Premier League
   HOME

TheInfoList



Click Here for Items Related To - Premier League
OR:
Premier League on:   [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Amazon]

The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's
English football league system The English football league system, also known as the football pyramid, is a series of interconnected leagues for men's association football clubs in England, with five teams from Wales, one from Guernsey, one from Jersey and one from the Isl ...
. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of
promotion and relegation In sports leagues, promotion and relegation is a process where teams are transferred between multiple divisions based on their performance for the completed season. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are often called open leagues. ...
with the
English Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in the world. It was the top-level football league in Engl ...
(EFL). Seasons typically run from August to May with each team playing 38 matches (playing all 19 other teams both home and away). Most games are played on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, with occasional weekday evening fixtures. The competition was founded as the FA Premier League on 20 February 1992 following the decision of clubs in the
Football League First Division The Football League First Division was a division of the Football League in England from 1888 until 2004. It was the top division in the English football league system from the season 1888–89 until 1991–92, a century in which the First ...
to break away from the
Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in the world. It was the top-level football league in Engla ...
, founded in 1888, and take advantage of a lucrative television rights sale to
Sky The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from outer space. In the field of astronomy, ...
. From 2019 to 2020, the league's accumulated television rights deals were worth around £3.1 billion a year, with Sky and
BT Group BT Group plc (trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, broa ...
securing the domestic rights to broadcast 128 and 32 games respectively. The Premier League is a corporation where chief executive Richard Masters is responsible for its management, whilst the member clubs act as shareholders. Clubs were apportioned central payment revenues of £2.4 billion in 2016–17, with a further £343 million in solidarity payments to English Football League (EFL) clubs. The Premier League is the most-watched sports league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643 million homes and a potential TV audience of 4.7 billion people. For the 2018–19 season, the average Premier League match attendance was at 38,181, second to the German
Bundesliga The Bundesliga (; ), sometimes referred to as the Fußball-Bundesliga () or 1. Bundesliga (), is a professional association football league in Germany. At the top of the German football league system, the Bundesliga is Germany's primary footba ...
's 43,500, while aggregated attendance across all matches is the highest of any association football league at 14,508,981. Most stadium occupancies are near capacity. The Premier League ranks first in the
UEFA coefficient In European football, the UEFA coefficients are statistics based in weighted arithmetic means used for ranking and seeding teams in club and international competitions. Introduced in 1979 for men's football tournaments, and after applied in wome ...
s of leagues based on performances in European competitions over the past five seasons as of 2021. The English top-flight has produced the second-highest number of UEFA Champions League/European Cup titles, with five English clubs having won fourteen European trophies in total. Fifty clubs have competed since the inception of the Premier League in 1992: forty-eight
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
and two
Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
clubs. Seven of them have won the title:
Manchester United Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...
(13),
Manchester City Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The tw ...
(6),
Chelsea Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to: Places Australia * Chelsea, Victoria Canada * Chelsea, Nova Scotia * Chelsea, Quebec United Kingdom * Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames ** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...
(5),
Arsenal An arsenal is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, or issued, in any combination, whether privately or publicly owned. Arsenal and armoury (British English) or armory (American English) are mostly ...
(3),
Blackburn Rovers Blackburn Rovers Football Club is a professional football club, based in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, which competes in the , the second tier of the English football league system. They have played home matches at Ewood Park since 1890. T ...
(1),
Leicester City Leicester ( ) is a city, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands. The city lies on the River Soar and close to the eastern end of the National ...
(1) and
Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
(1).


History


Origins

Despite significant European success in the 1970s and early 1980s, the late 1980s marked a low point for English football. Stadiums were deteriorating and supporters endured poor facilities,
hooliganism Hooliganism is disruptive or unlawful behavior such as rioting, bullying and vandalism, usually in connection with crowds at sporting events. Etymology There are several theories regarding the origin of the word ''hooliganism,'' which is a d ...
was rife, and English clubs had been banned from European competition for five years following the
Heysel Stadium disaster The Heysel Stadium disaster ( it, Strage dell'Heysel ; german: link=no, Katastrophe von Heysel ; french: Drame du Heysel ; nl, Heizeldrama ) was a crowd disaster that occurred on 29 May 1985 when mostly Juventus fans escaping from a breach by ...
in 1985. The
Football League First Division The Football League First Division was a division of the Football League in England from 1888 until 2004. It was the top division in the English football league system from the season 1888–89 until 1991–92, a century in which the First ...
, the top level of English football since 1888, was behind leagues such as Italy's
Serie A The Serie A (), also called Serie A TIM for national sponsorship with TIM, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the winner is awarded the Scudetto and the Coppa ...
and Spain's
La Liga The Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División, commonly known simply as Primera División in Spain, and as La Liga in English-speaking countries and officially as LaLiga Santander for sponsorship reasons, stylized as LaLiga, is the men's ...
in attendances and revenues, and several top English players had moved abroad. By the turn of the 1990s, the downward trend was starting to reverse. At the
1990 FIFA World Cup The 1990 FIFA World Cup was the 14th FIFA World Cup, a quadrennial football tournament for men's senior national teams. It was held from 8 June to 8 July 1990 in Italy, the second country to host the event for a second time (the first being Me ...
, England reached the semi-finals;
UEFA Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; french: Union des associations européennes de football; german: Union der europäischen Fußballverbände) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs f ...
, European football's governing body, lifted the five-year ban on English clubs playing in European competitions in 1990, resulting in Manchester United lifting the
UEFA Cup Winners' Cup The UEFA Cup Winners' Cup was a European football club competition contested annually by the winners of domestic cup competitions. The cup was, chronologically, the second seasonal inter-European club competition organised by UEFA. The tournam ...
in 1991. The
Taylor Report The Hillsborough Stadium Disaster Inquiry report is the report of an inquiry which was overseen by Lord Justice Taylor, into the causes of the Hillsborough disaster in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989, as a result of which, ...
on stadium safety standards, which proposed expensive upgrades to create all-seater stadiums in the aftermath of the
Hillsborough disaster The Hillsborough disaster was a fatal human crush during a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989. It occurred during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in the ...
, was published in January 1990. During the 1980s, major English clubs had begun to transform into business ventures, applying commercial principles to club administration to maximise revenue.
Martin Edwards Charles Martin Edwards (born 24 July 1945) is the former chairman of Manchester United, a position he held from 1980 until 2002. He now holds the position of honorary life president at the club and Director of Inview Technology Ltd. Biography ...
of
Manchester United Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...
,
Irving Scholar Irving Alan Scholar (born November 1947) is a property developer and former investor in football clubs, most noted for his time as chairman of Tottenham Hotspur and as a director of Nottingham Forest. As chairman of Tottenham, Scholar became know ...
of
Tottenham Hotspur Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, commonly referred to as Tottenham () or Spurs, is a professional association football, football club based in Tottenham, London, England. It competes in the Premier League, the top flight of English footba ...
, and
David Dein David Barry Dein (b. 7 September 1943) is a British businessman, known for being a former co-owner and vice-chairman of Arsenal Football Club, and former vice-chairman of the Football Association. Dein was vice-chairman of Arsenal between 198 ...
of
Arsenal An arsenal is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, or issued, in any combination, whether privately or publicly owned. Arsenal and armoury (British English) or armory (American English) are mostly ...
were among the leaders in this transformation. The commercial imperative led to the top clubs seeking to increase their power and revenue: the clubs in Division One threatened to break away from the Football League, and in so doing they managed to increase their voting power and gain a more favourable financial arrangement, taking a 50% share of all television and sponsorship income in 1986. They demanded that television companies should pay more for their coverage of football matches, and revenue from television grew in importance. The Football League received £6.3 million for a two-year agreement in 1986, but by 1988, in a deal agreed with
ITV ITV or iTV may refer to: ITV *Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, consisting of: ** ITV (TV network), a free-to-air national commercial television network covering the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islan ...
, the price rose to £44 million over four years with the leading clubs taking 75% of the cash. According to Scholar, who was involved in the negotiations of television deals, each of the First Division clubs received only around £25,000 per year from television rights before 1986, this increased to around £50,000 in the 1986 negotiation, then to £600,000 in 1988. The 1988 negotiations were conducted under the threat of ten clubs leaving to form a "super league", but they were eventually persuaded to stay, with the top clubs taking the lion's share of the deal. The negotiations also convinced the bigger clubs that in order to receive enough votes, they needed to take the whole of First Division with them instead of a smaller "super league". By the beginning of the 1990s, the big clubs again considered breaking away, especially now that they had to fund the cost of stadium upgrade as proposed by the Taylor Report. In 1990, the managing director of
London Weekend Television London Weekend Television (LWT) (now part of the non-franchised ITV London region) was the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties at weekends, broadcasting from Fridays at 5.15 pm (7:00 pm from 1968 unt ...
(LWT),
Greg Dyke Gregory Dyke (born 20 May 1947) is a British media executive, football administrator, journalist, and broadcaster. Since the 1960s, Dyke has had a long career in the UK in print and then broadcast journalism. He is credited with introducing ' ...
, met with the representatives of the "big five" football clubs in England (Manchester United,
Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
, Tottenham Hotspur, Everton and Arsenal) over a dinner. The meeting was to pave the way for a breakaway from
The Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in the world. It was the top-level football league in Engla ...
. Dyke believed that it would be more lucrative for LWT if only the larger clubs in the country were featured on national television and wanted to establish whether the clubs would be interested in a larger share of television rights money. The five clubs agreed with the suggestion and decided to press ahead with it; however, the league would have no credibility without the backing of
The Football Association The Football Association (also known as The FA) is the Sports governing body, governing body of association football in England and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Bailiwick of Guernsey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. Formed in 1863, it is the ...
, and so David Dein of Arsenal held talks to see whether the FA were receptive to the idea. The FA did not have an amicable relationship with the Football League at the time and considered it as a way to weaken the Football League's position. The FA released a report in June 1991, ''Blueprint for the Future of Football'', that supported the plan for the Premier League with the FA as the ultimate authority that would oversee the breakaway league.


