Premier League The Premier League, often referred to as the English Premier League or the EPL outside England, is the top level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion Premier League and relegation with the English Football League (EFL). Seasons run from August to May with each team playing 38 matches (playing all 19 other teams both home and away).[1] Most games are played on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The competition was founded as the FA Premier League on 20 February 1992 following the decision of clubs in the Football League First Division to break away from the Football League, founded in 1888, and take advantage of a lucrative television rights deal.[2] The deal was worth around £1 billion a year domestically as Founded 20 February 1992 of 2013–14, with Sky and BT Group securing the domestic rights to broadcast 116 and 38 games Country England respectively.[3] The league is a corporation in which the member clubs act as shareholders, and generates Confederation UEFA €2.2 billion per year in domestic and international television rights.[4] Clubs were apportioned central payment revenues of £2.4 billion in 2016–17, with a further £343 million in solidarity payments to English Number of teams 20 [5] Football League (EFL) clubs. Level on pyramid 1 The Premier League is the most-watched sports league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to Relegation to EFL Championship 643 million homes and a potential TV audience of 4.7 billion people.[6][7] For the 2018–19 season average Domestic cup(s) FA Cup Premier League match attendance was at 38,181,[8] second to the Bundesliga's 43,500,[9] while aggregated FA Community Shield [10] attendance across all matches is the highest of any league at 14,508,981. Most stadium occupancies are League cup(s) EFL Cup near capacity.[11] The Premier League ranks second in the UEFA coefficients of leagues based on performances in European competitions over the past five seasons as of 2019, only behind Spain's La International cup(s) UEFA Champions Liga.[12] League UEFA Europa League Forty-nine clubs have competed since the inception of the Premier League in 1992: forty-seven English and Current champions Manchester City (4th two Welsh clubs. Six of them have won the title: Manchester United (13), Chelsea (5), Manchester City (4), title) Arsenal (3), Blackburn Rovers (1), and Leicester City (1). The record of most points in a Premier League season is 100, set by Manchester City in 2017–18. (2018–19) Most championships Manchester United (13 titles) Contents Most appearances Gareth Barry (653) Top goalscorer Alan Shearer (260) History Origins TV partners Sky Sports, BT Sport, Foundation Amazon (live matches) "Top Four" dominance (2000s) Sky Sports, BBC Sport Emergence of the "Big Six" (2010s) (highlights) Development List of international broadcasters Corporate structure Website premierleague.com (htt Competition format p://www.premierleague. Competition com) Promotion and relegation 2019–20 Premier League Clubs Champions Wins by club 2019–20 season Maps Other clubs Non-English clubs Wales Scotland and Ireland International competitions Qualification for European competitions Qualification criteria for 2020–21 Previous seasons Performance in international competition Sponsorship Finances Media coverage United Kingdom and Ireland Worldwide Widening gap with lower leagues Stadiums Managers Players Appearances Foreign players and transfer regulations Player wages Player transfer fees Top scorers Awards Trophy Player and manager awards 20 Seasons Awards See also References External links History Origins Despite significant European success in the 1970s and early 1980s, the late 1980s marked a low point for English football. Stadiums were crumbling, supporters endured poor facilities, hooliganism was rife, and English clubs were banned from European competition for five years following the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985.[13] The Football League First Division, the top level of English football since 1888, was behind leagues such as Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga in attendances and revenues, and several top English players had moved abroad.[14] By the turn of the 1990s the downward trend was starting to reverse. At the 1990 FIFA World Cup, England reached the semi-finals; UEFA, European football's governing body, lifted the five-year ban on English clubs playing in European competitions in 1990, resulting in Manchester United lifting the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1991. The Taylor Report on stadium safety standards, which proposed expensive upgrades to create all-seater stadiums in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster, was published in January 1990.[15] In the 1980s, major English clubs had begun to transform into business ventures, applying commercial principles to club administration to maximise revenue. Martin Edwards of Manchester United, Irving Scholar of Tottenham Hotspur, and David Dein of Arsenal were among the leaders in this transformation.[16] The commercial imperative led to the top clubs seeking to increase their power and revenue; the clubs in Division One threatened to break away from the Football League, and in so doing they managed to increase their voting power and gain more favourable financial arrangement, taking a 50% share of all television and sponsorship income in 1986.[16] They demanded that television companies should pay more for their coverage of football matches,[17] and revenue from television grew in importance. The Football League received £6.3 million for a two-year agreement in 1986, but by 1988, in a deal agreed with ITV, the price rose to £44 million over four years with the leading clubs taking 75% of the cash.[18][19] According to Scholar who was involved in the negotiations of television deals, each of the First Division clubs received only around £25,000 per year from television rights before 1986, this increased to around £50,000 in the 1986 negotiation, then to £600,000 in 1988.[20] The 1988 negotiations were conducted under the threat of ten clubs leaving to form a "super league", but they were eventually persuaded to stay with the top clubs taking the lion's share of the deal.[18][21][22] The negotiations also convinced the bigger clubs that in order to receive enough votes, they needed to take the whole of First Division with them instead of a smaller "super league".[23] By the beginning of the 1990s, the big clubs again considered breaking away, especially now that they had to fund the cost of stadium upgrade as proposed by the Taylor Report.[24] Foundation In 1990, the managing director of London Weekend Television (LWT), Greg Dyke, met with the representatives of the "big five" football clubs in England (Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham, Everton and Arsenal) over a dinner.[25] The meeting was to pave the way for a break away from The Football League.[26] Dyke believed that it would be more lucrative for LWT if only the larger clubs in the country were featured on national television and wanted to establish whether the clubs would be interested in a larger share of television rights money.[27] The five clubs agreed with the suggestion and decided to press ahead with it; however, the league would have no credibility without the backing of The Football Association and so David Dein of Arsenal held talks to see whether the FA were receptive to the idea. The FA did not enjoy an amicable relationship with the Football League at the time and considered it as a way to weaken the Football League's position.[28] The FA released a report in June 1991, Blueprint for the Future of Football, that supported the plan for Premier League with FA the ultimate authority that would oversee the breakaway league.[23] At the close of the 1991 season, a proposal was tabled for the establishment of a new league 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.[29] The newly formed top division would have commercial independence from The Football Association and the Football League, giving the FA Premier League licence to negotiate its own broadcast and sponsorship agreements. The argument given at the time was that the extra income would allow English clubs to compete with teams across Europe.[14] Although Dyke played a significant role in the creation of the Premier League, Dyke and ITV would lose out in the bidding for broadcast rights as BSkyB won with a bid of £304 million over five years with the BBC awarded the highlights package broadcast on Match of the Day.[25][27] 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 Football Association's then headquarters in Lancaster Gate.[14] This meant a break-up of the 104-year-old Football League that had operated until then with four divisions; the Premier League would operate with a single division and the Football League with three. There was no change in competition format; the same number of teams competed in the top flight, and promotion and relegation between the Premier League and the new First Division remained the same as the old First and Second Divisions with three teams relegated from the league and three promoted.[22] The league held its first season in 1992–93. It was composed of 22 clubs for that season. The first Premier League goal was scored by