FA Premier League

"Premier League" redirects here. See List of professional sports leagues for other sports leagues which (maybe unofficially) are referred to by this name. 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 or the EPL 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.

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 20 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

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. 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, which worked 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 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, which has put the Premier League at war with football's biggest governing body.Fifa wants 18-team Premier League, BBC Sport, 8 June 2006

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.First fall in Premiership wages, BBC News, 31 May 2006, reporting on Deloitte's review of football finance in 2004–05. 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.UEFA Country Ranking 2006

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 Dollar|US$" target="_blank" >^*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. 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, 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).

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: 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. 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. BSkyB's monopoly was finally 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 Union 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.BBC keeps Premiership highlights, bbc.co.uk, 8 June 2006. 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.TV deal pays another £84m, Daily Telegraph, 26 May, 2006. Overseas and mobile phone rights are expected to fetch a further several hundred million pounds.

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.

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.Barrie Clement, Pubs win the right to show football on Saturday afternoons, The Independent, 12 April 2006

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. 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, 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).Ron Atkinson, England need to stem the foreign tide, The Guardian, August 23 2002 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 is the most represented league at the 2006 World Cup, with more than eighty players in the competition.

Premier League clubs

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

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 Played in every Premier League seasonFounding member of Premier League.	4th	1904–05	1919–20
Aston Villa	16th	1888–89	1988–89
Blackburn Rovers	6th	1888–89	2001–02
Bolton Wanderers	8th	1888–89	2001–02
Charlton Athletic	13th	1936–37	2000–01
Chelsea	1st	1907–08	1989–90
Everton	11th	1888–89	1954–55
Fulham	12th	1949-50	2001–02
Liverpool	3rd	1894–95	1962–63
Manchester City	15th	1899–1900	2002–03
Manchester United	2nd	1892–93	1975–76
Middlesbrough	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	2nd in the Championship	1893–94	2006–07
Tottenham Hotspur	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 and 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, 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, were promoted to the Premiership for the first time since the 1993-94 season, after were held to a draw against Reading.
On 21 May, gained promotion to the Premiership by defeating 3-0 in the Championship play-off final. They had previously defeated 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.

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 Middlesbrough deducted 3 points for failure to fulfill fixture at Blackburn Rovers on 21 December 1996	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 Now known as Milton Keynes Dons F.C.	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 Currently active in Premier league team's roster	185
3	Thierry Henry	164
4	Robbie Fowler	159
5	Les Ferdinand	149
6	Teddy Sheringham	145
7	Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink	126
8	Michael Owen	125
9	Dwight Yorke	122
10	Ian Wright	113

By season

The season top scorer is listed on the English football champions page along with the winners of each season.

Notes

External links

FA Premier League | English football competitions | National football (soccer) premier leagues | English cultural icons | 1992 establishments

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