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Premier League

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"Premier League" redirects here. See List of professional sports leagues for other sports leagues which may be referred to by this name.
File:FA Premier League.png
FA Premier League logo

The FA Premier League (often referred to as the Barclays Premiership or just The Premiership in the UK and as the Barclays English Premier League or the English Premier League internationally) is a league competition for football clubs located at the top of the English football league system (above The Football League), making it England's primary football competition.

The Premier League formed in 1992, following the decision of clubs in the Football League First Division to break away from The Football League to take advantage of a lucrative television rights deal.

The Premier League is presently contested by twenty clubs each season, but in a total of fourteen seasons, the title has been won by only four teams: Arsenal, Blackburn Rovers, Chelsea and Manchester United. Of these, the most successful are Manchester United and Arsenal, who have won the title eight and three times respectively. The current Premier League champions are Chelsea, who won their second consecutive title in the 2005-06 season.

History

FA Premier League title holders
 Template:FA Premier League winners

The 1980s marked a low point for English football. Stadiums were crumbling, supporters were faced with poor facilities, hooliganism was rife and English clubs were banned from European competition following the events at Heysel in 1985. The old First Division was well behind Serie A in attendances and revenues, and a few top British players had moved abroad. The ban on English clubs playing in UEFA competitions was lifted in 1990, and the Taylor Report on stadium safety standards, which proposed expensive upgrades to all seater stadiums, was published in January that year.

A proposal for the establishment of a new league was tabled 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.[1] The newly formed top division would have commercial independence from the Football Association and the Football League, giving the FA Premier League license to negotiate its own broadcast and sponsorship agreements. This was seen to be necessary so that English clubs could once again compete with and beat the best of Europe, while attracting the best talent in the world, something which in 1991 seemed practically unthinkable.

In 1992 the First Division Clubs resigned from the football league en masse and on 27 May 1992 the FA Premier League was formed as a limited company working out of an office at the then Football Association's headquarters, Lancaster Gate. This meant a break-up of the 104-year-old Football League that had operated until then with four divisions.

The league held its first season in 1992–93 and originally comprised twenty-two clubs. The first ever Premiership goal was scored by Brian Deane against Manchester United in a 2-1 win for the Sheffield United. The new name was simply a commercial restructuring and a rebranding exercise as there was no innovation in competitive terms; an identical first tier league had existed the previous season. Due to FIFA's insistence on domestic leagues reducing the number of games clubs played, the number was reduced to twenty in 1995, when four teams were relegated from the league and only two teams were promoted. On 8 June, 2006, FIFA requested that all major European leagues, including Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga be reduced to eighteen teams by the start of the 2007-08 season. The Premier League responded by announcing their intention to resist a reduction.[2]

Competition and structure

The FA Premier League comprises the top twenty football clubs in the league system of English football. It was created in 1992, when the First Division football clubs broke away from the Football League after securing a greatly improved TV rights deal with the then fledgling satellite television company, BSkyB. The first season's twenty-two clubs were reduced to twenty for the 1995–96 season.

The Premiership boasts some of the best players in the world, including many from outside England. The Premier League is the most lucrative football league in the world, with total club revenues of over £1.3 billion in 2004–05 according to Deloitte, more than forty per cent above its nearest competitor, Italy's Serie A.[3] Revenues will increase substantially by the 2007–08 season, when new media rights deals start (see below). The Premership is currently third in the UEFA rankings of European leagues based on their performances in European competitions over a five year period, behind Spain's La Liga, and Italy's Serie A.[4]

The 2005–06 average attendance of 33,875 for league matches is the fourth highest of any domestic professional sports league in the world. Based on May 2006 exchange rates, £1.3 billion converts to annual league revenue of about US$2.44 billion. This figure is also the fourth highest for any sports league worldwide, behind the annual revenues of the three most popular North American major sports leagues (the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association), but ahead of the National Hockey League.

The competition

There are twenty clubs in the Premier League. During the course of a season, (which lasts from August to May) each club plays the others twice, once at their home stadium and once at that of their opponents for a total of 38 games for each club, and a total of 380 games in a Premier League season. Teams receive three points for a win and one point for a draw. No points are awarded for a loss. At the end of each season, the club with the most points is crowned as champion. Additionally, the three lowest placed teams are relegated into the Football League Championship and the top two teams from the Championship, together with the winner of a play-off involving the third to sixth placed clubs inclusive, are promoted in their place.

