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The Premier League (officially known as the '''Barclays Premier League''' for Sponsorship reasons, colloquially known as '''The Premiership'''), is a professional league competition for Football clubs located at the top echelon of the English Football League System (above The Football League ). It is the world's most watched sporting league, and the most lucrative football league.1 Based on the performances of member clubs in European competitions over a five-year period, with the 2006/07 season results in consideration, the Premier League is unofficially ranked second2 behind Spain's La Liga , but ahead of Italy's Serie A in the UEFA Rankings Of European Leagues ; this is an improvement on the third place from the official rankings up to the 2005–06 season.3 The FA Premier League (as it was then known) was formed in 1992 from the clubs in the top division of The Football League, and is currently contested by twenty clubs. In a total of fifteen seasons, the title has been won by only four teams: Manchester United (nine times), Arsenal (three times), Chelsea (twice), and Blackburn Rovers (once). The current Premier League champions are Manchester United , who won the title with two games remaining of the 2006–07 Season . The FA Women's Premier League , more specifically the National Division , is the Premiership's Female counterpart, as most of its clubs are affiliated with Premiership and Football League sides; however, the league is semi-professional and has a much lower profile than the men's game. The 2007–08 Season sees the Premier League introduce a new theme song, logo, typeface for player names and numbers, and patches. HISTORY Origins Establishment The league held its first season in 1992–93 and was originally composed of 22 clubs. The first ever Premiership goal was scored by Brian Deane of Sheffield United in a 2–1 win against Manchester United . Due to insistence by FIFA , the international governing body of football, that domestic leagues reduce the number of games clubs played, the number of clubs was reduced to 20 in 1995 when four teams were relegated from the league and only two teams were promoted. On 8 June , 2006 , FIFA requested that all major European leagues, including Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga be reduced to 18 teams by the start of the 2007–08 season. The Premier League responded by announcing their intention to resist such a reduction.4 Ultimately the 2007-08 season kicked off again with 20 teams. The league changed its name from the 'FA Premier League' to simply the 'Premier League' on February 12 , 2007 . STRUCTURE The Premier League is operated as a Corporation that is owned by the 20 member clubs. Each club is considered a Shareholder with one vote each on such issues as rule changes and contracts. The clubs elect a Chairman , Chief Executive , and Board Of Directors to oversee the daily operations of the league.5 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.6 The Premier League sends representatives to UEFA's European Club Forum, the number of clubs and the clubs themselves chosen according to UEFA Coefficients . The European Club Forum 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 Cup .7 COMPETITION FORMAT AND SPONSORSHIP Competition There are 20 clubs in the Premier League. During the course of a season (which lasts from August to May) each club plays the others twice, once at their home stadium and once at that of their opponents for a total of 38 games for each club, with a total of 380 games in each season. Teams receive three points for a win and one point for a draw. No points are awarded for a loss. Teams are ranked by total points, then Goal Difference and then goals scored. At the end of each season, the club with the most points is crowned as champion. If points are equal the goal difference and goals scored then determines the winner. If still equal they are deemed to occupy the same position; if the champions, teams for relegation or qualification for other competitions thus cannot be decided, a series of play-off matches are played between the affected teams at neutral venues (this has yet to occur). The three lowest placed teams are Relegated into the Football League Championship and the top two teams from the Championship, together with the winner of play-offs involving the third to sixth placed Championship clubs, are Promoted in their place. Qualification for European competitions The top four teams in the Premiership qualify for the UEFA Champions League , with the top two teams directly entering the group phase. The third and fourth placed teams enter the competition at the third qualifying round and must win a two-legged knockout tie in order to enter the group phase. The fifth placed team automatically qualifies for the UEFA Cup , and the sixth and seventh placed teams can also qualify, depending on what happens in the two domestic cup competitions. If the FA Cup winners and runners-up both finish in the top five of the Premier League, the FA Cup's UEFA Cup spot goes to the sixth placed team in the League. If the League Cup (Carling cup) is won by a team that has already qualified for Europe, the League Cup's UEFA Cup spot also goes to the next highest placed team in the League (unlike the FA Cup spot, it is never transferred to the losing