer finance (salaries, agent fees, transfer fees, etc.), and cannot be recouped by selling players outside of freeing up salary money. In theory, this will relax current rules requiring clubs to post no lower than a net 105m-pound loss in a three-season window, thus allowing clubs to gamble their funds at their own risk, while also preventing bigger clubs from simply splurging on new transfers every season, both making the market fairer for smaller teams and preventing the player market from inflating as a result of English teams overspending, and because it is tied to television revenue, it essentially future-proofs discussion over raising or lowering the spending cap by tying it to an ever-changing value. The final vote is expected to be held in June 2024, but all signs point to this change being in place by the start of the 2025/26 season.
There is no doubt that the current state of the Premier League showcases a remarkable turnaround for football in England since the troubles of The '80s and has helped move England back up to being one of the top footballing nations in the world. It is arguably back ahead of its cousin leagues in Spain and Italy in terms of the quality of football, certainly in terms of attendance and revenue and is now watched all around the world and particularly in the Far East.
Current League Information
- Current titleholders: Manchester City
- Promoted from Championship:
- Burnley
- Sheffield United
- Luton Town
- To be relegated to Championship:
- Burnley
- Sheffield United
- To be promoted from Championship:
- Leicester City
- Ipswich Town
- Winner of playoff between:
- Leeds United
- Southampton
- West Bromwich United
- Norwich City
