Promotion and Relegation in Football

In domestic football leagues all over the world promotion and relegation happens at the end of the season. Teams move between the respective divisions based on how well or badly they have performed over the course of the season. The better teams get promoted while the poorest sides suffer the heartache of being relegated.

You will not find two more contrasting experiences in football than promotion and relegation. Promotion allows a football club to play at a higher level against bigger clubs. From a players, point of view they have the opportunity to test themselves against a better standard of player.

Promotion is great for the supporters and is the perfect way to end a long football season. Fans always want to see their team do well and promotion represents the ultimate success in league football. The euphoria of winning promotion lasts for several months until the new season gets underway.

When a club wins promotion revenue increases as a result. There are higher season ticket sales, lucrative sponsorship deals and a bigger share of any television rights deal. Crowds will increase because the club will be playing at a higher level against better opposition. This means new fans are picked up and existing ones who may have become disillusioned return.

Relegation is a terrible experience for everyone connected with a football club. It usually takes time to come to terms with the reality of knowing that the team was not good enough to survive. After the dust settles there, can be doubts over whether players will remain and play at a lower level. In some cases, players will ask for a transfer to another club.

When a football club is relegated there is usually a big drop in revenue. This is down to several factors but the main ones are lower crowd attendances and a significant fall in sponsorship revenue. There is also less money available to the club from any television deals.

Promotion and relegation in football usually involve the top and bottom three teams. The top three are promoted while the bottom three is relegated. There is also a play off competition where the top two teams win automatic promotion and the third, fourth, fifth and sixth placed teams play each other until a winner is found. The winner of the play offs takes the third promotion spot.

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The English Premier League Promotion and Relegation System

The concept of promotion and relegation in English soccer is a difficult one for most American sports fans to grasp immediately. In major American sport leagues, if for instance the Washington Nationals have an awful year where they only win 40 games, they'll be right back next year playing the likes of the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies. That is not the case in the English soccer 'pyramid', where the different levels of soccer are directly connected through a series of promotions and relegations.

To talk specifically about the English Premier League, at the end of each season the bottom three teams are relegated down to the next tier of English soccer, which is called the Championship. The EPL is a 20-team league, so each team plays the other 19 teams twice. At the end of that 38 game schedule, the teams in places 18, 19 and 20 are automatically sent down to the Championship for the next season. That means a team like Portsmouth, who is likely to be relegated this 2009-2010 season, could go from playing Arsenal, Manchester United, and Chelsea one season to playing Watford, Bristol City and Blackpool the next. That's quite a huge difference and it's one of the main reasons why the relegation battle is often more compelling than the battle for the Premier League Champion. These teams are in some cases fighting for the survival of their club as well, as the Premier League television compensation is vastly superior to that of the Championship.

Promotion from the Championship is quite similar in concept. In the 24-team Championship, each team plays the others twice, and at the end of those 46 games, the top two teams are automatically promoted to the Premier League. Teams in places 3-6 then contest a playoff where the winner is awarded the third promotion place to the Premier League. So it's simply three teams relegated and three teams promoted each season. With some slight variation, this type of promotion and relegation exists throughout the entire English soccer pyramid, many levels below the Premier League. It really adds to the allure of the sport that a team can literally rise from a local club to one day play against Manchester United at Old Trafford in the Premier League.

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