How England’s football league is breaking the sport

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I'm English, and believe me, most fans here think it has gone too far as well. Man Citeh have 115 charges against them for cheating, Chelsea buy anything that can run, and some owners are draining the clubs dry. Meanwhile its now expensive for the working classes to go to the matches, football shirts cost a fortune, and television subscriptions are expensive. If Uefa and FIFA were not so corrupt, they would be able to deal with this.

And just like that I’m interested in Sports! (Sam’s got lots more stories like this in the works)

Two facts that I feel are missing from the video to add some context: The fact that fewer countries are represented in late rounds of the Champions League is massively influenced by the fact that until the mid-90s, every country was only able to send a single club to the competition, whereas now up to four clubs from the top countries can qualify in parallel. Also, the Premier League always had the built-in advantage of being the one top competition that was from an English-speaking country. English is the most universal language today, and while there are lots of people who speak Spanish and quite a few who speak French, they tend to have their own native leagues to watch, whereas people from Asia and North America (except for Mexico) would find it most convenient to watch PL football in the original English presentation as opposed to German, French, Spanish or Italian football.

1:04 Was the other way around in the 90s Italian clubs were spending crazy amounts of money, breaking transfer records almost every few seasons.

Leagues from smaller countries like The Netherlands, Portugal etc have been struggling with this for years. But now the power imbalance is even affecting the other top four leagues. The power imbalance has slowly been ruining football for the past 25 years or so

Good stuff! As a European, I'm fascinated by how big college sports are in the US. The size of the stadiums, the facilities, the fanbases are mind blowing. But there's also the business side of it and how players can't earn money whilst being a student athlete. Would love to see a video about this 😄

In many African countries, the Premier League is HUGE. In the most remote areas people pay a small fee to watch the games on large screens, it’s rare to go a day without seeing someone wearing some jersey, every kid dreams of becoming a professional footballer, small talk is arguing about coaches and teams, highlights of big games are discussed during local news… I mean it’s EVERYWHERE. As a kid, I always thought the names of the clubs were just random names—imagine my shock when I grew up and realized they were actually English cities! Long story short — the TV broadcasting has made the league international. It’s my league as much as any English man. Great vid.

A key thing was missing, Italy started it (spending crazy), Spain then took it to next level 100M+ spending, England is just finishing it.

As someone from Sheffield (who lives just down the road from Hillsborough Stadium) it's really impressive how you're able to take so many big topics around English Football and it's history and apply the deserved nuance to them - all whilst keeping the video to less than 15 minutes! Looking forward to future vids already.

As an English Chelsea supporter who grew up during this period of the last 20 years, I can really relate to this story. My grandad tried to warn me that all this money was dangerous to the sport when I was an excited kid who wanted his team to win. Turns out he was right. Well done.

you missed one of the key points on how the broadcast right is so expensive now: EPL did so well in promoting their league in asia, especially south east asia, by offering them a cheap package back in the 2000s.

Love the video as an EPL fan from Liverpool! Just a quick note, 97 fans perished at Hillsborough in 1989. A man suffered life altering injuries that ultimately lead to his death a few years back. This is something we in Liverpool never forget and always respect, no matter who's teams colours you wear

IMMEDIATELY became a member. This channel is amazing, and it's just the beginning. Congratulations Sam!

It was mentioned in this but I think Barcelona’s complete mismanagement and all the financial levers they’d had to pull to even finance a new stadium and win LaLiga this season deserves it’s own video. Always enjoy new sports channel like this on YouTube!

0:07: You have Chelsea's location incorrect on the map. It is 1 mile to the east of Fulham, which is in the correct positron.

Great work; I'm not a football fan, but this is very intresting! A little bit dissapointing that the Heizeldrama wasn't mentioned in the intro. I looking forward for the new vids.

This channel is what we’ve all been hoping for…

You didnt cover one key matter: the Bosman Law, which allowed european clubs to sign any number of players from EU as they want, instead of a fixed number of foreign players like before. That is when football actually started breaking, with rich clubs concentrating all the best players, marginalizing teams like Ajax, Red Star and south americans (with were as good or better than the best european teams), basically turning them into "player exporters", instead of the final destination

The spending is undoubtedly out of control but it should be pointed out that in the past Italian clubs and Spanish clubs were outspending everyone else to buy the best players. Real and Barcelona in particular continually paid what at the time were huge amounts on obtaining the best players.