The Premier League (officially known as the Barclays Premier League for sponsorship reasons, colloquially known as The Premiership), is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top echelon of the English football league system (above The Football League). It is the world's most watched sporting league, and the most lucrative football league.
The FA Premier League (as it was then known) was formed in 1992 from the clubs in the top division of The Football League, and is currently contested by twenty clubs. In a total of fifteen seasons, the title has been won by only four teams: Manchester United (nine times), Arsenal (three times), Chelsea (twice), and Blackburn Rovers (once). The current Premier League champions are Manchester United, who won the title with two games remaining of the 2006–07 season.
The FA Women's Premier League, more specifically the National Division, is the Premiership's female counterpart, as most of its clubs are affiliated with Premiership and Football League sides; however, the league is semi-professional and has a much lower profile than the men's game.
The 2007–08 Season sees the Premier League introduce a new theme song, logo, typeface for player names and numbers, and patches.
History
The 1980s had marked a low point for English football. Stadiums were crumbling, supporters endured poor facilities, hooliganism was rife, and English clubs were banned from European competition following the events at Heysel in 1985. The Football League First Division, which had been the top level of English football since 1888, was well behind foreign leagues such as Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga in attendances and revenues, and several top English players had moved abroad. However, by the turn of the 1990s the downward trend was starting to reverse; England had been successful in the 1990 FIFA World Cup, reaching the semi-finals. UEFA, European football's governing body, lifted the ban on English clubs playing in European competitions in 1990 and the Taylor Report on stadium safety standards, which proposed expensive upgrades to all-seater stadiums, was published in January of that year.
Origins
The league held its first season in 1992–93 and was originally composed of 22 clubs. The first ever Premiership goal was scored by Brian Deane of Sheffield United in a 2–1 win against Manchester United. Due to insistence by FIFA, the international governing body of football, that domestic leagues reduce the number of games clubs played, the number of clubs was reduced to 20 in 1995 when four teams were relegated from the league and only two teams were promoted. On 8 June 2006, FIFA requested that all major European leagues, including Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga be reduced to 18 teams by the start of the 2007–08 season. The Premier League responded by announcing their intention to resist such a reduction. Ultimately the 2007-08 season kicked off again with 20 teams.
The league changed its name from the 'FA Premier League' to simply the 'Premier League' on February 12, 2007.
Establishment
The Premier League is operated as a corporation that is owned by the 20 member clubs. Each club is considered a shareholder with one vote each on such issues as rule changes and contracts. The clubs elect a Chairman, Chief Executive, and Board of Directors to oversee the daily operations of the league.
Structure
Competition format and sponsorship
There are 20 clubs in the Premier League. During the course of a season (which lasts from August to May) each club plays the others twice, once at their home stadium and once at that of their opponents for a total of 38 games for each club, with a total of 380 games in each season. Teams receive three points for a win and one point for a draw. No points are awarded for a loss. Teams are ranked by total points, then goal difference and then goals scored. At the end of each season, the club with the most points is crowned as champion. If points are equal the goal difference and goals scored then determines the winner. If still equal they are deemed to occupy the same position; if the champions, teams for relegation or qualification for other competitions thus cannot be decided, a series of play-off matches are played between the affected teams at neutral venues (this has yet to occur). The three lowest placed teams are relegated into the Football League Championship and the top two teams from the Championship, together with the winner of play-offs involving the third to sixth placed Championship clubs, are promoted in their place.
Competition
The top four teams in the Premiership qualify for the UEFA Champions League, with the top two teams directly entering the group phase. The third and fourth placed teams enter the competition at the third qualifying round and must win a two-legged knockout tie in order to enter the group phase. The fifth placed team automatically qualifies for the UEFA Cup, and the sixth and seventh placed teams can also qualify, depending on what happens in the two domestic cup competitions. If the FA Cup winners and runners-up both finish in the top five of the Premier League, the FA Cup's UEFA Cup spot goes to the sixth placed team in the League. If the League Cup (Carling cup) is won by a team that has already qualified for Europe, the League Cup's UEFA Cup spot also goes to the next highest placed team in the League (unlike the FA Cup spot, it is never transferred to the losing finalist). The highest placed team that has not qualified for the UEFA Cup is allowed the opportunity to compete in the UEFA Intertoto Cup, provided they have applied to enter the Intertoto Cup in the next season. This provides another means of getting into the UEFA Cup, as winners of all eleven third-round Intertoto Cup ties qualify for that tournament.