finalist). The highest placed team that has not qualified for the UEFA Cup is allowed the opportunity to compete in the UEFA Intertoto Cup , provided they have applied to enter the Intertoto Cup in the next season. This provides another means of getting into the UEFA Cup, as winners of all eleven third-round Intertoto Cup ties qualify for that tournament. and Fulham compete in the FA Cup .]] Technically, the FA can nominate any team in the League System to represent them in Europe; however, understandably and just as in all the other major leagues, only the teams that finished top of their highest league are sent. This Issue Presented Itself in 2005 when Liverpool won the UEFA Champions League , but failed to finish high enough in the Premier League to be entered into the following year's tournament. Initially, this would have meant that for the first time in the competition's history the defending champions would not have been allowed to defend their trophy. In fact, a similar situation had occurred at the start of the 2000–01 Champions League , when defending champions Real Madrid from Spain did not finish high enough to qualify. In that situation, they were allowed to qualify by Sacrificing The Fourth Placed Qualifier that year. However, the FA insisted on its policy of only entering the four highest qualifiers. In addition, Everton (who finished fourth in the Premier League that year) justly bemoaned the fact that they would lose their place, which they had earned. UEFA , although initially reluctant to alter the rules, were forced to admit five English teams to the Champions League that year after receiving support from their own president Lennart Johansson ,8 FIFA president Sepp Blatter ,9 and prominent members of the game such as Franz Beckenbauer .10 Subsequently, UEFA ruled that the defending champions of the trophy qualify for the competition the following year regardless of their domestic league placing. This means that, in future, if a team wins the Champions League but finishes outside the top four in the Premier League, the team will be entered into the next season's Champions League at the expense of the fourth-placed team in leagues permitted to enter four clubs. The Premiership was recently promoted to second 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 now above Italy's Serie A .11 The top three leagues in Europe are currently allowed to enter four teams into the Champions League, although the new UEFA president Michel Platini has proposed changing the rules so as to limit any league's Champions League contingent to three at some point in the future. Sponsorship Since 1993, the Premier League has been sponsored. The sponsor has been able to determine the league's sponsorship name. The list below details who the sponsors have been and what they called the competition:
FINANCES The Premier League is the most lucrative football league in the world, with total club revenues of over £1.4 billion in 2005–06 according to , 30 May 2007 when new media rights deals start (see below). Based on May 2007 Exchange Rate s, £1.8 billion converts to annual league revenue of about US$ 3.55 billion. For the past few seasons, this figure is the fourth highest for any sports league worldwide, behind the annual revenues of the three most popular North America n Major Sports League s (the National Football League , Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association ), but slightly ahead of the National Hockey League . The new TV deal is expected to give the Premier League total revenue comparable to that of the NBA. Also, considering that the Premier League has only 20 clubs (compared to 32 in the NFL and 30 in the other major North American leagues), at roughly US$180 million the Premier League's average annual per-team revenues are expected to pull ahead of MLB's on the strength of its new TV deal, and will only be about $20 million behind the NFL. {Link without Title} Deloitte annually releases figures on club revenues through its " Football Money League " which is, expectedly, dominated by Premier League teams; although the top spot is currently held by Spanish club Real Madrid , who ended Manchester United's long run at the top spot in the 2004–05 season. Although there is considerable disparity in Premier League club revenues by American standards, the league's 20 clubs do distribute their league revenues far more equally compared to clubs in the other European leagues. For this reason, Deloitte currently lists eight Premier League clubs in the top 20 of the "Money League." No other league has more than four clubs in this table, and while La Liga rivals Real Madrid and F.C. Barcelona are currently ranked #1 and #2, no other Spanish clubs are listed in the top 20. After the Premier League's new TV deal comes into effect, the league-wide increase in revenues is expected to increase the Premier League clubs' standing in the list, and a Premier League club (most likely to be Manchester United ) may possibly regain the top spot. The 2005–06 average attendance of 34,364 for league matches is the Fourth Highest of any domestic professional sports league in the world, ahead of Serie A and La Liga, but behind the German Bundesliga. This represents an increase of over 60% from the average attendance of 21,126 recorded in the league's first season (1992–93).13 