The Premier League is a professional association football league in England and 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, following the decision of First Division (the top-tier league from 1888 until 1992) clubs to break away from the English Football League. However, teams may still be relegated to and promoted from the EFL Championship. The Premier League is a corporation managed by a chief executive, with member clubs acting as shareholders. The Premier League takes advantage of a £5 billion television rights deal, with Sky and BT Group securing the domestic rights to broadcast 128 and 32 games, respectively. This deal will rise to £6.7 billion for the four seasons from 2025 to 2029. The league is projected to earn $7.2 billion in overseas TV rights from 2022 to 2025. Clubs were apportioned central payment revenues of £2.4 billion in 2016–17, with a further £343 million in solidarity payments to EFL clubs.
The Premier League is the most-watched sports league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643 million homes, with a potential TV audience of 4.7 billion people. For the 2023–24 season, the average Premier League match attendance was 38,375, second to the German Bundesliga's 39,512, whilst aggregated attendance across all matches was the highest of any association football league at 14,508,981, and most stadium occupancies are near capacity. As of 2023, the Premier League is ranked first in the UEFA coefficient rankings based on performances in European competitions over the past five seasons, ahead of Spain's La Liga. The English top-flight has produced the second-highest number of European Cup / UEFA Champions League titles, with a record six English clubs having won fifteen European championships in total.
Fifty-one clubs have competed in the Premier League since its inception in 1992: 49 from England and two from Wales. Seven of them have won the title: Manchester United (13), Manchester City (8), Chelsea (5), Arsenal (3), Blackburn Rovers (1), Leicester City (1), and Liverpool (1). Manchester City hold the distinction of having won the most successive titles, with four. Only six clubs have played in every season to date: Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United, and Tottenham Hotspur.
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