Foundation (1990s)

At the close of the 1990–1991 season, a proposal was tabled for the establishment of a new league that would bring more money into the game overall. The Founder Members Agreement, signed on 17 July 1991 by the game's top-flight clubs, established the basic principles for setting up the FA Premier League. The newly formed top division was to have commercial independence from The Football Association and the Football League, giving the FA Premier League licence to negotiate its own
broadcast Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum ( radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began ...
and
sponsorship Sponsoring something (or someone) is the act of supporting an event, activity, person, or organization financially or through the provision of products or services. The individual or group that provides the support, similar to a benefactor, is k ...
agreements. The argument given at the time was that the extra income would allow English clubs to compete with teams across Europe. Although Dyke played a significant role in the creation of the Premier League, he and ITV (of which LWT was part) lost out in the bidding for broadcast rights:
BSkyB Sky UK Limited is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television and broadband Internet services, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of ...
won with a bid of £304 million over five years, with the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
awarded the highlights package broadcast on ''
Match of the Day ''Match of the Day'' (abbreviated to ''MOTD'') is a football highlights programme, typically broadcast on BBC One on Saturday nights, during the Premier League season. The show's current presenter is former England international striker Gary L ...
''. The First Division clubs resigned en masse from the Football League in 1992, and on 27 May that year the FA Premier League was formed as a
limited company In a limited company, the liability of members or subscribers of the company is limited to what they have invested or guaranteed to the company. Limited companies may be limited by Share (finance), shares or by guarantee. In a company limited by ...
, working out of an office at the Football Association's then headquarters in
Lancaster Gate Lancaster Gate is a mid-19th century development in the Bayswater district of central London, immediately to the north of Kensington Gardens. It consists of two long terraces of houses overlooking the park, with a wide gap between them openi ...
. The 22 inaugural members of the new Premier League were: *
Arsenal An arsenal is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, or issued, in any combination, whether privately or publicly owned. Arsenal and armoury (British English) or armory (American English) are mostly ...
*
Aston Villa Aston Villa Football Club is a professional football club based in Aston, Birmingham, England. The club competes in the , the top tier of the English football league system. Founded in 1874, they have played at their home ground, Villa Park ...
*
Blackburn Rovers Blackburn Rovers Football Club is a professional football club, based in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, which competes in the , the second tier of the English football league system. They have played home matches at Ewood Park since 1890. T ...
*
Chelsea Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to: Places Australia * Chelsea, Victoria Canada * Chelsea, Nova Scotia * Chelsea, Quebec United Kingdom * Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames ** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...
*
Coventry City Coventry City Football Club is a professional association football club based in Coventry, West Midlands, England. The team currently compete in the Championship, the second tier of the English football league system. The club is nicknamed t ...
*
Crystal Palace Crystal Palace may refer to: Places Canada * Crystal Palace Complex (Dieppe), a former amusement park now a shopping complex in Dieppe, New Brunswick * Crystal Palace Barracks, London, Ontario * Crystal Palace (Montreal), an exhibition building ...
* Everton *
Ipswich Town Ipswich Town Football Club is a professional association football club based in Ipswich, Suffolk, England. They play in League One, the third tier of the English football league system. The club was founded in 1878 but did not turn profession ...
*
Leeds United Leeds United Football Club is a professional football club based in Leeds, West Yorkshire in England. The club competes in the Premier League, the highest level of England's football league system, and plays its home matches at Elland Road S ...
*
Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
*
Manchester City Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The tw ...
*
Manchester United Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...
*
Middlesbrough Middlesbrough ( ) is a town on the southern bank of the River Tees in North Yorkshire, England. It is near the North York Moors national park. It is the namesake and main town of its local borough council area. Until the early 1800s, the a ...
*
Norwich City Norwich City Football Club (also known as The Canaries or The Yellows) is an English professional football club based in Norwich, Norfolk. The club competes in the EFL Championship following their relegation from the Premier League in the 20 ...
*
Nottingham Forest Nottingham Forest Football Club is an association football club based in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, England. Nottingham Forest was founded in 1865 and have been playing their home games at the City Ground, on the banks of the River Tren ...
*
Oldham Athletic Oldham Athletic Association Football Club is a professional football club in Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, which competes in the National League, the fifth tier of the English football league system. The history of Oldham Athletic ...
*
Queens Park Rangers Queens Park Rangers Football Club, commonly abbreviated to QPR, is a professional football club based in Shepherd's Bush, West London, England, which compete in the . After a nomadic early existence, they have played home matches at Loftus Ro ...
*
Sheffield United Sheffield United Football Club is a professional football club in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, which compete in the . They are nicknamed "the Blades" due to Sheffield's history of cutlery production. The team have played home games at ...
*
Sheffield Wednesday Sheffield Wednesday Football Club is a professional association football club based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. The team competes in League One, the third tier of the English football league system. Formed in 1867 as an offshoot of ...
*
Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...
*
Tottenham Hotspur Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, commonly referred to as Tottenham () or Spurs, is a professional association football, football club based in Tottenham, London, England. It competes in the Premier League, the top flight of English footba ...
*
Wimbledon Wimbledon most often refers to: * Wimbledon, London, a district of southwest London * Wimbledon Championships, the oldest tennis tournament in the world and one of the four Grand Slam championships Wimbledon may also refer to: Places London * ...
This meant a break-up of the 104-year-old Football League that had operated until then with four divisions; the Premier League would operate with a single division and the Football League with three. There was no change in competition format; the same number of teams competed in the top flight, and promotion and relegation between the Premier League and the new First Division remained the same as the old First and
Second Division In sport, the Second Division, also called Division 2 or Division II is usually the second highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below. Following the rise of Premier League style compet ...
s with three teams relegated from the league and three promoted. The league held its first season in 1992–93. It was composed of 22 clubs for that season (reduced to 20 in the 1995–96 season). The first Premier League goal was scored by
Brian Deane Brian Christopher Deane (born 7 February 1968) is an English football coach and former player. His most recent managerial position was as the manager of the Norwegian side Sarpsborg 08. During his playing career, he played as forward from 1985 ...
of
Sheffield United Sheffield United Football Club is a professional football club in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, which compete in the . They are nicknamed "the Blades" due to Sheffield's history of cutlery production. The team have played home games at ...
in a 2–1 win against Manchester United.
Luton Town Luton Town Football Club () is a professional association football club based in the town of Luton, Bedfordshire, England, that competes in the Championship, the second tier of the English football league system. Founded in 1885, it is nicknam ...
,
Notts County Notts County Football Club is a professional association football club based in Nottingham, England. The team participate in the National League (division), National League, the fifth tier of the English football league system. Founded on the 2 ...
, and
West Ham United West Ham United Football Club is an English professional football club that plays its home matches in Stratford, East London. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. The club plays at the London Stadium, hav ...
were the three teams relegated from the old First Division at the end of the 1991–92 season, and did not take part in the inaugural Premier League season.


"Top Four" dominance (2000s)

The 2000s saw the dominance of the so-called "Top Four" clubs. Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United finished at the top of the table for bulk of the decade, thereby guaranteeing qualification for the
UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competit ...
. Only four other clubs managed to qualify for the competition during this period: Leeds United ( 2000–01),
Newcastle United Newcastle United Football Club is an English professional football club, based in Newcastle upon Tyne, that plays in the Premier League – the top flight of English football. The club was founded in 1892 by the merger of Newcastle East End ...
( 2001–02 and 2002–03), Everton ( 2004–05) and Tottenham Hotspur ( 2009–10) – each occupying the final Champions League spot, with the exception of Newcastle in the 2002–03 season, who finished third. Following the 2003–04 season, Arsenal acquired the nickname " The Invincibles" as it became the first, and to date, only club to complete a Premier League campaign without losing a single game. In May 2008,
Kevin Keegan Joseph Kevin Keegan (born 14 February 1951) is an English former footballer and manager. A forward, he played for several professional clubs from 1968 to 1984. Having begun his career at Scunthorpe United, he moved to Liverpool in 1971 and ...
stated that "Top Four" dominance threatened the division: "This league is in danger of becoming one of the most boring but great leagues in the world." Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore said in defence: "There are a lot of different tussles that go on in the Premier League depending on whether you're at the top, in the middle or at the bottom that make it interesting." Between 2005 and 2012 there was a Premier League representative in seven of the eight Champions League finals, with only "Top Four" clubs reaching that stage. Liverpool (
2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...
), Manchester United (
2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...
) and Chelsea (
2012 File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...
) won the competition during this period, with Arsenal (
2006 File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...
), Liverpool (
2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...
), Chelsea (
2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...
) and Manchester United (
2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...
and
2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...
) all losing Champions League finals. Leeds United were the only non-"Top Four" side to reach the semi-finals of the Champions League, in the 2000–01 season. There were three Premier League teams in the Champions League semi-finals in 2006–07, 2007–08, and 2008–09, a feat only ever achieved five times (along with
Serie A The Serie A (), also called Serie A TIM for national sponsorship with TIM, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the winner is awarded the Scudetto and the Coppa ...
in 2002–03 and
La Liga The Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División, commonly known simply as Primera División in Spain, and as La Liga in English-speaking countries and officially as LaLiga Santander for sponsorship reasons, stylized as LaLiga, is the men's ...
in 1999–2000). Additionally, between the 1999–2000 and 2009–10 seasons, four Premier League sides reached UEFA Cup or Europa League finals, with only Liverpool managing to win the competition in
2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...
. Arsenal (
2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...
),
Middlesbrough Middlesbrough ( ) is a town on the southern bank of the River Tees in North Yorkshire, England. It is near the North York Moors national park. It is the namesake and main town of its local borough council area. Until the early 1800s, the a ...
(
2006 File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...
) and
Fulham Fulham () is an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham in West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, bordering Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea. The area faces Wandsworth ...
(
2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...
) all lost their finals. Although the group's dominance was reduced to a degree after this period with the emergence of Manchester City and Tottenham, in terms of all-time Premier League points won they remain clear by some margin. As of the end of the 2018–19 season – the 27th season of the Premier League – Liverpool, in fourth place in the all-time points table, were over 250 points ahead of the next team, Tottenham Hotspur. They are also the only teams to maintain a winning average of over 50% throughout their entire Premier League tenures.


Emergence of the "Big Six" (2010s)

The years following 2009 marked a shift in the structure of the "Top Four" with
Tottenham Hotspur Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, commonly referred to as Tottenham () or Spurs, is a professional association football, football club based in Tottenham, London, England. It competes in the Premier League, the top flight of English footba ...
and
Manchester City Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The tw ...
both breaking into the top four places on a regular basis, turning the "Top Four" into the "Big Six". In the 2009–10 season, Tottenham finished fourth and became the first team to break the top four since Everton five years prior. Criticism of the gap between an elite group of "super clubs" and the majority of the Premier League has continued, nevertheless, due to their increasing ability to spend more than the other Premier League clubs. Manchester City won the title in the 2011–12 season, becoming the first club outside the "Big Four" to win since
Blackburn Rovers Blackburn Rovers Football Club is a professional football club, based in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, which competes in the , the second tier of the English football league system. They have played home matches at Ewood Park since 1890. T ...
in the 1994–95 season. That season also saw two of the "Big Four" (Chelsea and Liverpool) finish outside the top four places for the first time since that season. With only four UEFA Champions League qualifying places available in the league, greater competition for qualification now exists, albeit from a narrow base of six clubs. In the five seasons following the 2011–12 campaign, Manchester United and Liverpool both found themselves outside of the top four three times, while Chelsea finished 10th in the 2015–16 season. Arsenal finished 5th in 2016–17, ending their record run of 20 consecutive top-four finishes. In the 2015–16 season, the top four was breached by a non-Big Six side for the first time since Everton in 2005.
Leicester City Leicester ( ) is a city, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands. The city lies on the River Soar and close to the eastern end of the National ...
were the surprise winners of the league, qualifying for the Champions League as a result. Off the pitch, the "Big Six" wield significant financial power and influence, with these clubs arguing that they should be entitled to a greater share of revenue due to the greater stature of their clubs globally and the attractive football they aim to play. Objectors argue that the egalitarian revenue structure in the Premier League helps to maintain a competitive league which is vital for its future success. The 2016–17
Deloitte Football Money League The Deloitte Football Money League is a ranking of football clubs by revenue generated from football operations. It is produced annually by the accountancy firm Deloitte and released in early February of each year, describing the season most recent ...
report showed the financial disparity between the "Big Six" and the rest of the division. All of the "Big Six" had revenues greater than €350 million, with Manchester United having the largest revenue in the league at €676.3 million. Leicester City was the closest club to the "Big Six" in terms of revenue, recording a figure of €271.1 million for that season – helped by participation in the Champions League. The eighth-largest revenue generator, West Ham – who did not play in European competition – had revenues of €213.3 million, nearly half of those of the club with the fifth-largest revenue, Liverpool (€424.2 million). A substantial part of the clubs' revenue by then came from television broadcast deals, with the biggest clubs each taking from around £150 million to nearly £200 million in the 2016–17 season from such deals. In
Deloitte Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (), commonly referred to as Deloitte, is an international professional services network headquartered in London, England. Deloitte is the largest professional services network by revenue and number of profession ...
's 2019 report, all the "Big Six" were in the top ten of the world's richest clubs.


