Premier League History

For residents of the United Kingdom, football is a popular sport that pervades the culture of the region and is the source of lots of sports betting. The dominant football league is the English Premier League. The league is known officially as the Barclay's Premier League, giving tribute to its sponsor. The league is comprised of twenty clubs. Each club plays 28 games in their season, which commences in August and concludes in May.

During the 1980's, English football was facing difficult times. The infrastructure for the sports (stadiums and similar facilities) was in dire need of reconstruction or renovation. Furthermore, the achievement of the English football clubs was vastly lacking in comparison to their European counterparts. This fueled the fire by creating much dissatisfaction amongst football fans. This led to many football players leaving the English league to play for the more professional European teams.

English football players and even fans gained an undesirable reputation of being violent and racist. Given this behaviour, the English football clubs were no longer permitted to participate in matches in Europe. The culminating events that led to this ban occurred in the later part of the 1980's. At the final match of the European Cup between Liverpool and Juventus, 39 fans were killed. Additionally, in 1989, another 96 fans of the Liverpool club were killed at another match at the Hillsborough facility in Sheffield. This disaster was the worst stadium related disaster in British history.

The English football league was in a shambles and something needed to be done soon to remedy the situation. Following this disaster, an inquiry was ordered to delve into the problem. They were then to make recommendations regarding necessary changes. The inquiry recommended that all stadiums should be all-seaters. This created further problems for the league as most of the stadiums did not have money to make these improvements.

On May 27th, 1992, the FA Premier League became registered as a privately owned company. This saw a change from the previous organization of the football clubs. Now instead of having four divisions, the amount was reduced to three with the Premier League at the top. This gave English football a fresh start and they have prospered ever since.

If you enjoy watching and supporting sports games such as football, then why not add even more excitement to the game with some football betting? You could win big money just by correctly predicting the scoreline or goalscorers for whichever game you chose. Just visit www.bwin.com to start winning now.