All of the Premier League on one page: today's stories told by hundreds of British and international outlets, the live table, fixtures, results and the news of every club, translated into English.
InghilterraThe Premier League is a professional association football league in England and the highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football League (EFL).
Seasons usually run from August to May, with each team playing 38 matches: two against each other team, one home and one away. Most games are played on weekend afternoons, with occasional weekday evening fixtures.
The competition was founded as the FA Premier League on 20 February 1992, after First Division (the top tier since 1888) clubs broke away from the English Football League. The league is a corporation governed by its member clubs and managed by a chief executive. The Premier League has a £6.7 billion domestic television rights deal, with Sky and TNT Sports showing at least 215 and 52 games, respectively. In the 2022–2025 cycle, the Premier League's international broadcast rights were worth £5.3 billion, surpassing £5.1 billion domestic rights for the first time. As of 2023–24, clubs received £2.8 billion in central payments, with additional solidarity payments made to relegated clubs.
The Premier League is the world's most-watched sports league, broadcast in 212 territories to a potential audience of 4.7 billion people. More than 1.4 billion watched live games during the 2024–25 season. The league has the highest average match attendance in association football, at 40,421 per game, with most stadiums near full capacity. The Premier League is ranked first in the UEFA coefficient rankings based on performances in European competitions over the past five seasons. English clubs have won the second-highest number of European Cup / UEFA Champions League titles, with a record six clubs winning fifteen European cups in total.
Fifty-one clubs have competed in the Premier League since its inception in 1992: 49 from England and two from Wales. Seven have won the title: Manchester United (13), Manchester City (8), Chelsea (5), Arsenal (4), Liverpool (2), Blackburn Rovers and Leicester City (1 each). Only six clubs have played in every season to date: Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United, and Tottenham Hotspur.
Origins
Despite major European success in the 1970s and early 1980s, the mid-to-late 1980s marked a low point for English football. Stadiums were ageing with poor facilities, hooliganism was rife, and all English clubs faced a 5-year ban from European competition following the events of the 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster, with Liverpool facing an extra year. 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 attendance and revenues, and several top English players had moved abroad.
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 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 (between the fans of Liverpool and the fans of Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield, Yorkshire on 15 April 1989) was published in January 1990.
During the 1980s, major English clubs began transforming 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 key figures in this shift. The drive for greater revenue and influence led First Division clubs to threaten a breakaway from the Football League. They also began demanding higher fees from broadcasters. As a result, they secured increased voting power and a 50% share of all television and sponsorship income in 1986. Before 1986, clubs received only around £25,000 per year from television rights, and this rose to £600,000 by 1988. The Football League had secured £6.3 million for a two-year deal in 1986, followed by a £44 million deal over four years in 1988 with ITV, with top clubs taking 75% of the income.
Negotiations took place in 1988 under the threat of ten clubs forming a "super league". They were persuaded to stay, but with leading clubs securing the bulk of the deal. The talks also revealed that the bigger clubs would need the entire First Division to gain enough support for a future breakaway. By the early 1990s, such a move was again being considered, especially as clubs faced the financial burden of stadium upgrades recommended by the Taylor Report.
In 1990, the managing director of London Weekend Television (LWT), Greg Dyke, met the representatives of the "Big Five" football clubs in England (Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, Everton, and Arsenal) over a dinner. The meeting was to pave the way for a breakaway from the Football League. 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. 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 have an amicable relationship with the Football League at the time and considered it a way to weaken the Football League's position. The FA released a report in June 1991, Blueprint for the Future of Football, that supported the plan for the Premier League, with the FA as the ultimate authority that would oversee the breakaway league.