2020s

From the 2019–20 season,
video assistant referee The video assistant referee (VAR) is a match official in association football who reviews decisions made by the referee. The assistant video assistant referee (AVAR) is a current or former referee appointed to assist the VAR in the video ope ...
s were used in the league. Project Big Picture was announced in October 2020 that described a plan to reunite the top Premier League clubs with the
English Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in the world. It was the top-level football league in Engl ...
, proposed by leading Premier League clubs
Manchester United Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...
and
Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
. It has been criticised by the Premier League leadership and the UK government's
Department of Culture, Media and Sport , type = Department , logo = Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport logo.svg , logo_width = , logo_caption = , seal = , seal_width = , seal_caption = , picture = Gove ...
. On 26 April 2021, play was stopped during a match between Leicester City and Crystal Palace to allow players Wesley Fofana and Cheikhou Kouyaté to break
Ramadan fast During the entire month of Ramadan, Muslims are obligated to fast ( ar, صوم, ''sawm;'' Persian: روزہ, ''rozeh''), every day from dawn to sunset (or from dawn to night according to some scholars). Fasting requires the abstinence from se ...
. It is believed to be the first time in Premier League history that a game was paused to allow Muslim players to eat and drink after the sun had set in accordance with the rules of the faith. The 2022–23 season will be the first to take a six-week break between November and December 2022 to allow for the first winter World Cup, with a return for the
Boxing Day Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated after Christmas Day, occurring on the second day of Christmastide (26 December). Though it originated as a holiday to give gifts to the poor, today Boxing Day is primarily known as a shopping holiday. It ...
fixtures. The Premier League players decided to take the knee only at some selected "significant moments", instead of the routine before matches. However, they assured to "remain resolutely committed to eradicate racial prejudice".


Corporate structure

The Football Association Premier League Ltd (FAPL) is operated as a corporation and is owned by the 20 member clubs. Each club is a
shareholder A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of a corporation is an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the legal own ...
, with one vote each on issues such as rule changes and contracts. The clubs elect a chairman, chief executive, and board of directors to oversee the daily operations of the league. The Football Association is not directly involved in the day-to-day operations of the Premier League, but has veto power as a special shareholder during the election of the chairman and chief executive and when new rules are adopted by the league. The current chief executive is Richard Masters, who was appointed in December 2019. The chair is due to be
Alison Brittain Alison Jane Brittain (née Hopkins; born February 1965) is a British businesswoman, chair of the Premier League, and the former chief executive officer (CEO) of Whitbread. She was previously head of retail banking at Lloyds Banking Group. Earl ...
, who will take over the role in early 2023. The Premier League sends representatives to UEFA's
European Club Association The European Club Association (ECA) is a body representing the interests of professional association football clubs in UEFA. It is the sole such body recognised by the confederation, and has member clubs in each UEFA member association. It was fo ...
, the number of clubs and the clubs themselves chosen according to
UEFA coefficients In European football, the UEFA coefficients are statistics based in weighted arithmetic means used for ranking and seeding teams in club and international competitions. Introduced in 1979 for men's football tournaments, and after applied in wome ...
. For the 2012–13 season the Premier League has 10 representatives in the Association: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Everton, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur. The European Club Association is responsible for electing three members to UEFA's Club Competitions Committee, which is involved in the operations of UEFA competitions such as the Champions League and
UEFA Europa League The UEFA Europa League (abbreviated as UEL, or sometimes, UEFA EL), formerly the UEFA Cup, is an annual football club competition organised since 1971 by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) for eligible European football clubs. It ...
.


Criticism of governance

The Premier League has faced criticism of its
governance Governance is the process of interactions through the laws, social norm, norms, power (social and political), power or language of an organized society over a social system (family, tribe, formal organization, formal or informal organization, a ...
due to an alleged lack of transparency and
accountability Accountability, in terms of ethics and governance, is equated with answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and the expectation of account-giving. As in an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in the publ ...
. Following the Premier League's blocking of the attempted takeover of Newcastle United by a PIF-backed consortium through the league's Owners' and Directors' test, many MPs,
Newcastle United Newcastle United Football Club is an English professional football club, based in Newcastle upon Tyne, that plays in the Premier League – the top flight of English football. The club was founded in 1892 by the merger of Newcastle East End ...
fans and related parties to the deal denounced the Premier League for its perceived lack of transparency and accountability throughout the process. On 6 July 2021, consortium member
Amanda Staveley Amanda Louise Staveley (born 11 April 1973) is a British business executive. She is notable chiefly for her connections with Middle Eastern investors. She helped a Saudi consortium take over Newcastle United in a deal completed in October 2021 ...
of PCP Capital Partners said that "fans surely deserve absolute transparency from the regulators across all their processes – to best ensure that they act responsibly. They (the Premier League) are performing a function like that of a government regulator – but without the same systems for accountability." On 22 July 2021, Tracey Crouch MP – chair of the fan-led review into the UK's football governance – announced in the review's interim findings that the Premier League had "lost the trust and confidence" of fans. The review also recommended that a new independent regulator be created to oversee matters such as club takeovers. Premier League chief executive Richard Masters had earlier spoken out against the implementation of an independent regulator, saying in May 2021, "I don't think that the independent regulator is the answer to the question. I would defend the Premier League's role as regulator of its clubs over the past 30 years."


Competition format


Competition

There are 20 clubs in the Premier League. During the course of a season (from August to May) each club plays the others twice (a double round-robin system), once at their home stadium and once at that of their opponents, for 38 games. Teams receive
three points for a win Three points for a win is a standard used in many sports leagues and group tournaments, especially in association football, in which three points are awarded to the team winning a match, with no points awarded to the losing team. If the game is ...
and one point for a draw. No points are awarded for a loss. Teams are
ranked A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two items, the first is either "ranked higher than", "ranked lower than" or "ranked equal to" the second. In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of ...
by total points, then
goal difference Goal difference, goal differential or points difference is a form of tiebreaker used to rank sport teams which finish on equal points in a league competition. Either "goal difference" or "points difference" is used, depending on whether matches ar ...
, and then goals scored. If still equal, teams are deemed to occupy the same position. If there is a tie for the championship, for relegation, or for qualification to other competitions, the head-to-head record between the tied teams is taken into consideration (points scored in the matches between the teams, followed by away goals in those matches.) If two teams are still tied, a play-off match at a neutral venue decides rank.


Promotion and relegation

A system of
promotion and relegation In sports leagues, promotion and relegation is a process where teams are transferred between multiple divisions based on their performance for the completed season. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are often called open leagues. ...
exists between the Premier League and the
EFL Championship The English Football League Championship (often referred to as the Championship for short or the Sky Bet Championship for sponsorship purposes) is the highest division of the English Football League (EFL) and second-highest overall in the E ...
. The three lowest placed teams in the Premier League are relegated to the Championship, and the top two teams from the Championship promoted to the Premier League, with an additional team promoted after a series of play-offs involving the third, fourth, fifth and sixth placed clubs. The number of clubs was reduced from 22 to 20 in
1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is O. J. Simpson murder case, acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the 1994, year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The ...
, when four teams were relegated from the league and only two teams promoted. The top flight had only been expanded to 22 teams at the start of the 1991–92 season – the year prior to the formation of the Premier League. On 8 June 2006,
FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...
requested that all major European leagues, including Italy's
Serie A The Serie A (), also called Serie A TIM for national sponsorship with TIM, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the winner is awarded the Scudetto and the Coppa ...
and Spain's
La Liga The Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División, commonly known simply as Primera División in Spain, and as La Liga in English-speaking countries and officially as LaLiga Santander for sponsorship reasons, stylized as LaLiga, is the men's ...
, 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.


Clubs

Fifty clubs have played in the Premier League from its inception in 1992, up to and including the
2022–23 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
season.


Champions

Notably one-time champions
Blackburn Rovers Blackburn Rovers Football Club is a professional football club, based in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, which competes in the , the second tier of the English football league system. They have played home matches at Ewood Park since 1890. T ...
are currently out of the Premier League.


2022–23 season

Twenty clubs will compete in the
2022–23 Premier League The 2022–23 Premier League will be the 31st season of the Premier League, and the 124th season of top-flight English football overall. The provisional fixtures are scheduled to be released on Wednesday 15 June 2022. As of the 2022–23 season, c ...
, with three promoted from the
Championship In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match system In this system ...
: *
Burnley Burnley () is a town and the administrative centre of the wider Borough of Burnley in Lancashire, England, with a 2001 population of 73,021. It is north of Manchester and east of Preston, at the confluence of the River Calder and River Bru ...
,
Watford Watford () is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, 15 miles northwest of Central London, on the River Colne. Initially a small market town, the Grand Junction Canal encouraged the construction of paper-making mills, print works, a ...
, and
Norwich City Norwich City Football Club (also known as The Canaries or The Yellows) is an English professional football club based in Norwich, Norfolk. The club competes in the EFL Championship following their relegation from the Premier League in the 20 ...
were relegated to the
EFL Championship The English Football League Championship (often referred to as the Championship for short or the Sky Bet Championship for sponsorship purposes) is the highest division of the English Football League (EFL) and second-highest overall in the E ...
for the 2022–23 season, while
Fulham Fulham () is an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham in West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, bordering Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea. The area faces Wandsworth ...
,
Bournemouth Bournemouth () is a coastal resort town in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council area of Dorset, England. At the 2011 census, the town had a population of 183,491, making it the largest town in Dorset. It is situated on the Southern ...
and
Nottingham Forest Nottingham Forest Football Club is an association football club based in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, England. Nottingham Forest was founded in 1865 and have been playing their home games at the City Ground, on the banks of the River Tren ...
, as winners, runners-up and play-off final winners, respectively, were promoted from the 2021–22 season. *Only two clubs have remained in the Premier League since their first promotion:
Brentford Brentford is a suburban town in West London, England and part of the London Borough of Hounslow. It lies at the confluence of the River Brent and the Thames, west of Charing Cross. Its economy has diverse company headquarters buildings whi ...
and
Brighton & Hove Albion Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club (), commonly referred to simply as Brighton, is an English professional football club based in the city of Brighton and Hove. They compete in the Premier League, the top tier of the English football league ...
, who have been in 2 and 6 seasons (out of 31), respectively.


