Since its creation in 1992 The Premiership has been making great steps in development, it is the strongest league in the world at this current stage. It has an annual turnover of £1.765 billion, which makes it comparable to the N.B.A which is the richest sports league in the world, seeming that The Premiership only has 20 teams and the N.B.A has 30 teams it is a great complement. It is a huge difference when you compare it to the 1980’s, it was the darkest moment in English football history, the stadiums were out of date and hazardous, hooliganism was rife within most topflight clubs. English teams were band from European competition following the death of 39 fans at Heysel Stadium in Belgium just before kick-off between Liverpool and Juventus for the 1985 European Final. Then in 1989, 96 fans died and 150 were injured at Hillsborough due to over crowding in the FA Cup semi-final game between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. There was a report made by Lord Justice Taylor strongly recommending that all clubs should have all-seater stadia, due to the Taylor report all topflight clubs were faced with huge costs in developing their grounds to meet certain safety recommendations, up to 10 teams in 1988 were threatening to break away to generate revenue from Television rights. It was deemed that extreme measures were required to develop the English game.
On the 17th July 1991 The Founder Members Agreement was signed, this entailed that The League would have commercial independence from the Football League and FA, giving them full rights on its broadcast and sponsorship deals. On the 20th of February 1992 the then current First division teams resigned from the football league as a whole and three months later the Premiership was established as a limited company. The Premiership signed their first broadcasting deal with Sky TV in 1992 in an initial deal worth £191 million over a five year deal. The latest deal that runs from 2007-2010 seasons between broadcasters Sky TV and Setanta TV is a reported £1.7 billion. Research company Deloitte who annually release figures of clubs turnover in the world, presently have 8 English clubs in the top 20 richest clubs in the world, until recently a Premiership club had held top spot for over a decade. Another major source of income for the Premiership is gate receipts, the average attendance in 2005-2006 was 34,364 for league matches, the average is above that of the Italian Serie A and the Spanish La Liga, but somewhat surprisingly second behind the German Bundesliga. But shows the growth of the league since its founding in 1992 when the average attendance was only 21,126. With the growth of crowds obviously ticket prices have risen, to obscene levels some have said, unfortunately clubs do not publish there average ticket prices at this moment, but on a rough estimate clubs have put prices up by 600 per cent since the 1989-1990 season. Prices for this season are higher than ever, for example look at Arsenal, for category B games they charge between £32 to £66 and in category A games they charge £46 to £96. This is a drastic difference when you compare it to Liverpool who mostly charge £32 for category B games and £34 for category A games. The game is slowly being taken away from the working man.
The Premiership is the most watched league in the whole world, with over 200 countries broadcasting their games, which is the reason behind the huge money going around the clubs at the moment. The television revenue is distributed by the Premier League, 50 per cent of total money is given as an equal share basis to the 20 clubs in the league, while relegated clubs are given a share but in the form of a parachute payment. Also 25 per cent is paid as facility fees, which is determined by the amount of appearances made on television and the final 25 per cent is paid in merit payments, depending on where the club finishes in the league. There is also another side of the Premiership, last year they donated 5 per cent of there domestic broadcast revenue , that’s £20 million, to fund grass roots football initiatives. In late 2006 it was announced by an independent agency that The Premier league is one of the leading contributors in good causes in the U.K totalling £30,484,408 in 2005. It is Projected that this season they will contribute around £50 million to good causes.
The structure of The Premier League is a complicated structure, it is operated as a corporation that is owned by its 20 member clubs. A total of 40 clubs have been members of the Premier League between 1992-2006. Seven of these clubs have been members of the League since its inception. The group comprises Arsenal, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.
Each club is deemed as a shareholder with one vote, this vote is used on such issues as rule changes and contracts. The clubs are the ones who nominate and elect a Chairman, Chief Executive and board of Directors to oversee the daily operations of the league. The FA as mentioned before does not have day-today control on of operations but does have a veto power as a special shareholder when elections are made for the Chairman, Chief Executive and Rule changes. Also the Premier League sends representatives to UEFA’s European Club Forum, they are responsible for electing three members to UEFA’s Club Competition Committee, who are involved in operations in UEFA competitions such as Champions League and UEFA Cup.
With such heavy investment from overseas and foreign owners of clubs now it is obvious that the Premier League will have foreign players too. There are currently over 337 foreign players registered to Premier League teams, the total number of countries represented is 66. In 1992 there was just 11 non-British or Irish footballers in the Premier League. On the 26th December 1999 Chelsea were the first team to field an entirely foreign starting line-up, on the 14th February 2005 Arsenal were the first club to announce a completely foreign 16 man squad for a match. That is a drastic climb over the last 16 years, there are pro’s and cons that comes with this, obviously you get some very good foreign players that add technique and class to the league but it also detrimental to the National team also, with the lack of English talent that is not given enough first team experience because of this. It can also be seen that a lot of foreign players have been brought into the league due to the amount of foreign coaches over the last decade, at this moment there are 5 non-British managers in the league.
The most successful team in Premier League history is Manchester United managed by the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson. They have won the title 9 times out of 15 and have never finished below 3rd place, with Sir Alex there have only been another three managers to win the Premier League non of them being an English man, they are Kenny Dalglish, Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho, two English mangers have come in 2nd place and they are Ron Atkinson and Kevin Keegan. With so many good managers obviously there will be some very good players, there are only two players who have scored in every season since the inception of the Premiership, that is Gary Speed and Ryan Giggs. The Highest goal scorer in Premiership history is Alan Shearer with 260 goals for Southampton, Blackburn and Newcastle respectively, finishing among the top ten goal scorers in 10 out of his 14 seasons in the Premier League. Shearer also held the highest transfer fee paid in the world at the time which was £15 million from Blackburn to Newcastle. The Highest fee paid by any Premiership club is Chelsea’s Andrei Shevchenko with his transfer from AC Milan for £30 million in 2006. The highest fee paid for a teenager is £30 million by Manchester United to Everton for Wayne Rooney, this is based on bonuses and instalments.
The Premier League has offered so much to fans all over the world and im sure it will continue to do so for many years to come. With the European powers pushing for a limit on foreign players per team, it might well change again and we will only see the top foreign players grace our pitches soon, with more English talent been given a chance to prove their worth. There is no doubt that with the money that is generated the standard of football will only get better. Long live the Premier League.