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 's 1994–95 deadline for All-seater Stadium s.1415 The 2005–06 figure is lower than the Premier League's record average attendance of 35,464, set during the 2002–03 season.16 With the new three year deal Sky will pay £1.314 billion for 92 games and Setanta £392 million for 46 games. Foreign TV rights will produce £625 million in revenue whilst Internet and Mobile Phone revenue will be £400 million. The top club in Premiership will receive £50m (including prize money as well as TV revenue) compared to £30.4 million with the current deal. £50m is comparable to what each NFL club receives from its league's TV contracts (the NFL shares its TV revenues equally). The bottom club will receive £26.8 million under the new deal. The new deals will, by a significant margin, provide the Premier League with the second richest set of television contracts negotiated by any sports league in the world when measured on a gross basis, behind only the NFL. If the British Pound continues to appreciate against the U.S. Dollar , then on a per-club basis Premier League TV revenues could realistically reach parity with American league under the existing contracts. The NFL's high TV contracts stem from that league's team specific sponsorships - with mandatory player promotion in TV, print and radio, as well as several live appearances each year. The figures in the preceding paragraph are for the TV rights to domestic matches only, and do not include revenues earned by clubs for participating in European competitions, most notably the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Cup . The former competition can be highly lucrative for clubs, especially if they advance to the latter stages of the tournament. 2005 champions Liverpool received a £20.5 million share of UEFA 's television revenue for winning the competition. Arsenal received about £22.4 million from UEFA The Following Season despite finishing runners-up in the tournament (due to the large revenues generated by the English television market, they actually received more money than winners F.C. Barcelona ). Liverpool reached the final again in 2007 and stand to benefit from UEFA's new, more lucrative deal. However, they will receive a smaller share of the increased total revenue this time around because two other Premier League clubs ( Chelsea and Manchester United ) also made it to the semi-finals and will receive significant shares of their own (£8 million each plus TV market pool shares and bonuses).1718 MEDIA COVERAGE England See Also: English football on television and Tottenham Hotspur ]] Television has played a major role in the history of the Premier League. The money from television rights has been vital in helping to create excellence both on and off the field. The League's decision to assign broadcasting rights to BSkyB in 1992 was at the time a radical decision, but one that has paid off. At the time pay television was an almost untested proposition in the UK market, as was charging fans to watch live televised football. However, a combination of Sky's strategy, the quality of Premier League football and the public's appetite for the game has seen the value of the Premier League's TV rights soar. It also saw the creation of regularly scheduled games on Sundays and Mondays, taking a page from the U.S. National Football League 's Sunday Night and Monday Night games. In both cases, the featured TV games are normally the only ones played at that time. The Premier League sells its television rights on a collective basis. This is in contrast to some European Leagues, including Serie A and La Liga , in which each club sells its rights individually, leading to a much higher share of the total income going to the top few clubs. The money is divided into three parts:19 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. The first Sky television rights agreement was worth £191 million over five seasons.20 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 2004–05 to 2006–07. The league brought in £320 million from the sale of its international rights for the three-year period from 2004–05 to 2006–07. It sold the rights itself on a territory-by-territory basis.21 Sky's monopoly was broken from August 2006 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 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.22 Sky and BT have 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.23 Overseas television rights fetched £625 million, nearly double the previous contract,24 and there was also a smaller deal for mobile phone rights. The total raised from these deals is more than £2.7 billion, giving Premiership clubs an average media income from league games of £45 million a year from 2007 to 2010. They also receive smaller amounts from media rights for the domestic cups and in some cases substantial amounts from media rights for European matches. The TV rights agreement between the Premier League and Sky has faced accusations of being a cartel, and a number of court cases have arisen 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.25 (pdf) 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.26 (pdf) Worldwide Promoted as "The Greatest Show On Earth", the Premier League is the world's most popular and most watched sporting league, followed worldwide by around half a billion people.27 It is widely