While the Bundesliga might have recently
become fashionable and boast the reigning European Champions, and La
Liga currently plays host to the vast majority of the current World Cup
winners as well as the two most outstanding players of this generation,
the English Premier League remains the most powerful league in the
world.
It is easy to snipe at the Premier League for its perceived lack of
quality and uncultured football, the unrelenting influx of both foreign
players and owners, and the constant failure of its home nation England
to make any impact on the international stage.
But nearly 22 years after its launch, the Premier League is still the
template for all others for generating both the most wealth and the
most excitement around the world.
The Premier League derives most of its power from the simple truth that more people want to watch it than any other league.
On average each Premier League game has a global
audience of 12.3 million people, Per Football-Marketing.com, which far outstrips La Liga, the Bundesliga and Serie A.
In fact if you added together the average global audience for these leagues,
La Liga with 2.2 million (via EPFL-Euroleagues.com), the
Bundesliga (via 2012's economic report) with two million and
Serie A (via Alessandro Baroncelli and Raul Caruso) with 4.5 million, it still wouldn’t overtake the all powerful Premier League.
David Ramos/Getty Images
As reported in
The Daily Mirror, the German-based SPORT+MARKT found that the Premier League commands the biggest television audience in the world.
Based on the 2010-11 season, the Premier League’s cumulative
audience was an enormous 4.7 billion people in 212 countries and territories, per PremierLeague.com.
This exposure gives the Premier League an unprecedented power to
negotiate both its centralised television-rights deal and the clubs'
individual sponsorship deals.
The Premier League’s television-rights deal overshadows all its
European competitors. At the start of last season, it began a new
domestic
television deal worth £3.018 billion for the next three seasons, a vast increase from the previous deal worth £1.25 billion.
The rest of Europe lags behind the Premier League with
Serie A commanding £721 million,
La Liga £511 million and the
Bundesliga trailing behind with £417.4 million.
The Premier League’s chief executive Richard Scudamore explained its appeal and success to
The Times last year.
We’ve got two fantastic things in our advantage. One is our heritage,
culture, history and the authenticity of it all. People crave that
authenticity, whether it is a British landmark or a crest on a football
shirt that goes back to the 19th century.
Greenwich Mean Time is [also] very much in our favour. People
underestimate the importance of GMT, but when you’re operating a
business, it means you sit right in the middle. You can deal with the
Far East and California in the same day.
Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press
This worldwide appeal plays a significant role in the Premier League
having more teams than any other league in the top 20 richest football
teams, a list which is published annually by
Deloitte Football Money League.
While La Liga contributes just three teams, and Serie A and the
Bundesliga account for four teams each, once again the Premier League
comes out on top with six teams, Manchester United, Manchester City,
Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur.
On the actual pitch the Premier League is not as dominant, and for
all its global appeal, astronomical television deals and the wealth of
its sides, the majority of the very best players in the world still seek
to ply their trade elsewhere.
The quality of a player is of course subjective, but over the course
of three different surveys, the Premier League trails behind its rivals.
It fares well in the
The Guardian’s
list of the best 100 players in the world from last year, contributing
29 players compared to 26 from La Liga, 18 from the Bundesliga and 17
from Serie A.
Shaun Botterill/Getty Images
But the Premier League suffers with the statistical analysis of Opta and Football Observatory published in
The Daily Mirror, per
Richard Beech, which sought to find the best top 50 players in Europe’s
leading five leagues broken down into the best 10 strikers, attacking
midfielders, defensive midfielders, central midfielders and full-backs.
The Premier League comes in at the bottom of the five leagues with
just seven players represented, compared to 14 from La Liga, 11 from
Serie A, nine from the Bundesliga and eight from France’s Ligue 1.
What do the players themselves think? The best way to judge that is by reviewing their votes for the
FIFPro World XI team of the year since it began in the 2005/06 season.
Once again it makes for sorry reading for the Premier League which
has only been represented in the FIFPro World XI team of the year 18
times, compared to La Liga which has had a player in the team 52 times.
Serie A has contributed 13 players and the Bundesliga has only been
represented on three occasions.
The great success of the Premier League is that it manages to be the best league in the world without the best players.
Scott Heppell/Associated Press
The power and enduring appeal of the Premier League is not in the
quality of its football but rather in the excitement it provides and its
inherent competitiveness.
The Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has coached in the Premier League,
Serie A and La Liga, and it was clear which one he thinks is the best
when he spoke to
The Daily Telegraph, per Paul Hayward.
In England, you don’t do 100 points, [and] you don’t score 125 goals
unless Manchester City can do it this season. But normally the evolution
of a player needs difficulty and the difficulties help the development
of a player. You reach your maximum with difficult situations. The big
push comes. After that you have choices, stay in the most beautiful
league to play or go where it is easier to succeed.
You go to Spain and there are two big clubs [Barcelona and Real
Madrid]. You go to Germany and they have one big club [Bayern Munich]
and a little bit more. In Italy now there is one big team [Juventus],
although obviously more than one big club. So it is easier to succeed.
This season the Premier League is fulfilling Mourinho’s words and
proving just why it has a greater appeal than the other leagues.
At this stage of the season, the gap between the top five in the
Premier League is by far the smallest of any of the leading European
leagues.
Just 10 points separate Arsenal in first and Everton in fifth
position, while in La Liga this gap is 17 points, in the Bundesliga it
is 20 points and in Serie A it grows to a mammoth 24 points.
The Premier League is far from perfect, but when you take into
account its global audience, sponsorship appeal, wealth generated
through television rights and competitiveness, it can still call itself
the most popular and powerful league in the world.