Non-English clubs

In 2011, after Swansea City gained promotion, a Welsh club participated in the Premier League for the first time. The first Premier League match to be played outside England was Swansea City's home match at the
Liberty Stadium The Swansea.com Stadium ( cy, Stadiwm Swansea.com; formerly Liberty Stadium) is an all-seated sports stadium and conferencing venue located in the Landore area of Swansea, Wales. The stadium opened in 2005 and was named the Liberty Stadium. It ...
against
Wigan Athletic Wigan Athletic Football Club () is an English professional association football club based in Wigan, Greater Manchester, England. The team competes in the Championship, the second tier of the English football league system. Founded in 1932, ...
on 20 August 2011. The number of Welsh clubs in the Premier League increased to two in 2013–14, as Cardiff City gained promotion, but they were relegated after their maiden season. Cardiff were promoted again in 2017–18 but the number of Welsh clubs remained the same for the
2018–19 Premier League The 2018–19 Premier League was the 27th season of the Premier League, the top English professional league for association football clubs, since its establishment in 1992, and the 120th season of top-flight English football overall. The season ...
season, as Swansea City had been relegated from the Premier League in 2017–18. Following Cardiff City's relegation after the 2018–19 season, there are currently no Welsh clubs participating in the Premier League. Because they are members of the
Football Association of Wales The Football Association of Wales (FAW; cy, Cymdeithas Bêl-droed Cymru) is the Governing bodies of sports in Wales, governing body of association football and futsal in Wales, and controls the Wales national football team, Welsh national foo ...
(FAW), the question of whether clubs like Swansea should represent England or Wales in European competitions has caused long-running discussions in
UEFA Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; french: Union des associations européennes de football; german: Union der europäischen Fußballverbände) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs f ...
. Swansea took one of England's three available places in the
Europa League The UEFA Europa League (abbreviated as UEL, or sometimes, UEFA EL), formerly the UEFA Cup, is an annual football club competition organised since 1971 by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) for eligible European football clubs. It ...
in 2013–14 by winning the
League Cup In several sports, most prominently association football, a league cup or secondary cup generally signifies a cup competition for which entry is restricted only to teams in a particular league. The first national association football tournament t ...
in 2012–13. The right of Welsh clubs to take up such English places was in doubt until UEFA clarified the matter in March 2012, allowing them to participate. Participation in the Premier League by some Scottish or Irish clubs has sometimes been discussed, but without result. The idea came closest to reality in 1998, when
Wimbledon Wimbledon most often refers to: * Wimbledon, London, a district of southwest London * Wimbledon Championships, the oldest tennis tournament in the world and one of the four Grand Slam championships Wimbledon may also refer to: Places London * ...
received Premier League approval to relocate to Dublin, Ireland, but the move was blocked by the Football Association of Ireland. Additionally, the media occasionally discusses the idea that Scotland's two biggest teams,
Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language * Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Fo ...
and Rangers, should or will take part in the Premier League, but nothing has come of these discussions.


International competitions


Qualification for European competitions


Qualification criteria for 2020–21

The top four teams in the Premier League qualify automatically for the subsequent season's
UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competit ...
group stage. The winners of the Champions League and
UEFA Europa League The UEFA Europa League (abbreviated as UEL, or sometimes, UEFA EL), formerly the UEFA Cup, is an annual football club competition organised since 1971 by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) for eligible European football clubs. It ...
may earn an additional qualification for the subsequent season's Champions League group stage if they are not in the top four. If this means six Premier League teams qualify, then the fourth-placed team in the Premier League instead plays in the Europa League, as any single nation is limited to a maximum of five teams in the Champions League. The fifth-placed team in the Premier League, as well as the winner of the
FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ...
, qualifies for the subsequent season's Europa League group stage, but if the winner of the FA Cup also finished in the top five places in the Premier League or has won one of UEFA's major tournaments, then this place reverts to the team that finished sixth. The winner of the
EFL Cup The EFL Cup (referred to historically, and colloquially, as the League Cup), currently known as the Carabao Cup for sponsorship reasons, is an annual knockout competition and major trophy in men's domestic football in England. Organised by the ...
qualifies for the subsequent season's Europa conference league, but if the winner already qualified for a UEFA competition via their performance in another competition, then this place reverts to the team that finished sixth in the Premier League, or seventh if the
FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ...
result already caused the sixth-placed team to qualify. The number of places allocated to English clubs in UEFA competitions is dependent upon the position a country holds in the
UEFA country coefficient In European football, the UEFA coefficients are statistics based in weighted arithmetic means used for ranking and seeding teams in club and international competitions. Introduced in 1979 for men's football tournaments, and after applied in wome ...
s, which are calculated based upon the performance of teams in UEFA competitions in the previous five years. Currently the ranking of England (and ''de facto'' the Premier League) is second, behind Spain.


Previous seasons

An exception to the usual European qualification system happened in 2005, after
Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
won the Champions League the season before, but did not finish in a Champions League qualification place in the Premier League. UEFA gave special dispensation for Liverpool to enter the Champions League, giving England five qualifiers. UEFA subsequently ruled that the defending champions qualify for the competition the following year regardless of their domestic league placing. However, for those leagues with four entrants in the Champions League, this meant that if the Champions League winner finished outside the top four in its domestic league, it would qualify at the expense of the fourth-placed team in the league. At that time, no association could have more than four entrants in the Champions League. This occurred in 2012, when Chelsea – who had won the Champions League that summer, but finished sixth in the league – qualified for the Champions League in place of Tottenham Hotspur, who went into the Europa League. From 2015–16, the Europa League winners qualify for the Champions League, increasing the maximum number of participants per country to five. This took effect in England in 2016–17, when Manchester United finished sixth in the Premier League and won the Europa League, giving England five Champions League entrants for 2017–18. In these instances, any Europa League berth vacated will not be handed down to the next-best Premier League finisher outside a qualifying place and so the association's Europa League entrants for the following season will be reduced. If it happens that both Champions League and Europa League winners are of the same association and both finish outside the top four, then the fourth-placed team will be transferred to the Europa League.


Performance in international competition

Between the 1992–93 and the 2021–22 seasons, Premier League clubs won the
UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competit ...
six times (and had eight runners-up), behind Spain's
La Liga The Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División, commonly known simply as Primera División in Spain, and as La Liga in English-speaking countries and officially as LaLiga Santander for sponsorship reasons, stylized as LaLiga, is the men's ...
with twelve wins, and ahead of, among others, Italy's
Serie A The Serie A (), also called Serie A TIM for national sponsorship with TIM, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the winner is awarded the Scudetto and the Coppa ...
with five wins and Germany's
Bundesliga The Bundesliga (; ), sometimes referred to as the Fußball-Bundesliga () or 1. Bundesliga (), is a professional association football league in Germany. At the top of the German football league system, the Bundesliga is Germany's primary footba ...
with four wins. The
FIFA Club World Cup The FIFA Club World Cup is an international men's association football competition organised by the ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The competition was first contested in 200 ...
(originally called the FIFA Club World Championship) has been won three times by a Premier League club (Manchester United in
2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...
, Liverpool in
2019 File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
, and Chelsea in
2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October–November 2021 ...
), with two runners-up (Liverpool in
2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...
and Chelsea in
2012 File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...
), behind Spain's La Liga with seven wins and Brazil's Brasileirão with four wins.


Sponsorship

The league changed its name from the ''FA Premier League'' to simply the ''Premier League'' in 2007. From 1993 to 2016, the Premier League had
title sponsor Naming rights are a financial transaction and form of advertising or memorialization whereby a corporation, person, or other entity purchases the right to name a facility, object, location, program, or event, typically for a defined period of t ...
ship rights sold to two companies, which were Carling brewery and
Barclays Bank PLC Barclays () is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services. Barclays traces ...
;
Barclays Barclays () is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services. Barclays traces ...
was the most recent title sponsor, having sponsored the Premier League from 2001 until 2016 (until 2004, the title sponsorship was held through its
Barclaycard Barclaycard (; stylized as barclaycard) is a brand for credit cards of Barclays PLC. , Barclays had over ten million customers in the United Kingdom. History Barclays launched Barclaycard on 29 June 1966, initially as a charge card, but followin ...
brand before shifting to its main banking brand in 2004). Barclays' deal with the Premier League expired at the end of the 2015–16 season. The FA announced on 4 June 2015 that it would not pursue any further title sponsorship deals for the Premier League, arguing that they wanted to build a "clean" brand for the competition more in line with those of major U.S. sports leagues. As well as sponsorship for the league itself, the Premier League has a number of official partners and suppliers. The official ball supplier for the league is
Nike Nike often refers to: * Nike (mythology), a Greek goddess who personifies victory * Nike, Inc., a major American producer of athletic shoes, apparel, and sports equipment Nike may also refer to: People * Nike (name), a surname and feminine give ...
who have had the contract since the 2000–01 season when they took over from
Mitre The mitre (Commonwealth English) (; Greek: μίτρα, "headband" or "turban") or miter (American English; see spelling differences), is a type of headgear now known as the traditional, ceremonial headdress of bishops and certain abbots in ...
. Under its ''Merlin'' brand,
Topps The Topps Company, Inc. is an American company that manufactures chewing gum, candy, and collectibles. Formerly based in New York City, Topps is best known as a leading producer of American Football Card, American football, Baseball card, baseb ...
held the licence to produce collectables for the Premier League between 1994 and 2019 including stickers (for their
sticker album A sticker album is a book in which collectable stickers are stuck into designated sections. Sticker album themes can be sporting events such as the FIFA World Cup, English Premier League or TV shows, Movies, Animals or Music. Panini were the fi ...
) and
trading cards A trading card (or collectible card) is a small card, usually made out of paperboard or thick paper, which usually contains an image of a certain person, place or thing (fictional or real) and a short description of the picture, along with other ...
. Launched in the 2007–08 season, Topps’ Match Attax, the official Premier League trading card game, is the best selling boys collectable in the UK, and is also the biggest selling sports trading card game in the world. In October 2018, Panini were awarded the licence to produce collectables from the 2019–20 season. The chocolate company
Cadbury Cadbury, formerly Cadbury's and Cadbury Schweppes, is a British multinational confectionery company fully owned by Mondelez International (originally Kraft Foods) since 2010. It is the second largest confectionery brand in the world after Mar ...
has been the official snack partner of the Premier League since 2017, and sponsored the Golden Boot, Golden Glove and Playmaker of the Season awards from the 2017–18 season to 2019–20 season.
The Coca-Cola Company The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational beverage corporation founded in 1892, best known as the producer of Coca-Cola. The Coca-Cola Company also manufactures, sells, and markets other non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups, ...
(under its
Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Coca-Cola Zero Sugar is a diet cola produced by The Coca-Cola Company. In some countries, it is sold as Coca-Cola No Sugar. The drink was introduced in 2005 as Coca-Cola Zero as a new no-calorie cola. In 2017, the formula was modified and the ...
product line) sponsored these awards during the 2020–21 season with
Castrol Castrol is a British oil company that markets industrial and automotive lubricants, offering a wide range of oil, greases and similar products for most lubrication applications. The name ''Castrol'' was originally just the brand name for com ...
being the current sponsor as of the 2021–22 season.


