Prior to the outbreak of the COVID 19 pandemic, sports was on the front burner and the football leagues in Europe where in their competitive stages. The leagues have now been put on hold pending the eventual defeat of the Corona virus. But why is football and especially the English Premier League hugely popular?
Football is certainly the number one sports in the world and accounts for over a billion followership worldwide. Football is not just huge because of its amazing following all over the world but it is also a money spinner in many ways.
The German Bundesliga, French Ligue One, Italian Serie A, the Spanish La Liga, and the English Premier league are the elite leagues that have attracted incredible followership all across the globe. The UEFA Champions league which is an annual tourney to determine the numero uno amongst all the top European clubs is the icing on the cake that has made European football a mecca of sorts. Interestingly, over the last ten years, the meteoric rise of the English premier league has continued to astound followers of the round leather game. The Premier League is the biggest in terms of revenue generated, followership all around the world and TV viewership.
English clubs like Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United, and Liverpool have a worldwide fan base that accounts for 600 million people in 200 countries watching via TV and the internet every weekend.
Premier League TV rights to games for 2019-2022 was sold for £4.464bn to Sky Sports and BT sports with the remaining batch of TV rights still to be contested for. Social media giants like Facebook and Amazon are locked in a hot contest to acquire the remaining tranche of the rights. This is a pointer to the fact that the premier league is going to be on top of league football for many years to come.
What is the reason for the astronomical rise of England’s Premier League one would ask? It is quite simple actually. It comes down to what we’ll call democracy. In England, revenues are shared from top to bottom irrespective of your actual contribution or position at the end of the season. Every club gets a chunk of revenues from domestic and international TV rights. This sets England apart from all the other leagues. In the other leagues, a larger chunk of the revenue generated from TV rights is shared by just the top teams such as what is evident in the Spanish LA Liga, where the top teams Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Atletico Madrid take a significant portion and just some few million Euros is shared among the lower cadre. What this means is that while all the clubs in England have enough money to develop their facilities and also court some of the best players anywhere in the world, only the top teams can afford to do that in other parts of Europe.
In England however, the best of the best converge. This makes the league all the more competitive. At the start of every season, the top six clubs- Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, and Tottenham Hotspur have a chance of winning the league. In the last ten seasons, no one club has won the league back to back. This is not the case in other parts of Europe. Juventus has all but won the Scudetto for the seventh time in a row. In Spain, Barcelona is on course to win the domestic double for the second successive season. Bayern Munich looks likely to win its fifth Bundesliga title. The other leagues are not as competitive as the English premier league.
English clubs also boast of some of the best sporting facilities in the world. Tottenham Hotspur just moved into its £1billion stadium at White Hart Lane. Theatre of Dreams, Manchester United’s home ground sits a capacity of over 70, 000 and many other home grounds of these clubs serve as opportunities to hit multiple streams of income such as season tickets and stadium tours. English football fans can go any length to support their clubs including paying huge amounts to watch their team play live and also buy club memorabilia. This is why the English premier league is first among equals.