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Introduction to the Premier League Competition

The FA Premier League represents the pinnacle of English club football. Here, the 20 finest teams in the country take part in the most exciting and demanding league in the world.

The FA Premier League remains the pinnacle of English club football. Here, the 20 finest teams in the country take part in the most exciting and demanding league in the world.

Launched in 1992 to improve the standards of football at the highest level and take the game into the 21st century, the competition is now thriving, regularly attracting a global audience of over 570 million in 162 countries.

The FA Premier League has a huge array of footballing talent with players from countries that span the globe. And alongside the host of overseas stars are also England's finest, the likes of Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Rio Ferdinand and Wayne Rooney to name just a few.

The FA Premier League is where the stars of the future are born. John Terry, Stewart Downing and Ashley Cole are all crucial members of their respective sides. With the 2004/05 season seeing Chelsea set a new points record as they romped to their first title in 50 years, the eyes of the world will be on the Premier League to see who can challenge them this year. And with record numbers still passing through the turnstiles, the competition continues to grow.

Accept no imitations, the FA Premier League is the place to be.

Introduction to the Premier League Competition
The FA Premier League represents the pinnacle of English club football. Here, the 20 finest teams in the country take part in the most exciting and demanding league in the world.

The FA Premier League remains the pinnacle of English club football. Here, the 20 finest teams in the country take part in the most exciting and demanding league in the world.

Launched in 1992 to improve the standards of football at the highest level and take the game into the 21st century, the competition is now thriving, regularly attracting a global audience of over 570 million in 162 countries.

The FA Premier League has a huge array of footballing talent with players from countries that span the globe. And alongside the host of overseas stars are also England's finest, the likes of Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Rio Ferdinand and Wayne Rooney to name just a few.

The FA Premier League is where the stars of the future are born. John Terry, Stewart Downing and Ashley Cole are all crucial members of their respective sides. With the 2004/05 season seeing Chelsea set a new points record as they romped to their first title in 50 years, the eyes of the world will be on the Premier League to see who can challenge them this year. And with record numbers still passing through the turnstiles, the competition continues to grow.

Accept no imitations, the FA Premier League is the place to be.

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

Overview

The FA Premier League comprises the top 20 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 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. 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 2003–04 according to Deloitte, more than 50 percent above its nearest competitor, Italy's Serie A [1]. It is currently 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 was the best performing league in 2004–05[2].

Based on December 2005 exchange rates, £1.3 billion converts to annual league revenue of about US$2.2 billion. This figure is comparable with the annual revenues of American major sports leagues.

The 2004-05 average attendance of 33,893 for league matches is the fourth highest of any domestic professional sports league in the world. The only leagues ahead of the Premier League are:

* The runaway leader in average game attendance, the National Football League in the United States (American football).
* The leader in football, the First Bundesliga in Germany. Note that the total season attendance is higher in England, as the German league has only 18 teams to the Premiership's 20.
* The Australian Football League, the highest-level competition in Australian rules football.

The competition

There are 20 clubs in the Premier League. During the course of a season 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. At the end of each season 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 3rd to 6th placed clubs, 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 5 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).

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)
* 2001–08: Barclays (Barclays Premiership; from 2001-2004, it was known as the Barclaycard Premiership)

Worldwide reach

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[3]. Over 260 foreign players compete in the league, and 101 stars from England's domestic leagues competed in the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan. It is widely watched overseas, with matches being shown in over 150 countries.

Premier League teams such as Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and star players over the years such as Eric Cantona, Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Alan Shearer, Gianfranco Zola and subsequently Thierry Henry, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Wayne Rooney have become worldwide sporting icons. The Premier League is particularly popular in Scandinavia, with ferry operators offering "football ferries" to Norwegian football fans wishing to see their favourite teams in action.

The Premier League is also very popular in Asia. In Southeast Asia, it is broadcasted by ESPN-Star, a collaboration of ESPN and Star Sports. The broadcast is done from Singapore.

In the USA, it is the cornerstone league shown on the Fox Soccer Channel.

In general, Premier League games air on networks owned and/or controlled by NewsCorp, which owns the primary UK and Ireland TV rights.

Number of foreigners

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 were foreign (players hailing from outside of the United Kingdom).[4] 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 2005: two Scots (Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United and Kenny Dalglish, Blackburn Rovers), a Frenchman (Arsene Wenger, Arsenal) and a Portuguese (Jose Mourinho, Chelsea).

Television broadcasting rights

Television has played a major role in the history of the F.A. 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 a relatively 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 F.A. Premier League football and the public’s appetite for the game has seen the value of the F.A. Premier League’s broadcast rights soar and delivered huge benefits to the game.

The first BSkyB television agreement was worth £191 million over five seasons. The next contract, negotiated to start from the 1997/98 season, rose to £670 million over four seasons. The Premier League’s current £1.024 billion deal with BSkyB runs over the course of three seasons from August 2004.

However, the decision to go with pay TV is still criticised by many, particularly with reference to the cost when compared with other pay TV platforms around Europe that offer coverage of live top flight domestic football.

Also, the F.A. 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. However, these broadcasting restrictions can be circumvented either by subscribing to overseas satellites broadcasters (thus creating somewhat of a grey market), or through various streaming networks on the internet. Although this is not illegal on the part of the viewer, it is illegal for anyone to provide such services knowingly, which has lead to heavy fines for public houses in the United Kingdom which have shown these games in their establishments.

History

The FA Premier League was formed on 20th February 1992 and played its first season in 1992–93. This meant a break-up of the 104-year-old Football League that had operated until then with four divisions. A number of events during the mid and late Eighties had sent clear signals that fundamental changes were needed to the structure of professional football. The English game was at possibly its lowest ebb ever. 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 became a selling league as many top players were lured by the financial attractions of the Continent.

A radical restructuring was required if English football was to prosper. A proposal for the establishment of the league was tabled that would bring more money into the game overall. The Founder Members Agreement, signed on 17th 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 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.

In 1992 the First Division Clubs resigned from the football league en masse and on 27th May 1992 the FA Premier League was formed as a limited company, which worked out of an office at the then Football Association's headquarters, Lancaster Gate.

The league originally comprised 22 clubs, however, owing to FIFA insistance on domestic leagues reducing the number of games clubs played, the number was reduced to 20 in 1995, when 4 teams were relegated from the league and only 2 teams were promoted. There have at times been discussions of reducing the number further to 18, however there are no known plans to do so.

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