Finances

The Premier League has the highest revenue of any association football league in the world, with total club revenues of €2.48 billion in 2009–10. In 2013–14, due to improved television revenues and cost controls, the Premier League clubs collectively made a net profit in excess of £78 million, exceeding all other football leagues. In 2010 the Premier League was awarded the
Queen's Award for Enterprise The Queen's Awards for Enterprise is an awards programme for British businesses and other organizations who excel at international trade, innovation, sustainable development or promoting opportunity (through social mobility). They are the highest ...
in the International Trade category for its outstanding contribution to international trade and the value it brings to English football and the United Kingdom's broadcasting industry. The Premier League includes some of the richest football clubs in the world. Deloitte's " Football Money League" listed seven Premier League clubs in the top 20 for the 2009–10 season, and all 20 clubs were in the top 40 globally by the end of the 2013–14 season, largely as a result of increased broadcasting revenue. In 2019, the league generated around £3.1 billion per year in domestic and international television rights. Premier League clubs agreed in principle in December 2012, to radical new cost controls. The two proposals consist of a break-even rule and a cap on the amount clubs can increase their wage bill by each season. With the new television deals on the horizon, momentum has been growing to find ways of preventing the majority of the cash going straight to players and agents. Central payments for the 2016–17 season amounted to £2,398,515,773 across the 20 clubs, with each team receiving a flat participation fee of £35,301,989 and additional payments for TV broadcasts (£1,016,690 for general UK rights to match highlights, £1,136,083 for each live UK broadcast of their games and £39,090,596 for all overseas rights), commercial rights (a flat fee of £4,759,404) and a notional measure of "merit" which was based upon final league position. The merit component was a nominal sum of £1,941,609 multiplied by each finishing place, counted from the foot of the table (e.g.,
Burnley Burnley () is a town and the administrative centre of the wider Borough of Burnley in Lancashire, England, with a 2001 population of 73,021. It is north of Manchester and east of Preston, at the confluence of the River Calder and River Bru ...
finished 16th in May 2017, five places counting upwards, and received 5 × £1,941,609 = £9,708,045 merit payment).


Relegation

Since its split with the
Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in the world. It was the top-level football league in Engla ...
, established clubs in the Premier League have a funding disparity from counterparts in lower leagues. Revenue from television rights between the leagues has played a part in this. Promoted teams have found it difficult to avoid relegation in their first Premier League season. One Premier League newcomer has been relegated back to the Football League every season, save the 2001–02, 2011–12 and 2017–18 seasons. In the 1997–98 season, all three promoted clubs were relegated by the season's end. The Premier League distributes a portion of its television revenue as "parachute payments" to relegated clubs for adjustment to television revenue loss. The average Premier League team receives £41 million while the average
Championship In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match system In this system ...
club receives £2 million. Starting with the 2013–14 season, these payments are in excess of £60 million over four seasons. Critics maintain that the payments widen the gap between teams that have reached the Premier League and those that have not, leading to the common occurrence of teams "
bouncing back "Bouncing Back" is the eleventh episode of the third season of the American television series ''Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'', based on the Marvel Comics organization S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division), ...
" soon after their relegation. Clubs which have failed to win immediate promotion back to the Premier League have seen financial problems, in some cases
administration Administration may refer to: Management of organizations * Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal ** Administrative assistant, Administrative Assistant, traditionally known as a Secretary, or also known as an admini ...
or liquidation. Further relegations down the footballing ladder have occurred for multiple clubs unable to cope with the gap.


Media coverage


United Kingdom and Ireland

Television has played a major role in the history of the Premier League. The League's decision to assign broadcasting rights to
Sky The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from outer space. In the field of astronomy, ...
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. The Premier League sells its television rights on a collective basis. This is in contrast to some other European leagues, including 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: half is divided equally between the clubs; one quarter is awarded on a merit basis based on final league position, the top club getting twenty times as much as the bottom club, and equal steps all the way down the table; the final quarter is paid out as facilities fees for games that are shown on television, with the top clubs generally receiving the largest shares of this. The income from overseas rights is divided equally between the twenty clubs. Not all Premier League matches are televised in the United Kingdom, as the league upholds the long-standing prohibition on telecasts of any association football match (domestic or otherwise) that kicks off between 2:45 p.m. and 5:15 p.m. on Saturday matchdays. The first Sky television rights agreement was worth £304 million over five seasons. The next contract, negotiated to start from the 1997–98 season, rose to £670 million over four seasons. The third contract was a £1.024 billion deal with BSkyB for the three seasons from 2001 to 2002 to 2003–04. The league brought in £320 million from the sale of its international rights for the three-year period from 2004 to 2005 to 2006–07. It sold the rights itself on a territory-by-territory basis. Sky's monopoly was broken from August 2006 when
Setanta Sports Setanta Sports is a sports television company based in Dublin, Ireland broadcasting throughout select Eurasian. The company was formed in 1990 to facilitate the broadcasting of Irish sporting events to international audiences. The company previo ...
was awarded rights to show two out of the six packages of matches available. This occurred following an insistence by the
European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...
that exclusive rights should not be sold to one television company. Sky and Setanta paid £1.7 billion, a two-thirds increase which took many commentators by surprise as it had been widely assumed that the value of the rights had levelled off following many years of rapid growth. Setanta also hold rights to a live 3 pm match solely for Irish viewers. The
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
retained the rights to show highlights for the same three seasons (on ''
Match of the Day ''Match of the Day'' (abbreviated to ''MOTD'') is a football highlights programme, typically broadcast on BBC One on Saturday nights, during the Premier League season. The show's current presenter is former England international striker Gary L ...
'') for £171.6 million, a 63 per cent increase on the £105 million it paid for the previous three-year period. Sky and BT agreed to jointly pay £84.3 million for delayed television rights to 242 games (that is the right to broadcast them in full on television and over the internet) in most cases for a period of 50 hours after 10 pm on matchday. Overseas television rights fetched £625 million, nearly double the previous contract. The total raised from those deals was more than £2.7 billion, giving Premier League clubs an average media income from league games of around £40 million-a-year from 2007 to 2010. The TV rights agreement between the Premier League and Sky faced accusations of being a cartel, and a number of court cases arose as a result. An investigation by the
Office of Fair Trading The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) was a non-ministerial government department of the United Kingdom, established by the Fair Trading Act 1973, which enforced both consumer protection and competition law, acting as the United Kingdom's economic ...
in 2002 found BSkyB to be dominant within the pay TV sports market, but concluded that there were insufficient grounds for the claim that BSkyB had abused its dominant position. In July 1999 the Premier League's method of selling rights collectively for all member clubs was investigated by the UK Restrictive Practices Court, which concluded that the agreement was not contrary to the public interest. The BBC's highlights package on Saturday and Sunday nights, as well as other evenings when fixtures justify, ran until 2016. Television rights alone for the period 2010 to 2013 were purchased for £1.782 billion. On 22 June 2009, due to troubles encountered by Setanta Sports after it failed to meet a final deadline over a £30 million payment to the Premier League,
ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
was awarded two packages of UK rights containing 46 matches that were available for the 2009–10 season as well as a package of 23 matches per season from 2010 to 2011 to 2012–13. On 13 June 2012, the Premier League announced that BT had been awarded 38 games a season for the 2013–14, 2014–15 and 2015–16 seasons at £246 million-a-year. The remaining 116 games were retained by
Sky The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from outer space. In the field of astronomy, ...
, which paid £760 million-a-year. The total domestic rights raised £3.018 billion, an increase of 70.2% over the 2010–11 to 2012–13 rights. The value of the licensing deal rose by another 70.2% in 2015, when Sky and BT paid £5.136 billion to renew their contracts with the Premier League for another three years up to the 2018–19 season. A new rights cycle began in the 2019–20 season, with the domestic package increasing to 200 matches overall; in February 2018, BT were awarded the package of 32 lunchtime fixtures on Saturdays, while Sky was awarded four of the seven packages, covering the majority of weekend fixtures (including eight new prime time fixtures on Saturdays), as well as Monday and Friday matches. Two remaining packages of 20 fixtures each were to be sold at a later date, including three rounds of mid-week fixtures and a bank holiday round. As Sky already owned the maximum number of matches it could hold without breaching a 148-match cap, it was speculated that at least one of the new packages could go to a new entrant, such as a streaming service. The five packages sold to BT and Sky were valued at £4.464 billion. In June 2018, it was announced that
Amazon Prime Video Amazon Prime Video, also known simply as Prime Video, is an American Video on demand#Subscription models, subscription video on-demand Over-the-top media service, over-the-top Streaming media, streaming and Renting, rental service of Amazon (c ...
and BT had acquired the remaining two packages; Amazon acquired rights to 20 matches per-season, covering a mid-week round in December, and all
Boxing Day Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated after Christmas Day, occurring on the second day of Christmastide (26 December). Though it originated as a holiday to give gifts to the poor, today Boxing Day is primarily known as a shopping holiday. It ...
fixtures. The Amazon telecasts are produced in association with Sunset + Vine and BT Sport. With the resumption of play in the 2019–20 Premier League due to the
COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom The COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom is a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In the United Kingdom, it has resulted in confir ...
, the Premier League announced that all remaining matches would be carried on British television, split primarily across Sky, BT, and Amazon. A large number of these matches were also scheduled for free-to-air broadcasts, with Sky airing 25 on Pick, Amazon streaming its four matches on
Twitch Twitch may refer to: Biology * Muscle contraction ** Convulsion, rapid and repeated muscle contraction and relaxation ** Fasciculation, a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction ** Myoclonic twitch, a jerk usually caused by sudden muscle co ...
, and the BBC – for the first time in league history – carrying four live matches. As matches would continue to be played without spectators upon the start of the
2020–21 Premier League The 2020–21 Premier League was the 29th season of the Premier League, the top English professional league for association football clubs since its establishment in 1992 and the 122nd season of top-flight English football overall. The season w ...
, its clubs voted on 8 September to continue broadcasting all matches through at least September (with the BBC and Amazon each holding one additional match), and "appropriate arrangements" being made for October. It was later announced that matches not selected for broadcast would be carried on
pay-per-view Pay-per-view (PPV) is a type of pay television or webcast service that enables a viewer to pay to watch individual events via private telecast. Events can be purchased through a multichannel television platform using their electronic program guid ...
via
BT Sport Box Office BT Sport Box Office is a pay-per-view channel from BT Sport. The channel is available in HD on BT TV and Sky. History In April 2018, BT Sport revealed its intention to launch a pay-per-view channel to show live boxing and it launched on 15 ...
and
Sky Box Office Sky Box Office is Sky's pay-per-view (PPV) system operated in the United Kingdom and Ireland. There were three branded divisions of Sky Box Office – Sky Cinema Box Office, Sky Sports Box Office and Sky 3D Box Office. Until 1 February 2011, the ...
at a cost of £14.95 per-match. The PPV scheme was poorly received; the
Football Supporters' Federation The Football Supporters' Federation (FSF) is an organisation representing football fans in England and Wales. It campaigns across a range of issues and supports fan representation on clubs' boards, lower ticket prices, and the introduction of sa ...
felt that the price was too high, and there were concerns that it could encourage piracy. There were calls from supporters to boycott the pay-per-views, and make donations to support charitable causes instead (with Newcastle's "Charity Not PPV" campaign raising £20,000 for a local food bank, and Arsenal fans raising £34,000 for Islington Giving). On 13 November, amid the reintroduction of measures across the UK, the Premier League officially announced that the non-televised matches would be assigned to its main broadcast partners, and again including additional matches for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
and
Amazon Prime Amazon Prime is a paid subscription service from Amazon which is available in various countries and gives users access to additional services otherwise unavailable or available at a premium to other Amazon customers. Services include same, one- ...
. UK highlights In August 2016, it was announced the BBC would be creating a new magazine-style show for the Premier League entitled ''
The Premier League Show ''The Premier League Show'' is a ''BBC'' magazine television show focusing on the ''Premier League''. The programme started broadcasting during the 2016–17 Premier League season and ran up to the end of 2018–19, it was succeeded by ''MOTD ...
''.