The top four teams in the Premiership qualify for the UEFA Champions League, with the top two teams directly entering the group phase. The third and fourth placed teams enter the competition at the third qualifying round and must win a two-legged knockout tie in order to enter the group phase. The fifth placed team automatically qualifies for the UEFA Cup, and the sixth and seventh placed teams can also qualify, depending on what happens in the two domestic cup competitions. If the FA Cup champions and runners-up both finish in the top five of the Premier League, the FA Cup's UEFA Cup spot goes to the sixth placed team in the League. If the League Cup is won by a team that has already qualified for Europe, the League Cup's UEFA Cup spot also goes to the next highest placed team in the League (unlike the FA Cup spot, it is never transferred to the losing finalist). The highest placed team that has not qualified for the UEFA Cup is allowed the opportunity to compete in the UEFA Intertoto Cup.

Sponsorship

Since 1993, the FA Premier League has been sponsored. The sponsor has been able to determine the league's sponsorship name. So far, all the sponsors have referred to the competition as the 'Premiership'. The list below details who the sponsors have been and what they called the competition:

  • 1993–2001: Carling (FA Carling Premiership)
  • 2001–2004: Barclaycard (Barclaycard Premiership)
  • 2004–2008: Barclays (Barclays Premiership)

Media coverage

England

Television has played a major role in the history of the FA Premier League. The money from TV deals has been vital in helping to create excellence both on and off the field. The initial decision to go with BSkyB was, again, 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 marketing strategy, the quality of the FA Premier League football and the public’s appetite for the game has seen the value of the FA Premier League’s broadcast rights soar and delivered huge benefits to the game.

The Premier League sells its television rights on a collective basis. This is in contrast to some European Leagues, including Serie A and La Liga, which each club sells its rights individually, which leads to a much higher share of the total income going to the top few clubs. The money is divided into three parts:[5] half is divided equally between the clubs; one quarter is awarded on a merit basis based on final league position, with 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 receiving the largest shares of this. The income from overseas rights is divided equally between the twenty clubs.

The first BSkyB television agreement was worth £191 million over five seasons.[6] The next contract, negotiated to start from the 1997–98 season, rose to £670 million over four seasons.[7] The Premier League’s current £1.024 billion deal with BSkyB runs over the course of three seasons from August 2004. BSkyB's monopoly was broken from August 2007 when Setanta Sports was awarded rights to show two out of the six packages of matches available. This occurred following an insistence by the European Commission that exclusive rights should not be sold to any one television company. Sky and Setanta paid a total of £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. The BBC has retained the rights to show highlights for the same three seasons (on Match of the Day) for £171.6 million, a 63% increase on the £105 million it paid for the previous three year period.[8] Sky and BT have will jointly pay £84.3 million for delayed broadcast 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 10pm on matchday.[9] Overseas and mobile phone rights are expected to fetch a further several hundred million pounds.

The broadcasting agreement between the Premier League and Sky has faced accusations of being a cartel, and a number of court cases have arised as a result. An investigation by the Office of Fair Trading 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.[10] In July 1999 the Premier League's method of selling rights collectively for all member clubs was investigated by the UK Restrictive Practices Court, who concluded that the agreement was not contrary to the public interest.[11]

The FA Premier League is unique in domestic football in Europe in its agreement over kick off times. In an agreement with the Football Association, it does not allow live broadcasts at the traditional English kick off time (Saturday 3pm). This is designed to ensure that fans still attend lower league games. These broadcasting restrictions can be circumvented either by subscribing to overseas satellite broadcasters (thus creating somewhat of a grey market), or through various streaming networks on the internet.

The Premier League and Sky maintain that whilst this is not illegal on the part of the viewer, it is illegal for anyone (such as a public house) to make such services available. This has in the past lead to heavy fines for public houses in the United Kingdom which have shown these games in their establishments. More recently, the legality of such fines has been disputed, and a number of Crown Court cases have been reported in which publicans successfully challenged the Premier League's position.[12]

File:Fa premier league norway.jpg
A Norwegian take on FA Premier League team names

Worldwide

Promoted as "The Greatest Show On Earth", the FA Premier League is the world's most popular and most watched sporting league, followed worldwide by over a billion people[13]. Over 260 foreign players compete in the league, and 101 players from England's domestic leagues competed in the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Korea and Japan. It is widely watched overseas, with matches being shown in 195 countries[14], generally on networks owned and/or controlled by NewsCorp, which owns the primary UK and Ireland TV rights.

Players

At the inception of the Premier League in 1992-93, just eleven players named in the starting line-ups for the first round of matches were 'foreign' (players hailing from outside of the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland).[15] By 2000-01, the number of foreign players participating in the Premiership was 36%. In the 2004-5 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, while on 14 February 2005 Arsenal were the first to name a completely foreign 16-man squad for a match. Arsenal's 85% foreign player figure (rising from 64% in 2000–01) is the highest of any club over the period. Chelsea have since been overtaken in terms of the number of foreign-born players by Liverpool (72%).