watched overseas, with matches being shown in 195 countries,28 generally on networks owned and/or controlled by NewsCorp , which owns BSkyB and thus the primary UK and Ireland TV rights. NewsCorp has purchased ad space at some Premier League stadiums to promote Fox Soccer Channel , which is part of the company's US division (as in Britain and Ireland, the rights are shared with Setanta Sports). NewsCorp's Australian division, among others, also televises matches. Rogers Sportsnet , The Score and Setanta in Canada split the rights. The Premier League is particularly popular in Asia , where it is the most widely distributed sports programme.29 In the People's Republic Of China , matches attract television audiences between 100 million and 360 million, more than any other foreign sport, although pay television is relatively new to that region, so future audience numbers are somewhat uncertain.30 Due to this popularity, the league has held two pre-season tournaments in Asia, the only Premier League affiliated tournaments ever to have been held outside England. In July 2003 the FA Premier League Asia Cup was held in Malaysia , featuring three Premiership clubs, Chelsea, Newcastle United and Birmingham City, and the Malaysia National Team .31 In 2005 the Asia Trophy featured a similar format, held in Thailand and featuring the Thailand National Team competing against three English clubs — Everton , Manchester City and Bolton Wanderers , the latter of whom won the trophy.32 In 2007, the FA Premier League Asia Cup took place in Hong Kong, to be renamed the Barclays Asia Trophy and featured Liverpool, Portsmouth, Fulham and the Hong Kong FA Cup winning team, South China and BHRT in Bosnia and Herzgovina Radio coverage of the Premier League can also be heard in the United States and Canada on Sirius Satellite Radio ; several other countries also have radio broadcasters with Premier League coverage. The FA has faced difficulty fighting internet copyright infringement. In an effort to stop the broadcasting of streams of live games on the net they have hired NetResult, a company that specializes on protecting trademark rights on online. Although NetResult has cut down the number of sites offering free streams some see their actions as heavy handed. The British Broadcasting Corporation reported that NetResult, on behalf of the Premier League, emailed a warning to 101greatgoals.blogspot.com, an independent website that links to youtube videos, that forced its temporary closure.33 Recent overseas TV rights deals have sometimes included internet and/or mobile phone rights, taking advantage of technology to restrict usage to the countries included under the contract. PLAYERS Premier League clubs have almost complete freedom to sign whatever number and category of players they wish. There is no team or individual salary cap, no squad size limit, no age restrictions other than those applied by general employment law, no restrictions on the overall number of foreign players, and few restrictions on individual foreign players - all players with EU nationality, including those able to claim an EU passport through a parent or grandparent, are eligible to play, and top players from outside the EU are able to obtain UK work permits. The only area where the Premiership's player registration rules are more restrictive than those of some other football leagues, such as those of those of Belgium and Portugal, is that academy level non-EU players have little access to English football. At the inception of the Premier League in 1992–93 , just eleven players named in the starting line-ups for the first round of matches were 'foreign' (players hailing from outside of the United Kingdom or Republic Of Ireland ).34 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,35 and on 14 February 2005 Arsenal were the first to name a completely foreign 16-man squad for a match.36 In response to concerns that clubs were increasingly passing over young British players in favour of signing less-expensive foreign players, the Home Office in 1999 tightened its rules for granting work permits to players from countries outside of the European Union .37 Currently a non-EU player applying for the permit must have played for his country in at least 75% 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 if they believe that he is a special talent and "able to contribute significantly to the development of the game at the top level in the UK."38 Despite being an English competition, 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). 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 . At the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, the Premier League was the most represented league with more than eighty players in the competition, including 21 of the 23 players in England's Squad . As a result of the increasingly lucrative television deals, player wages rose sharply following the formation of the Premier League. In the first Premier League season the average player wage was £75,000 per year,39 but subsequently rose by an average 20% per year for a decade,40 peaking in the 2003–04 season, when the annual salary of the average Premier League player was £676,000.41 Transfer records The first few seasons of the Premier League saw the record transfer fee paid by English clubs broken almost every season, a practice that resumed in the first few years of the twenty-first century.