Worldwide

The Premier League is the most-watched football league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643 million homes and a potential TV audience of 4.7 billion people,. The Premier League's production arm,
Premier League Productions Premier League Productions is an IMG produced company with studio shows and commentators for worldwide viewers of Premier League association football. English-language broadcast team The company has a group of UK based commentators, pundits, and pr ...
, is operated by IMG Productions and produces content for its international television partners. The Premier League is the most widely distributed sports programme in Asia. In Australia,
Optus Singtel Optus Pty Limited (commonly referred to as Optus) is an Australian Telecommunications in Australia, telecommunications company headquartered in Macquarie Park, New South Wales, Australia. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore, Si ...
telecommunications holds exclusive rights to the Premier League, providing live broadcasts and online access (
Fox Sports Fox Sports is the brand name for a number of sports channels, broadcast divisions, programming, and other media around the world. The ''Fox Sports'' name has since been used for other sports media assets. These assets are held mainly by the Fo ...
formerly held rights). In India, the matches are broadcast live on
STAR Sports Star Sports refers to several current or former Asian sports networks owned by The Walt Disney Company: * Star Sports (East Asian TV channel) * Star Sports (Indian TV network) * Fox Sports (Southeast Asian TV network) Fox Sports (formerly ESPN ...
. In China, the broadcast rights were awarded to Super Sports in a six-year agreement that began in the 2013–14 season. As of the 2019–20 season, Canadian broadcast rights to the Premier League are owned by
DAZN DAZN ( "da zone") is a global sports entertainment platform. Different to traditional linear and satellite broadcasting, DAZN is an over-the-top (OTT) streaming service meaning that it is delivered directly to viewers via the internet. The ...
, after having been jointly owned by
Sportsnet Sportsnet is a Canadian English-language sports specialty channel owned by Rogers Sports & Media. It was established in 1998 as CTV Sportsnet, a joint venture between CTV, Liberty Media, and Rogers Media. CTV parent Bell Globemedia then ...
and TSN from 2013 to 2014. The Premier League is broadcast in the United States by
NBC Sports NBC Sports is an American programming division of the broadcast network NBC, owned and operated by NBC Sports Group division of NBCUniversal and subsidiary of Comcast. The division is responsible for sports broadcasts on the network, and its d ...
, a division of Sky parent
Comcast Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...
. Acquiring the rights to the Premier League in 2013 (replacing
Fox Soccer Fox Soccer (formerly Fox Soccer Channel & Fox Sports World before that) was an American television specialty channel specializing in soccer, owned by Fox Corporation, which operated from 1997 to 2013. It formerly broadcast rugby and Australian ...
and
ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
), NBC Sports has been widely praised for its coverage. NBC Sports reached a six-year extension with the Premier League in 2015 to broadcast the league until the end of the 2021–22 season in a deal valued at $1 billion (£640 million). In November 2021, NBC reached another six-year extension through 2028 in a deal valued at $2.76 billion (£2 billion). The Premier League is broadcast by SuperSport across
sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the List of sov ...
. Broadcasters to
continental Europe Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous continent of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, by ...
until 2025 include
Canal+ Canal+ (Canal Plus, , meaning 'Channel Plus'; sometimes abbreviated C+ or Canal) is a French premium television channel launched in 1984. It is 100% owned by the Groupe Canal+, which in turn is owned by Vivendi. The channel broadcasts several ki ...
for France, Sky Sport for Germany and Austria,
Match TV Match TV (russian: Матч ТВ) is a Russian federal sports channel owned by Gazprom Media. The channel began broadcasting on November 1, 2015 and was created in accordance with the order of Russian president Vladimir Putin, with the assist ...
for Russia, Sky Sport for Italy,
Eleven Sports Eleven Sports is a multinational sports and entertainment media group. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, it is owned by Andrea Radrizzani's sports and media investment platform Aser Ventures. Eleven Sports' business model initially centred a ...
for Portugal,
DAZN DAZN ( "da zone") is a global sports entertainment platform. Different to traditional linear and satellite broadcasting, DAZN is an over-the-top (OTT) streaming service meaning that it is delivered directly to viewers via the internet. The ...
for Spain,
beIN Sports beIN Sports ( ) is a global network of sports channels owned and operated by the Qatari media group beIN. It has played a major role in the increased commercialization of Qatari sports. Its chairman is Nasser Al-Khelaifi, and its CEO is Yousef O ...
to Turkey, Digi Sport for Romania and NENT to Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark and Norway), Poland and the Netherlands. In South America,
ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
covers much of the continent, with coverage in Brazil shared between
ESPN Brasil ESPN is the Brazilian division of ESPN Inc. Launched in March 1989 as Canal+, it was the first country-specific version of ESPN outside the United States, launched in June 1995. The channel has covered major sporting events, like the 1996, 2000, ...
and
Fox Sports Fox Sports is the brand name for a number of sports channels, broadcast divisions, programming, and other media around the world. The ''Fox Sports'' name has since been used for other sports media assets. These assets are held mainly by the Fo ...
.
SKY México The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from outer space. In the field of astronomy ...
broadcasts the league in Central America.


Stadiums

As of the 2017–18 season, Premier League football has been played in 58 stadiums since the formation of the division. The
Hillsborough disaster The Hillsborough disaster was a fatal human crush during a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989. It occurred during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in the ...
in 1989 and the subsequent
Taylor Report The Hillsborough Stadium Disaster Inquiry report is the report of an inquiry which was overseen by Lord Justice Taylor, into the causes of the Hillsborough disaster in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989, as a result of which, ...
saw a recommendation that standing terraces should be abolished. As a result, all stadiums in the Premier League are
all-seater An all-seater stadium is a sports stadium in which every spectator has a seat. This is commonplace in professional association football stadiums in nations such as the United Kingdom, Spain, and the Netherlands. Most association football and Ame ...
. Since the formation of the Premier League, football grounds in England have seen constant improvements to capacity and facilities, with some clubs moving to new-build stadiums. Nine stadiums that have seen Premier League football have now been demolished. The stadiums for the 2017–18 season show a large disparity in capacity. For example,
Wembley Stadium Wembley Stadium (branded as Wembley Stadium connected by EE for sponsorship reasons) is a football stadium in Wembley, London. It opened in 2007 on the site of the Wembley Stadium (1923), original Wembley Stadium, which was demolished from 200 ...
, the temporary home of Tottenham Hotspur, has a capacity of 90,000 while
Dean Court Dean Court, currently known as the Vitality Stadium for sponsorship purposes, is a football stadium in Kings Park, Boscombe, a suburb of Bournemouth, Dorset, England and the home ground of AFC Bournemouth. History In 1910, Boscombe F.C. was gi ...
, the home of
AFC Bournemouth AFC Bournemouth () is a professional association football club based in Kings Park, Boscombe, a suburb of Bournemouth, Dorset, England. The club competes in the Premier League, the highest division of English club football. Formed in 1899 as B ...
, has a capacity of 11,360. The combined total capacity of the Premier League in the 2017–18 season is 806,033 with an average capacity of 40,302. Stadium attendances are a significant source of regular income for Premier League clubs. For the 2016–17 season, average attendances across the league clubs were 35,838 for Premier League matches with an aggregate attendance of 13,618,596. This represents an increase of 14,712 from the average attendance of 21,126 recorded in the Premier League's first season (1992–93). However, during the 1992–93 season, the capacities of most stadiums were reduced as clubs replaced terraces with seats in order to meet the
Taylor Report The Hillsborough Stadium Disaster Inquiry report is the report of an inquiry which was overseen by Lord Justice Taylor, into the causes of the Hillsborough disaster in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989, as a result of which, ...
's 1994–95 deadline for
all-seater stadium An all-seater stadium is a sports stadium in which every spectator has a seat. This is commonplace in professional association football stadiums in nations such as the United Kingdom, Spain, and the Netherlands. Most association football and Ame ...
s. The Premier League's record average attendance of 36,144 was set during the 2007–08 season. This record was then beaten in the 2013–14 season recording an average attendance of 36,695 with an attendance of just under 14 million, the highest average in England's top flight since 1950.


