Premier League


The Premier League is a professional association football league in England and the highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football League. Seasons usually run from August to May, with each team playing 38 matches: two against each other team, one home and one away. Most games are played on weekend afternoons, with occasional weekday evening fixtures.
The competition was founded as the FA Premier League on 20 February 1992, following the decision of clubs from the First Division  to break away from the English Football League. Teams are still promoted and relegated to and from the EFL Championship each season. The Premier League is a corporation managed by a chief executive, with member clubs as shareholders. The Premier League takes advantage of a £5 billion domestic television rights deal, with Sky and BT Group broadcasting 128 and 32 games, respectively. This will rise to £6.7 billion from 2025 to 2029. In the 2022–2025 cycle, the Premier League earned a record £5.6 billion from international rights. As of 2023–24, Premier League clubs received central payments totalling £2.8 billion, with additional solidarity payments made to relegated EFL clubs.
The Premier League is the most-watched sports league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643 million homes, with a potential TV audience of 4.7 billion people. As of the 2024–25 season, the Premier League has the highest average and aggregate match attendance of any association football league in the world, at 40,421 per game. Most stadiums operate close to full capacity. The Premier League is currently ranked first in the UEFA coefficient rankings based on performances in European competitions over the past five seasons, ahead of Italy's Serie A. The English top-flight has produced the second-highest number of European Cup / UEFA Champions League titles, with a record six English clubs having won fifteen European cups in total.
Fifty-one clubs have competed in the Premier League since its inception in 1992: 49 from England and two from Wales. Seven have won the title: Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Blackburn Rovers and Leicester City. Only six clubs have played in every season to date: Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United, and Tottenham Hotspur.

History

Origins

Despite major European success in the 1970s and early 1980s, the mid-to-late 1980s marked a low point for English football. Stadiums were ageing with poor facilities, hooliganism was rife, and all English clubs faced a 5-year ban from European competition following the events of the 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster with Liverpool facing an extra year. The Football League First Division, the top level of English football since 1888, was behind leagues such as Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga in attendance 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, England reached the semi-finals; UEFA, 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 Cup Winners' Cup in 1991. The Taylor Report on stadium safety standards, which proposed expensive upgrades to create all-seater stadiums in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster was published in January 1990.
During the 1980s, major English clubs began transforming into business ventures, applying commercial principles to club administration to maximise revenue. Martin Edwards of Manchester United, Irving Scholar of Tottenham Hotspur, and David Dein of Arsenal were among the key figures in this shift. The drive for greater revenue and influence led First Division clubs to threaten a breakaway from the Football League. They also began demanding higher fees from broadcasters. As a result, they secured increased voting power and a 50% share of all television and sponsorship income in 1986. Before 1986, clubs received only around £25,000 per year from television rights, and this rose to £600,000 by 1988. The Football League had secured £6.3 million for a two-year deal in 1986, followed by a £44 million deal over four years in 1988 with ITV, with top clubs taking 75% of the income.
Negotiations took place in 1988 under the threat of ten clubs forming a "super league". They were persuaded to stay, but with leading clubs securing the bulk of the deal. The talks also revealed that the bigger clubs would need the entire First Division to gain enough support for a future breakaway. By the early 1990s, such a move was again being considered, especially as clubs faced the financial burden of stadium upgrades recommended by the Taylor Report.
In 1990, the managing director of London Weekend Television, Greg Dyke, met with the representatives of the "Big Five" football clubs in England over a dinner. The meeting was to pave the way for a breakaway from the Football League. 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, 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 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.

Founding and Manchester United dominance (1990s)

At the close of the 1990–91 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 and sponsorship agreements. The argument given was that the extra income would allow English clubs to compete with teams across Europe. This restructuring marked the end of the 104-year-old Football League system that had operated until then with four divisions; the Premier League would run as a single division, with the Football League continuing with three.
Although Dyke played a significant role in the creation of the Premier League, he and ITV lost out in the bidding for broadcast rights: BSkyB won with a bid of £304 million over five years, with the BBC awarded the highlights package broadcast on Match of the Day.
Luton Town, Notts County, and West Ham United 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. They were replaced by Ipswich Town, Middlesbrough, and Blackburn Rovers, promoted from the old Second Division. On 27 May 1992, the 22 First Division clubs resigned en masse from the Football League, and the FA Premier League was formed as a limited company, working out of an office at the Football Association's then headquarters in Lancaster Gate.
The league held its first season in 1992–93. The 22 inaugural members of the new Premier League were:
  • Arsenal
  • Aston Villa
  • Blackburn Rovers
  • Chelsea
  • Coventry City
  • Crystal Palace
  • Everton
  • Ipswich Town
  • Leeds United
  • Liverpool
  • Manchester City
  • Manchester United
  • Middlesbrough
  • Norwich City
  • Nottingham Forest
  • Oldham Athletic
  • Queens Park Rangers
  • Sheffield United
  • Sheffield Wednesday
  • Southampton
  • Tottenham Hotspur
  • Wimbledon
The first Premier League goal was scored by Brian Deane of Sheffield United in a 2–1 win against Manchester United.
Manchester United won the inaugural edition of the new league, ending a twenty-six year wait to be crowned champions of England. Bolstered by this breakthrough, United quickly became the dominant force in the Premier League, winning seven of the first nine titles and securing two League and FA Cup doubles. They were initially led by experienced players such as Bryan Robson, Steve Bruce, Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Eric Cantona, before evolving into a younger, more dynamic side featuring Roy Keane and the Class of 92, a group of homegrown talents including David Beckham and Paul Scholes.
At the end of the 1994–95 season, four rather than three clubs were relegated, while only two were promoted from the Football League First Division. This allowed the Premier League to reduce its size from 22 to 20 clubs for the start of the 1995–96 season, reducing the number of matches per team from 42 to 38.
Between 1993 and 1997, Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United came closest to challenging United's early dominance. Blackburn, led by the prolific Alan Shearer, won the 1994–95 FA Premier League. Newcastle topped the table for much of the 1995–96 season, and signed Shearer in the summer of 1996 for a then world-record fee of £15 million. He would go on to become the all-time top scorer, a record he still holds. Arsenal emerged as serious contenders by winning the League and FA Cup double in 1997–98, and from that point they and Manchester United would go on to dominate the league for the next several years.
In the 1998–99 season, Manchester United completed a historic treble by winning the Premier League, FA Cup and UEFA Champions League. In so doing, they became the first English club to win the European Cup since Liverpool in the 1983–84 season, securing the trophy with a dramatic comeback victory over Bayern Munich in the final.