Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The English Premier League

Starting point is 00:00:00 The most popular sports league in the world in terms of the number of people who follow and watch it is the English Premier League. Unlike other sports leagues, the English Premier League is relatively new. It was only created in the early 90s in response to the poor conditions of top division football at the time. Since then, it has brought in billions of pounds in revenue for the clubs that have played in the league, as well as some of the world's highest salaries for its players. Learn more about the English Premier League, how it was formed and its possible future. On this episode, of everything everywhere daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

Starting point is 00:00:55 It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The English Premier League, hereby known as the EPL, is the top tier of English, football and is arguably the most popular professional sports league in the entire world. In terms of the total number of fans around the world and the size of its television audience, nothing can approach the EPL.

Starting point is 00:01:28 In terms of the quality of competition, global rankings of national leagues puts the EPL above the top leagues of Spain, Italy, Germany, and France. And just to clarify for all of my American, Canadian, Australian, Kiwi, and South African listeners, which is actually the vast majority of my audience, I'm just going to be calling it football for the remainder of this episode instead of soccer, because that's what the league calls it. Unlike other popular sports leagues, the EPL does not trace its history back to the early 20th or late 19th century.

Starting point is 00:02:00 In fact, the league is only a bit over 30 years old. So how did such a relatively new league manage to become so popular so quickly and why was it created in the first place? To understand that, we have to understand club football. origin in England and how it works. And for those of you listening in the UK, this might be old hat. But as I've just mentioned, the majority of people who listen to this podcast live in countries where football, aka soccer, is not the most popular sport, and they don't have sports leagues that are organized like they are in England and in other countries. If you remember

Starting point is 00:02:36 back to my episode on the origins of various types of football games, association football was created in the 19th century and eventually split away from rugby as the two games of evolved to have very different rules. In 1888, the Football League was created in England as an organization for professional footballers. This came out of the Football Association, which was the organizing body for the sport, which at the time was strictly amateur. The Football League was the top league in the country, and until 1892 was the only professional league. That year, the Football League merged with a rival organization called the Football Alliance, which resulted in in the creation of the second division.

Starting point is 00:03:19 Here I should explain that, unlike American sports where you have two equal leagues, such as the American League and the National League in baseball, or the American Conference and the National Conference in the NFL, the second division was an inferior league below the first division. After a season of competition in 1893, the worst teams in the first division were relegated down to the second division, and the best teams in the second division were promoted to the first division. division. This began the system of promotion and relegation that still exists today. This is the

Starting point is 00:03:52 defining difference between the club model, which is popular in much of the world, and the franchise model, which is popular in North America. No matter how bad a franchise gets, they will never get kicked out of the league just for being bad. And that is why the Detroit Lions are still in the NFL. Over time, the football league added more divisions. By the mid-1980s, there were four divisions and those four were eventually linked up to the lower football conference to create an even larger system of teams and leagues down to the lowest amateur level. Today there are at least 11 different levels in English football. There are still teams below level 11, but they're not as well organized and the structure of the leagues isn't as well

Starting point is 00:04:34 defined. That means that through a series of promotions, a very low-level team could, in theory, work their way up to the highest level. Fast forward to the mid-1980s, and the theory of the underdog team making it to the first division was mostly that, theoretical. In reality, there was an elite group of clubs that were highly professional,

Starting point is 00:04:57 had bigger payrolls than every other team, and were almost never relegated. I'm going to come back to the subject of big teams in a bit, but before I continue with that, I have to cover another big issue that English football had to deal with in the 1980s, Hooliganism. Football hooligans had become a big problem in the 1980s. I don't think it would be quite accurate to say that hooligans were like gangs. They really weren't that organized

Starting point is 00:05:22 and they weren't involved in any illicit money-making activities. They were ardent team supporters who used games as an excuse to clash with other ardent team supporters, and these clashes were often fueled by alcohol. The term hooligan sounds sort of funny, but it doesn't express the seriousness of the problem. Most of the clashes between football hooligans consisted of clashes inside and outside of football stadiums. However, several extremely tragic events took place in a very short period of time that changed football forever. The first was the Heisel Stadium disaster that occurred on May 29, 1985 in Brussels, Belgium, during the European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus. What was meant to be a showcase of European football turned

Starting point is 00:06:11 tragic when clashes between rival fans led to a wall collapsing in the dilapidated Heisel Stadium. The chaos and ensuing stampede resulted in the deaths of 39 people, mostly Juventus fans, and injured hundreds more. The disaster highlighted the serious issues of hooliganism and inadequate stadium safety standards in football, leading to widespread calls for changes in stadium design and security. Perhaps most importantly, for the purpose of this episode, it led to all English football clubs being banned from European competitions for five years, with Liverpool receiving a six-year ban, underscoring the grave consequences of fan violence. The next event has been called the Hillsborough disaster. It occurred on April 15, 1989,

Starting point is 00:06:57 during an F.A. Cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England. The tragic event unfolded when overcrowding in the central pens of the stadium's Lepping Lane Terrace led to a fatal crush of spectators, resulting in the deaths of 96 Liverpool supporters and injuries to hundreds more. Initially blamed on fan behavior, subsequent inquiries revealed that poor policing and inadequate stadium design were the actual culprits. The disaster led to significant changes in UK sports venue safety standards, including eliminating standing terraces at all major football stadiums and implementing all Cedar stadiums, as recommended by the Taylor Report, which followed the tragedy.