Alan Shearer's £15-million record lasted nearly five years in England, although his worldwide record was broken within a year. Rio Ferdinand's record lasted nearly four years, before it was marginally broken in 2006 by the summer transfer of Andriy Shevchenko from A.C. Milan to Chelsea for an unknown figure between £30 million and £56 million. The creation of the Premier League, therefore, has seen the record fee paid by English clubs broken 11 times in under 15 years. The highest fee paid for a teenager is £27 million. This fee was paid by Manchester United to Everton for England striker Wayne Rooney in 2004. PREMIERSHIP-FOOTBALL LEAGUE GULF See Also: Premiership-Football League gulf Since its split with the Football League , many established clubs in the Premier League have managed to distance themselves from their counterparts in lower leagues. Owing in large part to the disparity in revenue from television rights between the leagues,42 many newly promoted teams have found it difficult to avoid relegation in their first season in the Premier League. In every season except 2001–02 ( Blackburn Rovers , Bolton Wanderers and Fulham F.C. ) at least one Premier League newcomer has been relegated back to the Football League. In 1997–98 all three promoted clubs were relegated at the end of the season. The Premier League distributes a small portion of its television revenue to clubs that are relegated from the league in the form of "parachute payments". Starting with the 2006–07 season, these payments are in the amount of £6.5 million over the club's first two seasons in lower leagues, although this is set to rise to £11.2 million per year for clubs relegated in 2007–2008. Designed to help teams adjust to the loss of television revenues (the average Premier League team receives £45 million while the average Football League Championship club receives £1 million), critics maintain that the payments actually widen the gap between teams that have reached the Premiership and those that have not,43 leading to the common occurrence of teams " Bouncing Back " soon after their relegation. SECOND SEASON SYNDROME See Also: Second season syndrome Second season syndrome is a frequent problem which has affected teams in the second season following their promotion. On several occasions, a team has won promotion to the '''Premier League''' and performed very well in their first season, only to suffer a substantial downturn in fortunes during their second season. The most high profile example of this is Ipswich Town , who were promoted to the Premier League in 2000, finished fifth in 2001, but were relegated on the last day of the season in 2002. 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 . Premier League members for 2007–08 The following twenty clubs will be competing in the Premier League during the 2007–08 season. Former Premier League members A total of forty clubs have played in the Premier League between 1992 and 2006. Two other clubs ( Luton Town and Notts County ) were signatories to the original agreement that created the Premier League, but were relegated prior to the inaugural Premiership season and have never returned to the top flight. For a list of all clubs past and present see List Of FA Premier League Clubs . Seven clubs have been members of the Premiership for every season (15) since its inception. This group is comprised of Arsenal , Aston Villa , Chelsea , Everton , Liverpool , Manchester United , and Tottenham Hotspur . STADIA See Also: List of English football stadia by capacity TOP SCORERS Former Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United Striker Alan Shearer holds the record for most Premiership goals with 260. Shearer finished among the top ten goal scorers in 10 out of his 14 seasons in the Premier League and won the top scorer title three times. 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 Shearer's mark of three titles which he won consecutively from 1994–95 through 1996–97. Other multiple winners include Michael Owen and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink who have won two titles each. Andrew Cole and Alan Shearer hold the record for most goals in a season (34) - for Newcastle United and Blackburn Rovers respectively. Cole's record came in the 1993–94 season, while Shearer's came in 1994–95, both of which were 42-game seasons. Shearer's mark of 31 goals in 1995–96 remains the highest total in a 38-game season. Didier Drogba won the Premiership Golden Boot in the 2006–2007 season, in doing this, he became the only person to win the Golden Boot who doesn't take penalties for their club. Manchester United became the first team to have scored 1,000 goals in this league after Cristiano Ronaldo scored, in a 4–1 defeat by Middlesbrough , in the 2005–06 season, having been the first team to have conceded a Premiership goal following the League's inception. Arsenal are the only other team to have reached the 1,000 goal mark. At the close of the 2006–07 season, only two players held the prestige of having scored in each of the 15 Premiership competitions. These were Bolton Wanderers player/coach Gary Speed and Manchester United veteran winger Ryan Giggs , both former captains of the Wales National Football Team . SEE ALSO
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