Managers

Managers Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activities o ...
in the Premier League are involved in the day-to-day running of the team, including the training, team selection and player acquisition. Their influence varies from club-to-club and is related to the ownership of the club and the relationship of the manager with fans. Managers are required to have a
UEFA Pro Licence UEFA, the governing body for football in Europe, mandates several coaching licences for professional managers, each valid for coaching at a certain level. These include the UEFA Pro Licence, the UEFA A Licence, and the UEFA B Licence. They are iss ...
which is the final coaching qualification available, and follows the completion of the
UEFA Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; french: Union des associations européennes de football; german: Union der europäischen Fußballverbände) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs f ...
'B' and 'A' Licences. The UEFA Pro Licence is required by every person who wishes to manage a club in the Premier League on a permanent basis (''i.e.'', more than 12 weeks, the amount of time an unqualified
caretaker manager In association footballing terms, a caretaker manager or interim manager is somebody who takes temporary charge of the management of a football team, usually when the regular Manager (association football), manager is dismissed or leaves for a ...
is allowed to take control). Caretaker appointments are managers that fill the gap between a managerial departure and a new appointment. Several caretaker managers have gone on to secure a permanent managerial post after performing well as a caretaker, including
Paul Hart Paul Anthony Hart (born 4 May 1953) is an English association football, football manager, coach, and former professional player who made 567 appearances in the English Football League, Football League as a Defender (association football), def ...
at
Portsmouth Portsmouth ( ) is a port and city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. The city of Portsmouth has been a unitary authority since 1 April 1997 and is administered by Portsmouth City Council. Portsmouth is the most dens ...
,
David Pleat David John Pleat (born 15 January 1945) is an English football player turned manager, and sports commentator. Pleat made 185 Football League appearances for five clubs, scoring 26 goals. He had two spells as manager of Luton Town, and four as ...
at
Tottenham Hotspur Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, commonly referred to as Tottenham () or Spurs, is a professional association football, football club based in Tottenham, London, England. It competes in the Premier League, the top flight of English footba ...
and
Ole Gunnar Solskjær Ole Gunnar Solskjær (; born 26 February 1973) is a Norwegian professional football manager and former player who played as a forward who last managed Premier League club Manchester United. As a player, Solskjær spent the majority of his car ...
at
Manchester United Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...
.
Arsène Wenger Arsène Charles Ernest Wenger (; born 22 October 1949) is a French former association football, football Manager (association football), manager and football player, player who is currently serving as FIFA's Chief of Global Football Developme ...
is the longest-serving manager, having been in charge of
Arsenal An arsenal is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, or issued, in any combination, whether privately or publicly owned. Arsenal and armoury (British English) or armory (American English) are mostly ...
in the Premier League from 1996 to his departure at the conclusion of the 2017–18 season, and holds the record for most matches managed in the Premier League with 828, all with Arsenal. He broke the record set by
Alex Ferguson Sir Alexander Chapman Ferguson (born 31 December 1941) is a Scottish former football manager and player, best known for managing Manchester United from 1986 to 2013. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest football managers of all time ...
, who had managed 810 matches with Manchester United from the Premier League's inception to his retirement at the end of the 2012–13 season. Ferguson was in charge of Manchester United from November 1986 until his retirement at the end of the 2012–13 season, meaning he was manager for the last five years of the old Football League First Division and all of the first 21 seasons of the Premier League. There have been several studies into the reasoning behind, and effects of, managerial sackings. Most famously, Professor Sue Bridgewater of the
University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...
and Dr. Bas ter Weel of the
University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...
, performed two separate studies which helped to explain the statistics behind managerial sackings. Bridgewater's study found clubs generally sack their managers upon dropping below an average of one point per match.


Players


Appearances


Transfer regulations and foreign players

Player transfers may only take place within
transfer window A transfer window is the period during the year in which a football club can transfer players from other playing staff into their playing staff. Such a transfer is completed by registering the player into the new club through FIFA. "Transfer win ...
s set by the Football Association. The two transfer windows run from the last day of the season to 31 August and from 31 December to 31 January. Player registrations cannot be exchanged outside these windows except under specific licence from the FA, usually on an emergency basis. As of the 2010–11 season, the Premier League introduced new rules mandating that each club must register a maximum 25-man squad of players aged over 21, with the squad list only allowed to be changed in transfer windows or in exceptional circumstances. This was to enable the "home grown" rule to be enacted, whereby the Premier League would also from 2010 require at least eight members of the named 25-man squad to be "home-grown players". At the inception of the Premier League in 1992–93, just 11 players named in the starting line-ups for the first round of matches hailed from outside of the United Kingdom or Ireland. By 2000–01, the number of foreign players participating in the Premier League was 36% of the total. In the 2004–05 season, the figure had increased to 45%. On 26 December 1999, Chelsea became the first Premier League side to field an entirely foreign starting line-up, and on 14 February 2005, Arsenal were the first to name a completely foreign 16-man squad for a match. By 2009, under 40% of the players in the Premier League were English. By February 2020, 117 different nationalities had played in the Premier League, and 101 nationalities had scored in the competition. In 1999, in response to concerns that clubs were increasingly passing over young English players in favour of foreign players, the Home Office tightened its rules for granting work permits to players from countries outside of the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
. A non-EU player applying for the permit must have played for his country in at least 75 per cent of its competitive 'A' team matches for which he was available for selection during the previous two years, and his country must have averaged at least 70th place in the official FIFA world rankings over the previous two years. If a player does not meet those criteria, the club wishing to sign him may appeal. Following the implementation of
Brexit Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or ...
in January 2021, new regulations were introduced which require all foreign players to obtain a Governing Body Endorsement (GBE) in order to play football in the United Kingdom, regardless of EU status.


Demographics

43% of players in the Premier League in 2021 were Black, as were 34% of players across the next three divisions that make up the top 92 clubs in the English football. A 2022 report found that 43 percent of Premier League players are Black.


Top scorers

The
Premier League Golden Boot The Premier League Golden Boot is an annual association football award presented to the leading goalscorer in the Premier League. For sponsorship purposes, it was called the Carling Golden Boot from 1994 to 2001, the Barclaycard Golden Boot from ...
is awarded each season to the top scorer in the division. Former Blackburn Rovers and
Newcastle United Newcastle United Football Club is an English professional football club, based in Newcastle upon Tyne, that plays in the Premier League – the top flight of English football. The club was founded in 1892 by the merger of Newcastle East End ...
striker
Alan Shearer Alan Shearer CBE DL (born 13 August 1970) is an English football pundit and retired football player and manager who played as a striker. Widely regarded as one of the best strikers of his generation and one of the greatest players in Premie ...
holds the record for most Premier League goals with 260. Thirty-three players have reached the 100-goal mark. Since the first Premier League season in 1992–93, 23 players from 11 clubs have won or shared the top scorer title.
Thierry Henry Thierry Daniel Henry (born 17 August 1977) is a French professional football coach, pundit, and former player who is an assistant coach for the Belgium national team. Considered one of the best strikers of all time and one of the best player ...
won his fourth overall scoring title by scoring 27 goals in the 2005–06 season. Andrew Cole and Alan Shearer hold the record for most goals in a season (34) – for Newcastle and Blackburn respectively.
Ryan Giggs Ryan Joseph Giggs (né Wilson; 29 November 1973) is a Welsh association football, football coach and former player. Regarded as one of the greatest players of his generation, Giggs played his List of one-club men in association football, entir ...
of Manchester United holds the record for scoring goals in consecutive seasons, having scored in the first 21 seasons of the league. Giggs also holds the record for the most Premier League assists, with 162.


Wages

There is no team or individual salary cap in the Premier League. As a result of the increasingly lucrative television deals, player wages rose sharply following the formation of the Premier League, when the average player wage was £75,000 per year. In the 2018–19 season the average annual salary stood at £2.99 million. The total salary bill for the 20 Premier League clubs in the 2018–19 season was £1.62 billion; this compares to £1.05 billion in
La Liga The Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División, commonly known simply as Primera División in Spain, and as La Liga in English-speaking countries and officially as LaLiga Santander for sponsorship reasons, stylized as LaLiga, is the men's ...
, £0.83 billion in
Serie A The Serie A (), also called Serie A TIM for national sponsorship with TIM, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the winner is awarded the Scudetto and the Coppa ...
, £0.72 billion in
Bundesliga The Bundesliga (; ), sometimes referred to as the Fußball-Bundesliga () or 1. Bundesliga (), is a professional association football league in Germany. At the top of the German football league system, the Bundesliga is Germany's primary footba ...
, and £0.54 billion in
Ligue 1 Ligue 1, officially known as Ligue 1 Uber Eats for sponsorship reasons, is a French professional league for men's association football clubs. At the top of the French football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. A ...
. The club with the highest average wage is
Manchester United Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...
at £6.5 million. This is smaller than the club with the highest wage bill in Spain (
Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
£10.5 million) and Italy (
Juventus Juventus Football Club (from la, iuventūs, 'youth'; ), colloquially known as Juve (), is a professional Association football, football club based in Turin, Piedmont, Italy, that competes in the Serie A, the top tier of the Italian football leagu ...
£6.7 million), but higher than in Germany (
Bayern Munich Fußball-Club Bayern München e. V. (FCB, ), also known as FC Bayern (), Bayern Munich, or simply Bayern, is a German professional sports club based in Munich, Bavaria. It is best known for its professional men's football team, which pla ...
£6.4 million) and France (
Paris Saint-Germain Paris Saint-Germain Football Club (), commonly referred to as Paris Saint-Germain, Paris, Paris SG or simply PSG is a professional football club based in Paris, France. They compete in Ligue 1, the top division of French football. As Fr ...
£6.1 million). For the 2018–19 season, the ratio of the wages of the highest-paid team to lowest-paid in the Premier League is 6.82 to 1. This is much lower than in
La Liga The Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División, commonly known simply as Primera División in Spain, and as La Liga in English-speaking countries and officially as LaLiga Santander for sponsorship reasons, stylized as LaLiga, is the men's ...
(19.1 to 1),
Serie A The Serie A (), also called Serie A TIM for national sponsorship with TIM, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the winner is awarded the Scudetto and the Coppa ...
(16 to 1),
Bundesliga The Bundesliga (; ), sometimes referred to as the Fußball-Bundesliga () or 1. Bundesliga (), is a professional association football league in Germany. At the top of the German football league system, the Bundesliga is Germany's primary footba ...
(20.5 to 1), and
Ligue 1 Ligue 1, officially known as Ligue 1 Uber Eats for sponsorship reasons, is a French professional league for men's association football clubs. At the top of the French football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. A ...
(26.6 to 1). Because of the lower differential between team wage bills in the Premier League, it is often regarded as being more competitive than other top European leagues.


Player transfer fees

The record transfer fee for a Premier League player has risen steadily over the lifetime of the competition. Before the start of the first Premier League season,
Alan Shearer Alan Shearer CBE DL (born 13 August 1970) is an English football pundit and retired football player and manager who played as a striker. Widely regarded as one of the best strikers of his generation and one of the greatest players in Premie ...
became the first British player to command a transfer fee of more than £3 million. The record has increased steadily and
Philippe Coutinho Philippe Coutinho Correia (born 12 June 1992) is a Brazilian professional footballer who plays as an attacking midfielder or winger for Premier League club Aston Villa and the Brazil national team. He is known for his combination of vision, ...
is now the most expensive transfer involving a Premier League club at £106 million. The highest transfer fee paid by a Premier League club is £100 million for
Jack Grealish Jack Peter Grealish (born 10 September 1995) is an English professional footballer who plays as a winger or attacking midfielder for club Manchester City and the England national team. Grealish joined Aston Villa at the age of six, and ...
.