No English manager has ever actually won the Premier League. Only four different managers have won the title as of 2006: two Scots (Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United and Kenny Dalglish, Blackburn Rovers), a Frenchman (Arsène Wenger, Arsenal) and a Portuguese (José Mourinho, Chelsea). Two English managers have achieved second place in the Premiership. They are Ron Atkinson (Aston Villa in 1993) and Kevin Keegan (Newcastle United in 1996).

The Premier League was the most represented league at the 2006 World Cup, with more than eighty players in the competition.

Premier League clubs

Premier League champions

For a list of winners and runners-up of the Premier League since its inception, and top scorers for each season, see English football champions.

Current Premier League members, 2006–07

Club
 Finishing position
last season 		First season in
top division 		First season of
current spell in
top division
Arsenal [16][17] 4th 1904–05 1919–20
Aston Villa [16][17] 16th 1888–89 1988–89
Blackburn Rovers [17] 6th 1888–89 2001–02
Bolton Wanderers 8th 1888–89 2001–02
Charlton Athletic 13th 1936–37 2000–01
Chelsea [16][17] 1st 1907–08 1989–90
Everton [16][17] 11th 1888–89 1954–55
Fulham 12th 1949-50 2001–02
Liverpool [16][17] 3rd 1894–95 1962–63
Manchester City [17] 15th 1899–1900 2002–03
Manchester United [16][17] 2nd 1892–93 1975–76
Middlesbrough [17] 14th 1902–03 1998–99
Newcastle United 7th 1898–99 1993–94
Portsmouth 17th 1927–28 2003–04
Reading 1st in the Championship 2006–07 2006–07
Sheffield United [17] 2nd in the Championship 1893–94 2006–07
Tottenham Hotspur [16][17] 5th 1909–10 1978–79
Watford 3rd in the Championship 1982–83 2006-07
West Ham United 9th 1923–24 2005–06
Wigan Athletic 10th 2005–06 2005–06

Team movements for 2006-07 season

Relegated
  • On 14 April, Sunderland were assured of an immediate return to the Championship. A scoreless draw at Manchester United left them on 12 points; they stood 17 points from safety with only five matches left.
  • On 29 April, both Birmingham City and West Bromwich Albion were assured of relegation after Portsmouth defeated Wigan Athletic 2–1, making it impossible for either Birmingham (who had a chance of surviving if they beat Newcastle, but drew 0–0) or West Brom to reach safety.
Promoted
  • On 25 March, Reading clinched a place in the Premiership for 2006-07, securing promotion to the top flight earlier than any other side in the post-war era. One week later (1 April), they secured the Championship crown. Reading will be playing in the top flight for the first time ever in their 135-year history.
  • On 15 April, Sheffield United were promoted to the Premiership for the first time since the 1993-94 season, after Leeds United were held to a draw against Reading.
  • On 21 May, Watford gained promotion to the Premiership by defeating Leeds United 3-0 in the Championship play-off final. They had previously defeated Crystal Palace in the semi-final by an aggregate scoreline of 3-0, after winning 3-0 at Selhurst Park and a 0-0 at Vicarage Road.

Former Premier League members

For a list of all clubs to have played in the Premier League, see List of FA Premier League clubs.

All Time FA Premier League Table

By total points from 1992-93 to 2005-2006 inclusive.

