Premier League
The Premier League is an English professional league for association football clubs. At the top of the English football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with The Football League. The Premier League is a corporation in which the 20 member clubs act as shareholders. Seasons run from August to May, with teams playing 38 games each. It is sponsored by Barclays Bank and therefore officially known as the Barclays Premier League.
The competition formed as the FA Premier League on 20 February 1992 following the decision of clubs in the Football League First Division to break away from The Football League, which was originally founded in 1888, and take advantage of a lucrative television rights deal. The Premier League has since become the world's most watched sporting league. It is the world's most lucrative football league, with combined club revenues of £1.93 billion ($3.15bn) in 2007–08. It is also ranked first in the UEFA rankings of leagues based on performances in European competitions over the last five years, ahead of Spain's La Liga and Italy's Serie A.
A total of 43 clubs have competed in the Premier League, but only four have won the title: Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers, Arsenal, and Chelsea. The current champions are Manchester United, who won their eleventh Premier League title in the 2008–09 season, the most of any Premier League team.
Primera Division
The Primera División (First Division) of the Liga de Fútbol Profesional (Professional Football League), commonly known as La Liga (The League) or, in terms of sponsorship, Liga BBVA (BBVA League)since 2008, is the top professional football league in Spain. It is contested by 20 teams, with the three lowest placed teams relegated to the Segunda División and replaced by the top three teams in that division. A total of 58 teams have competed in La Liga, nine of which have been crowned champions. Since the 1950s, Real Madrid and Barcelona have dominated the championship. The former have won the title 31 times while the latter have won it on 19 occasions. However, during the 1930s and 1940s and in the last two decades, La Liga has seen other champions including Atlético Madrid, Athletic Bilbao, Valencia, Sevilla, Deportivo La Coruña, Real Sociedad and Real Betis.
La Liga is one of the most popular professional sports leagues in the world, with an average attendance of 29,029 for league matches in the 2007-2008 season. This is the eighth highest of any domestic professional sports league in the world and the third highest of any professional football league, behind the Bundesliga and the Premier League.
Serie A
Serie A (officially known as the Serie A TIM, for sponsorship reasons) is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top echelon of the Italian football league system operating for eighty years from 1929 to the present. It is regarded as one of the elite leagues of the footballing world.[citation needed] Historically, Serie A has produced the highest number of European Cup finalists. In total Italian clubs have reached the final of the competition on a record of twenty-five different occasions, winning the title eleven times. As of 2008, Serie A is ranked third among European leagues by UEFA, based on the performance of Italian clubs in the Champions League and the UEFA Cup, and second in the IFFHS rating.
In its current format, the Italian Football Championship was revised from having regional and interregional rounds, to just one solid league for the 1929–30 season onwards; the Serie A system carries on today. The championship titles won before 1929 are officially recognised by FIGC as a championship in the same way the ones since then are.
The league hosts three of the world's most famous clubs as Internazionale, Juventus and A.C. Milan, all founding members of the G-14 a group representing the largest and most prestigious European football clubs; Serie A was the only league to produce three founding members. More players have won the coveted Ballon d'Or award while playing at a Serie A club than any other league in the world. Milan is one of two clubs with the most official international titles in the world. Juventus, the most successful Italian team, is tied for third in Europe and sixth in the world in the same ranking. They are also the only club in the world to have won all official club competitions.
Bundesliga
The Bundesliga is the highest level of Germany's football league system. The term Bundesliga also applies to football in Austria and is used to refer to the highest level league competitions in several other sports in the two countries.
Germany was unusual, in that, unlike in other countries, a unified national league structure was quite late in developing. The Bundesliga was not formed until 1963 and the structure and organisation of the nation's football leagues have undergone frequent changes right up to the present day. The league was originally founded by the German Football Association, but is now operated by the Deutsche Fußball Liga.