Awards


Trophy

The Premier League maintains two trophies – the genuine trophy (held by the reigning champions) and a spare replica. Two trophies are held for the purpose of making the award within minutes of the title being secured, in the event that on the final day of the season two clubs are still within reach of winning the League. In the rare event that more than two clubs are vying for the title on the final day of the season, a replica won by a previous club is used. The current Premier League trophy was created by Royal Jewellers Garrard & Co/Asprey of London and was designed in house at Garrard & Co by Trevor Brown and Paul Marsden. It consists of a trophy with a golden crown and a
malachite Malachite is a copper carbonate hydroxide mineral, with the formula Cu2CO3(OH)2. This opaque, green-banded mineral crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system, and most often forms botryoidal, fibrous, or stalagmitic masses, in fractures ...
plinth base. The plinth weighs and the trophy weighs . The trophy and plinth are tall, wide and deep. Its main body is solid
sterling silver Sterling silver is an alloy of silver containing 92.5% by weight of silver and 7.5% by weight of other metals, usually copper. The sterling silver standard has a minimum millesimal fineness of 925. ''Fine silver'', which is 99.9% pure silver, is r ...
and silver gilt, while its plinth is made of malachite, a
semi-precious A gemstone (also called a fine gem, jewel, precious stone, or semiprecious stone) is a piece of mineral crystal which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments. However, certain rocks (such as lapis lazuli, opal, ...
stone. The plinth has a silver band around its circumference, upon which the names of the title-winning clubs are listed. The green of the malachite represents the green field of play. The design of the trophy is based on the
heraldry Heraldry is a discipline relating to the design, display and study of armorial bearings (known as armory), as well as related disciplines, such as vexillology, together with the study of ceremony, rank and pedigree. Armory, the best-known branch ...
of
Three Lions "Three Lions" is a song by the English comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner and the rock band the Lightning Seeds. It was released on 20 May 1996 to mark the England football team's participation in that year's UEFA European Championshi ...
that is associated with English football. Two of the lions are found above the handles on either side of the trophy – the third is symbolised by the captain of the title-winning team as he raises the trophy, and its gold crown, above his head at the end of the season. The ribbons that drape the handles are presented in the team colours of the league champions that year. In 2004, a special gold version of the trophy was commissioned to commemorate Arsenal winning the title without a single defeat.


Player and manager awards

In addition to the winner's trophy and the individual winner's medals awarded to players who win the title, the Premier League also issues other awards throughout the season. A man-of-the-match award is awarded to the player who has the greatest impact in an individual match. Monthly awards are also given for the Manager of the Month, Player of the Month and Goal of the Month. These are also issued annually for Manager of the Season, Player of the Season. and
Goal of the Season In English football, the Goal of the Season is an annual competition and award given on BBC's ''Match of the Day'', in honour of the most spectacular goal scored that season. It is typically contested between the winners of the preceding ten Goa ...
. The Young Player of the Season award is given to the most outstanding U-23 player starting from the 2019–20 season. The Golden Boot award is given to the top goalscorer of every season, the Playmaker of the Season award is given to the player who makes the most assists of every season, and the Golden Glove award is given to the goalkeeper with the most clean sheets at the end of the season. From the 2017–18 season, players also receive a milestone award for 100 appearances and every century there after and also players who score 50 goals and multiples thereof. Each player to reach these milestones is to receive a presentation box from the Premier League containing a special medallion and a plaque commemorating their achievement.


20 Seasons Awards

In 2012, the Premier League celebrated its second decade by holding the 20 Seasons Awards: * Fantasy Team of the 20 Seasons ** Panel Choice:
Peter Schmeichel Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a sur ...
,
Gary Neville Gary Alexander Neville (born 18 February 1975) is an English football pundit and former player. He is also a co-owner of English Football League club Salford City. After retiring from football in 2011, Neville went into punditry and was a comm ...
,
Tony Adams Tony Alexander Adams (born 10 October 1966) is an English former football manager and player. Adams played for Arsenal and England, captaining both teams. He spent his entire playing career of 19 years as a centre back at Arsenal, making 672 ...
,
Rio Ferdinand Rio Gavin Ferdinand (born 7 November 1978) is an English former professional footballer who played as a centre-back, and is now a television pundit for BT Sport. He played 81 times for the England national team between 1997 and 2011, and was ...
,
Ashley Cole Ashley Cole (born 20 December 1980) is an English football coach and former player who is currently a first-team coach at Premier League club Everton. As a player, he played as a left-back, most notably for Arsenal and Chelsea. Cole is consi ...
,
Cristiano Ronaldo Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro (; born 5 February 1985) is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays as a forward and captains the Portugal national team. He is currently a free agent. Widely regarded as one of the greatest p ...
,
Roy Keane Roy Maurice Keane (born 10 August 1971) is an Irish football pundit, coach and former professional player. He is the joint most successful Irish footballer of all time, having won 19 major trophies in his club career, 17 of which came during ...
,
Paul Scholes Paul Scholes (born 16 November 1974) is an English football coach, pundit, former player, and co-owner of Salford City. He spent his entire professional playing career with Manchester United, for whom he scored over 150 goals in more than 700 ...
,
Ryan Giggs Ryan Joseph Giggs (né Wilson; 29 November 1973) is a Welsh association football, football coach and former player. Regarded as one of the greatest players of his generation, Giggs played his List of one-club men in association football, entir ...
,
Thierry Henry Thierry Daniel Henry (born 17 August 1977) is a French professional football coach, pundit, and former player who is an assistant coach for the Belgium national team. Considered one of the best strikers of all time and one of the best player ...
,
Alan Shearer Alan Shearer CBE DL (born 13 August 1970) is an English football pundit and retired football player and manager who played as a striker. Widely regarded as one of the best strikers of his generation and one of the greatest players in Premie ...
** Public Vote: Peter Schmeichel, Gary Neville, Tony Adams,
Nemanja Vidić Nemanja Vidić ( sr-Cyrl, Немања Видић, ; born 21 October 1981) is a Serbian former professional footballer who played as a centre-back. He is best known for his time at Manchester United, was part of the Serbia national team, and ...
, Ashley Cole, Cristiano Ronaldo,
Steven Gerrard Steven George Gerrard (born 30 May 1980) is an English professional football manager and former player, who most recently managed club Aston Villa. Described by pundits and fellow professionals as one of his generation's greatest players, Ge ...
, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Thierry Henry, Alan Shearer * Best Manager:
Sir Alex Ferguson Sir Alexander Chapman Ferguson (born 31 December 1941) is a Scottish former football manager and player, best known for managing Manchester United from 1986 to 2013. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest football managers of all tim ...
*
Best Player ''Best Player'' is a 2011 comedy television film that aired on Nickelodeon on March 13, 2011. The movie stars Jerry Trainor and Jennette McCurdy, from the show ''iCarly''. Filming started on October 24, 2009 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canad ...
:
Ryan Giggs Ryan Joseph Giggs (né Wilson; 29 November 1973) is a Welsh association football, football coach and former player. Regarded as one of the greatest players of his generation, Giggs played his List of one-club men in association football, entir ...
* Most Appearances:
Gareth Barry Gareth Barry (born 23 February 1981) is an English former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. He made 653 Premier League appearances for Aston Villa, Manchester City, Everton and West Bromwich Albion, the highest number of ap ...
(652) * Top Goalscorer:
Alan Shearer Alan Shearer CBE DL (born 13 August 1970) is an English football pundit and retired football player and manager who played as a striker. Widely regarded as one of the best strikers of his generation and one of the greatest players in Premie ...
(260) * Most Clean Sheets: David James (173) * 500 Club:
Steven Gerrard Steven George Gerrard (born 30 May 1980) is an English professional football manager and former player, who most recently managed club Aston Villa. Described by pundits and fellow professionals as one of his generation's greatest players, Ge ...
,
Jamie Carragher James Lee Duncan Carragher (; born 28 January 1978) is an English football pundit and former footballer who played as a defender for Premier League club Liverpool during a career which spanned 17 years. A one-club man, he was Liverpool's vic ...
,
Gareth Barry Gareth Barry (born 23 February 1981) is an English former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. He made 653 Premier League appearances for Aston Villa, Manchester City, Everton and West Bromwich Albion, the highest number of ap ...
,
Ryan Giggs Ryan Joseph Giggs (né Wilson; 29 November 1973) is a Welsh association football, football coach and former player. Regarded as one of the greatest players of his generation, Giggs played his List of one-club men in association football, entir ...
, David James,
Gary Speed Gary Andrew Speed (8 September 1969 – 27 November 2011) was a Welsh professional footballer and manager. As manager of Wales, Speed is often credited as being the catalyst for the change in fortunes of the national team and as setting t ...
,
Frank Lampard Frank James Lampard (born 20 June 1978) is an English professional football manager and former player who is the manager of club Everton. He is widely regarded as one of Chelsea’s greatest ever players, and one of the greatest midfielder ...
,
Emile Heskey Emile William Ivanhoe Heskey (born 11 January 1978) is an English former professional footballer who currently serves as head of football development of Leicester City Women. Playing as a striker, he made more than 500 appearances in the Foo ...
and
Sol Campbell Sulzeer Jeremiah Campbell (born 18 September 1974) is an English professional football manager and former player who was most recently the manager of club Southend United. He previously managed Macclesfield Town from November 2018 to August ...
* Best Goal:
Wayne Rooney Wayne Mark Rooney (born 24 October 1985) is an English professional football manager and former player, who is the manager of Major League Soccer club D.C. United in the United States. He spent much of his playing career as a forward while ...
, 12 February 2011,
Manchester United Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...
vs
Manchester City Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The tw ...
* Best Save:
Craig Gordon Craig Sinclair Gordon (born 31 December 1982) is a Scottish professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Scottish Premiership club Heart of Midlothian, where he is club captain, and the Scottish national team. Gordon started his c ...
, 18 December 2010,
Sunderland Sunderland () is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is the City of Sunderland's administrative centre and in the Historic counties of England, historic county of County of Durham, Durham. The city is from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is on t ...
vs
Bolton Wanderers Bolton Wanderers Football Club () is a professional football club based in Horwich, Bolton, Greater Manchester, England, which competes in . The club played at Burnden Park for 102 years from 1895 after moving from their original home at Pike's ...
* Best Team: Arsenal 2003–04


See also

* List of English football champions *
List of English Football League managers There are 92 association football teams in the top four divisions of English football, all of which have a manager, sometimes given the alternative title of head coach, or the role is currently vacated. The Premier League and the English Football ...
*
FA Women's Super League The Women's Super League (WSL), currently known as the Barclays Women's Super League (BWSL) for sponsorship reasons, is the highest league of women's football in England. Established in 2010, it is run by the Football Association and features t ...
(highest league of women's football in England) *
Football records and statistics in England This article concerns football records in England. Unless otherwise stated, records are taken from the Football League or Premier League. Where a different record exists for the top flight (Football League First Division 1888–1992, and Premie ...
* List of professional sports teams in the United Kingdom


References

Bibliography *


External links

* {{Authority control 1 1992 establishments in England Professional sports leagues in the United Kingdom Sports leagues established in 1992
England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
Organisations based in London