Starting point is 00:07:39 The recommendations of the Taylor Report required sizable investments of money. The crumbling stadium infrastructure around the country wasn't going to be fixed for free. At the same time, the biggest teams in the First Division began to complain that they were not receiving a fair share of revenue. The money generated in the First Division was divided between all the teams in the lower divisions as well. In particular, they felt that there was money to be made in television broadcasting, and they didn't think it should be shared with the clubs in the lower division that didn't draw an audience on TV. This was the biggest source of revenue for profitable leagues like the NFL,

Starting point is 00:08:19 but it hadn't yet been exploited by English football. In the 1990-91 season, the European ban on English teams expired, and they were once again eligible to play the biggest, most popular clubs on the European mainland. All of these things came to a head. After the season, the First Division clubs led by a group known as the Big Five, which consisted of Arsenal, Liverpool, Everton, Manchester United, and Tottenham Hotspur, began discussions with television networks. The networks, in particular ITV, claim that any television deal would have to be centered on the best teams with the biggest following. plans for this Super League were set in 1991, and after the conclusion of the 91-92 season,

Starting point is 00:09:04 there was a mass resignation of teams from the Football League. The teams then formed their own league, got the blessing of the Football Association, and established the FAA Premier League. The Premier League was basically the former first division of the Football League, except now it was its own economic entity. The big difference is that the television revenue would only be split with the teams participating in the Premier League. They continued promotion and relegation with the former 2nd Division, and the new Premier League began its first season in 1992 with 22 teams, which was later decreased to 20.

Starting point is 00:09:43 This meant that being promoted to the Premier League was now a huge financial windfall for any team that was able to do so. The predictions of increased television revenue turned out to, be true. For example, the most recent Premier League TV contract was signed in 2023 with Sky Sports for 6.7 billion pounds over four years. One problem that only got worse with the creation of the Premier League was the dominance of a small number of clubs. Since the founding of the league, only about four to six clubs in any given season really have any chance of winning. While there have been exceptions, most notably Leicester City winning in 2016 after starting the season at thousand to one underdogs. It's usually the same few teams who are always in contention.

Starting point is 00:10:30 These few mega teams are able to bring in the most money and as such are able to feel the best teams with the highest payroll. This has created a situation that is similar to that in the late 1980s. The top Premier League teams are finding the biggest audiences and the best competition, not against other English teams at the bottom of the Premier League, but against top teams from other European leagues. Despite being the most popular sports league in the world, the English Premier League is dwarfed in terms of revenue by the North American League such as the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and the National Basketball Association.

Starting point is 00:11:08 To give you an example, the most profitable EPL team makes less money than the least profitable NFL team. This situation is even worse for other big football clubs in other European leagues. In April of 2021, 12 of the top European clubs announced a plan to create the European Super League, which was intended to replace the current UEFA Champions League. The UEFA Champions League is a division above the top national divisions in each country and has a similar relegation and promotion system. The proposed Super League would consist of 20 teams,

Starting point is 00:11:46 15 of which would be considered founding clubs and would be immune from relegation forever. creating a system more like the North American franchise model. Of the 12 teams that announced their support for the plan, six were in the English Premier League, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Tottenham Hotspur. While this wouldn't have replaced the Premier League, it would have locked in a significant source of revenue for the big six clubs in the EPL,

Starting point is 00:12:17 which would have given them an even bigger advantage over every other club in English football. The reactions to the proposed Super League were swift and overwhelmingly negative. A poll conducted immediately after the announcement found that 79% of all English football fans disapproved of the league, and 76% of the fans of just the six clubs were also against it. And it wasn't just the fans. Many current and former players were against the new league, as were teams who were not invited to join. The backlash to the league was sharp enough that the proposal was withdrawn just a few weeks later.

Starting point is 00:12:53 However, the economic incentives that spurred the announcement of the Super League have never gone away. The biggest European clubs, many of which are in the English Premier League, can all see the financial benefits of changing the system. The English Premier League will probably remain the most popular sports league in the world for the foreseeable future. However, the fact that it is the most popular league, yet only the fourth most profitable, will probably be a point of contention for the biggest clubs for years to come.

Starting point is 00:13:24 And that means even though the Super League might not have survived its first attempt, something like it or a reform of the current system will probably create some sort of changes to the sport, which will have profound changes on the Premier League in the future. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Ben Long and Cameron Kiefer. You have left a lot of reviews. in the last month and I've gotten really far behind on reading them. So I have two for you today. The first comes from listener Game Night 2021 over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write,

Starting point is 00:14:04 This pod is great. This pod is so full of rich history and politics and culture. This is a must listen pod. It has helped me learn so much. Thank you. The next review comes from listener Volcano Farts, who writes, best podcast ever. This show is amazing. I love listening to it every single day after school, And the content of the show is great. Best podcast ever for heart emojis. Well, I'd like to thank both of you. Every single review is appreciated, and it gives me that extra motivation

Starting point is 00:14:33 to always get the next one out the door. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you two can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The English Premier League

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