Technically, the FA can nominate any team in the league system to represent them in Europe; however, understandably and just as in all the other major leagues, only the teams that finished top of their highest league are sent. This issue presented itself in 2005 when Liverpool won the UEFA Champions League, but failed to finish high enough in the Premier League to be entered into the following year's tournament. Initially, this would have meant that for the first time in the competition's history the defending champions would not have been allowed to defend their trophy. In fact, a similar situation had occurred at the start of the 2000–01 Champions League, when defending champions Real Madrid from Spain did not finish high enough to qualify. In that situation, they were allowed to qualify by sacrificing the fourth placed qualifier that year. However, the FA insisted on its policy of only entering the four highest qualifiers. In addition, Everton (who finished fourth in the Premier League that year) justly bemoaned the fact that they would lose their place, which they had earned. UEFA, although initially reluctant to alter the rules, were forced to admit five English teams to the Champions League that year after receiving support from their own president Lennart Johansson, The top three leagues in Europe are currently allowed to enter four teams into the Champions League, although the new UEFA president Michel Platini has proposed changing the rules so as to limit any league's Champions League contingent to three at some point in the future.
Qualification for European competitions
Since 1993, the Premier League has been sponsored. The sponsor has been able to determine the league's sponsorship name. The list below details who the sponsors have been and what they called the competition:
1993–2001: Carling (FA Carling Premiership)
2001–2004: Barclaycard (Barclaycard Premiership)
2004–2010: Barclays (Barclays Premiership (2004–2007) then Barclays Premier League (2007–2010)) Sponsorship
The Premier League is the most lucrative football league in the world, with total club revenues of over £1.4 billion in 2005–06 according to Deloitte, 40% above its nearest competitor, Italy's Serie A.
Finances
Media coverage
See also: English football on television
Television has played a major role in the history of the Premier League. The money from television rights has been vital in helping to create excellence both on and off the field. The League's decision to assign broadcasting rights to BSkyB in 1992 was at the time a radical decision, but one that has paid off. At the time pay television was an almost untested proposition in the UK market, as was charging fans to watch live televised football. However, a combination of Sky's strategy, the quality of Premier League football and the public's appetite for the game has seen the value of the Premier League's TV rights soar. It also saw the creation of regularly scheduled games on Sundays and Mondays, taking a page from the U.S. National Football League's Sunday Night and Monday Night games. In both cases, the featured TV games are normally the only ones played at that time.
The Premier League sells its television rights on a collective basis. This is in contrast to some European Leagues, including Serie A and La Liga, in which each club sells its rights individually, leading to a much higher share of the total income going to the top few clubs. The money is divided into three parts:
England
Promoted as "The Greatest Show On Earth", the Premier League is the world's most popular and most watched sporting league, followed worldwide by around half a billion people.
Recent overseas TV rights deals have sometimes included internet and/or mobile phone rights, taking advantage of technology to restrict usage to the countries included under the contract.
Worldwide
Premier League clubs have almost complete freedom to sign whatever number and category of players they wish. There is no team or individual salary cap, no squad size limit, no age restrictions other than those applied by general employment law, no restrictions on the overall number of foreign players, and few restrictions on individual foreign players - all players with EU nationality, including those able to claim an EU passport through a parent or grandparent, are eligible to play, and top players from outside the EU are able to obtain UK work permits. The only area where the Premiership's player registration rules are more restrictive than those of some other football leagues, such as those of those of Belgium and Portugal, is that academy level non-EU players have little access to English football.
At the inception of the Premier League in 1992–93, just eleven players named in the starting line-ups for the first round of matches were 'foreign' (players hailing from outside of the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland).
Players
The first few seasons of the Premier League saw the record transfer fee paid by English clubs broken almost every season, a practice that resumed in the first few years of the twenty-first century.
Alan Shearer's £15-million record lasted nearly five years in England, although his worldwide record was broken within a year. Rio Ferdinand's record lasted nearly four years, before it was marginally broken in 2006 by the summer transfer of Andriy Shevchenko from A.C. Milan to Chelsea for an unknown figure between £30 million and £56 million. The creation of the Premier League, therefore, has seen the record fee paid by English clubs broken 11 times in under 15 years. The highest fee paid for a teenager is £27 million. This fee was paid by Manchester United to Everton for England striker Wayne Rooney in 2004.
£3.75 million in June 1993 (Roy Keane, Nottingham Forest to Manchester United)
£5 million in July 1994 (Chris Sutton, Norwich City to Blackburn Rovers)
£7 million in January 1995 (Andy Cole, Newcastle United to Manchester United)
£7.5 million in June 1995 (Dennis Bergkamp, Inter Milan to Arsenal)
£8.5 million in July 1995 (Stan Collymore, Nottingham Forest to Liverpool)
£15 million in July 1996 (Alan Shearer, Blackburn Rovers to Newcastle United)
£18 million in November 2000 (Rio Ferdinand, West Ham to Leeds Utd)
£19 million in May 2001 (Ruud van Nistelrooy, PSV Eindhoven to Manchester United)
£28.1 million in July 2001 (Juan Sebastián Verón, Lazio to Manchester United)
£29 million in July 2002 (Rio Ferdinand, Leeds Utd to Manchester United)
£30 Million in June 2006 (Andriy Shevchenko, A.C. Milan to Chelsea)
Transfer records
Premier League clubs
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