The Premier League – England’s top tier club football competition – has been widely regarded as the best league in Europe, indeed the world, for some time now.
The Premier League consists of England’s 20 top clubs. But, although it has been regarded as the top league in terms of footballing quality for quite a while, it is only recently that the Premier League has established itself as the absolute financial powerhouse of European soccer as well.
Now, for the first time, the Premier League Clubs make up more than half of the so called “Money League Top 20” in Europe.
Eleven of the Premier League clubs are currently in the top 20. Manchester City is number one with a yearly revenue of 731 million euro. Real Madrid of Spain has revenues of 714 million euro, but another Premier League Club is third, Liverpool with a 702 million euro revenue. And Manchester United come in fourth with a revenue of almost 687 million euro.
The fact that the Premier League has a solid grip on the world footballing market, is highlighted by the fact that five of the so called “bix six” clubs, have reported revenue increases of 15 per cent or more annually.
These figures, released by Deloittes Sports Business Group, also divulge that The Premier League is the only one of the big five European leagues, that has experienced an increase in its media rights value, during its most recent rights sale process.
The Premier League and sports betting
Even in terms of sports betting, The Premier League is solidly in pole position.
At the turn of 2020, The Premier League generated more wagering, for example, than the Italian Serie A and the German Bundesliga combined.
Safebettingsites.com reported at the beginning of this decade, that The Premier League generated wagering worldwide of more than 68 billion euro. It can be interesting to note in this regard, that according to a study done by “Statista data and Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio” in 2021, European football is a market with annual betting around 188 billion euro. This is around 12 per cent of the betting market worldwide.
The English Football League (EFL) has seen betting exceeding over 122 million euros per season, with The Premier League making up the bulk of this figure.
There are a number of reasons for the popularity of the Premier League amongst the sports betting community, regardless if this is cryptobetting or regular sportsbook betting. One is, of course, the vast media exposure. Broadcasting companies such as Sky Sports, BT Sports, TNT Sports and Amazon Prime Video – amongst others – see to it that The Premier League can be watched by almost 190 countries all over the globe.
Also, The Premier League is definitely one of the most competitive leagues to be found anywhere in the world. There are very few “easy matches”. All Premier League clubs have players in their squads with international caps. In many cases, in fact, the entire starting eleven! None of the squads in The Premier League are “non-starters”, and every game can at any time, see a “Twist in the tale” as all teams have players capable of exceptional individual performances.
Also, The Premier League has numerous sources of data available to bettors. This makes it very easy for bettors to utilise strategical analysis, to enhance their predictions.
Needless to say, the iconic status of the Premier League stars, such as Erling Haaland of Manchester City, Mohamed Salah of Liverpool or Hyeung-Min Son of Tottenham Hotspur also contribute to attracting bettors to The Premier League.
How it all started
What is now the Premier League and a multi billion dollar or multi billion euro -industry, started off in 1992.
Until then, it had been the so called “Division one” of English football, between 1888 and 1992.
As with the inception of many good things in the history of sport, The Premier League which is today the pride of the Football Association (FA), was brought about by what was more or less a “crisis” situation.
In the mid-80s, the attendances were at an all time low, and the most famous actors of the English top flight were actually the footballing hooligans.
In 1985-1986, the league even started without TV coverage, since no deal could be agreed.
The biggest clubs in England were extremely disappointed with this situation of course, and really wanted to see the emergence of something new.
In the first three seasons, The Premier League consisted of 22 clubs.
But The Premier League now has 20 clubs. And since its inception, four clubs have dominated the so called EPL (English Premier League):
Manchester United with 13 wins, Manchester City with 9 wins, Chelsea with 5 wins and Arsenal with 3.
Three clubs – Blackburn Rovers, Leicester City and Liverpool – have one Premier League title each.
It should be noted though, that Liverpool have been one of the strongest Premier League Clubs over recent years. And counting from 1888 to date, only Manchester United have more titles than Liverpool, with 20 top flight league trophies. Liverpool have 18.
Todays Premier League is a money-spinning machine with lots of revenue involved. The matches are broadcasted in around 190 countries and the television contracts are extremely expensive.
Recently, Sky Sports, TNT Sports and the BBC split the live and highlights rights for 2025 to 2029 for 6.7 billion British pounds, over 8.4 billion US dollars.
The ticket revenue is also significant. Manchester United home stadium Old Trafford not only has a 75,000 plus spectator capacity – the average attendance for a season also tends to be around this figure!
More and more clubs also tend to have expensive ticketing, getting a ticket for a Chelsea game at under 60 euro, for example, is extremely difficult. Even though the official pricing for the fixtures at Stamford Bridge that are not high profile, may sometimes be listed as half of this.
The German Bundesliga has traditionally been the European footballing league wit the largest stadium attendances, tending to be around 40,000 – 45 000 spectators per game on average. But with many premier league clubs investing money in huge stadiums in recent years, it should just be a matter of time until the Premier League is number one in this regard as well.
Of course, all successful business ventures tend to be challenged sooner or later.
Recently, plans for a “European Super League” have emerged. This has of course, been opposed by the Premier League which has officially declared that it “Continues to reject any such concept”.
Only time will tell for how long the Premier League will stay on, as the super stage of European and world football.
But as of now, this position is undisputed.