Position Club Seasons in
Premier League 		Played Won Drawn Lost Goals
for 		Goals
against 		Goal
difference 		Total
points 		Titles won Runners-up
1 Manchester United 14 544 339 126 79 1057 489 568 1143 8 3
2 Arsenal 14 544 289 146 109 911 481 430 1030 3 5
3 Liverpool 14 544 265 136 143 868 552 316 931 1
4 Chelsea 14 544 261 147 136 848 556 292 930 2 1
5 Newcastle United 13 502 218 132 152 761 606 155 786 2
6 Aston Villa 14 544 203 158 183 668 632 36 767 1
7 Tottenham Hotspur 14 544 195 143 206 716 732 -16 728
8 Blackburn Rovers 12 468 190 125 153 650 553 97 695 1 1
9 Leeds United 12 468 189 125 154 641 573 68 692
10 Everton 14 544 177 146 221 651 739 -88 677
11 Southampton 13 506 150 137 219 598 738 -140 587
12 West Ham United 11 426 148 111 167 514 590 -76 555
13 Middlesbrough [18] 11 422 131 123 168 506 582 -76 513
14 Manchester City 9 354 103 101 150 413 482 -69 410
15 Coventry City 9 354 99 112 143 387 490 -103 409
16 Sheffield Wednesday 8 316 101 89 126 409 453 -44 392
17 Wimbledon [19] 8 316 99 94 123 384 472 -88 391
18 Leicester City 8 308 84 90 134 354 456 -102 342
19 Charlton Atheltic 7 266 85 72 109 308 382 -74 327
20 Bolton Wanderers 7 266 81 77 108 311 386 -75 320
21 Derby County 6 228 67 62 99 251 331 -80 263
22 Nottingham Forest 5 198 60 59 79 229 287 -58 239
23 Fulham 5 190 63 47 80 229 258 -29 236
24 Sunderland 6 228 58 55 115 214 335 -121 229
25 Ipswich Town 5 202 57 53 92 219 312 -93 224
26 Queens Park Rangers 4 164 59 39 66 224 232 -8 216
27 Norwich City 4 164 50 51 63 205 257 -52 201
28 Birmingham City 4 152 44 45 43 152 193 -41 177
29 Crystal Palace 4 160 37 49 74 160 243 -83 160
30 Portsmouth 3 114 37 26 56 127 175 -48 122
31 Sheffield United 2 84 22 28 34 96 113 -17 94
32 West Bromwich Albion 3 114 19 33 62 96 184 -88 90
33 Oldham Athletic 2 84 22 23 39 105 142 -37 89
34 Bradford City 2 76 14 20 42 68 138 -70 62
35 Wigan Athletic 1 38 15 6 17 45 52 -7 51
36 Barnsley 1 38 10 5 23 37 82 -45 35
37 Wolverhampton Wanderers 1 38 7 12 19 38 77 -39 33
38 Swindon Town 1 42 5 15 22 47 100 -53 30
39 Watford 1 38 6 6 26 35 77 -42 24

Top scorers

All-time

As of the end of the 2005–06 season on 7 May 2006. The 2006–07 season will commence on 19 August 2006.

Rank Player Goals
1 Alan Shearer 260
2 Andy Cole [20] 185
3 Thierry Henry [20] 164
4 Robbie Fowler [20] 159
5 Les Ferdinand [20] 149
6 Teddy Sheringham [20] 145
7 Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink [20] 126
8 Michael Owen [20] 125
9 Dwight Yorke 122
10 Ian Wright 113

By season

Main article: English football champions (The season's top scorer is listed on this page along with the winners of each season)

Since the first Premier League season in 1992-93, eleven different players have won or shared the top scorers title. Thierry Henry won his third consecutive and fourth overall scoring title by scoring 27 goals in the 2005-06 season. This surpassed Alan Shearer's mark of three titles which he also won consecutively from 1994-95 through 1996-97. Other multiple winners include Michael Owen and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink who have won two titles each. Shearer and Andy Cole hold the record for most goals in a season (34) which they scored in seasons that lasted 42 rather than 38 games. Shearer's mark of 31 goals in the 1995-96 is the highest total in a 38 game season.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "In the matter of an agreement between the Football Association Premier League Limited and the Football Association Limited and the Football League Limited and their respective member clubs". HM Courts Service. 2006. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ Fifa wants 18-team Premier League, BBC Sport, 8 June 2006
  3. ^ First fall in Premiership wages, BBC News, 31 May 2006, reporting on Deloitte's review of football finance in 2004–05.
  4. ^ UEFA Country Ranking 2006
  5. ^ "Frequently asked questions about the F.A. Premier League". [remierleague.com.
  6. ^ Martin Cave. "Football rights and competition in broadcasting". Football Governance Research Centre, University of London.
  7. ^ Ibid.
  8. ^ BBC keeps Premiership highlights, bbc.co.uk, 8 June 2006.
  9. ^ TV deal pays another £84m, Daily Telegraph, 26 May, 2006.
  10. ^ "BSkyB investigation: alleged infringement of the Chapter II prohibition" (PDF). Office of Fair Trading. 17 December, 2002. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) (pdf)
  11. ^ "Sport and European Competition Policy" (PDF). European Commission. 1999. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) (pdf)
  12. ^ Barrie Clement, Pubs win the right to show football on Saturday afternoons, The Independent, 12 April 2006
  13. ^ Campbell, Dennis (January 6 2002). "United (versus Liverpool) Nations". The Observer. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. ^ "About Us FAQs". Premier League. 15 July 2006. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  15. ^ Ron Atkinson, England need to stem the foreign tide, The Guardian, August 23 2002
  16. ^ a b c d e f g Played in every Premier League season
  17. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Founding member of Premier League.
  18. ^ Middlesbrough deducted 3 points for failure to fulfill fixture at Blackburn Rovers on 21 December 1996
  19. ^ Now known as Milton Keynes Dons F.C.
  20. ^ a b c d e f g Currently active in Premier league team's roster
Template:FA Premier League teamlist
Seasons
Clubs
2024–25
Former
Competition
Statistics
and awards
Finances
Associated
competitions

Template:English football league system cells

Template:Link FA

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