The Premier League is the UK’s most popular professional football league. It is the most watched football league in the world broadcasting into an estimated 643 million homes. The television rights alone produce a revenue of €2.2 billion per year. It is home to jaw dropping goals, unbelievable upsets, intense rivalries, and some of the best football in the world.
Our Website seeks to show off the exciting stories of the Premier League. We highlight some of the interesting trends that we found when examining the data while allowing the user to find their own stories that they are interested in. Take a look at the aggregate data below and then pick a year from the timeline above and follow your favorite teams throughout Premier League history.
The Premier, founded in 1992, and since then has hosted games each year from August to May. The bottom three teams each year get relegated so there's always new competition. However, throughout the 2000’s the league has been dominated by the “Big Four”, namely Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. These teams secured the top spots 5 times from the 2003 to the 2008 season.
The graph above is able to offer insight to how the League has been changing over time. For example, it is interesting to note how the number of shots on target falls across the board in 2012. This may indicate that the league tightened its standards for what on target is defined as. Another interesting trend is how the number of fouls steadily decreased from 2000 to 2012. This may indicate teams playing more defensively and avoiding fouls or referees changing how often the call a foul. We invite you to try and find more interesting trends from this data.
Teams compete for the title each year. Unlike many other sports there is no playoffs in the Premier League. Instead the team with the most amount of points is crowned the winner at the end of the season. A team is awarded 3 points for a win, 0 points for a loss and one point for a draw. At the end of the season the 3 teams with the worst records are relegated to the Football League Championship, a less prestigious league. On the other hand the Top 3 teams from the FLC are prompted in order to fill the slots of the relegated teams. Some teams consistently bounce back and forth between the leagues. The map to the left shows the home stadiums of each team and changing the timeline shows how the geography of the league has changed over time. Click to move. Double-click in order to zoom.
Within each season there is a wealth of data available. The above graph shows cumulative data over a selected season. The bar chart next to it demonstrates the data for the whole season in the same category. Playing with these graphs show interesting trends across a season. For example, the teams with high foul counts typically do not seem like the ones with the most points. Clicking on a dot will highlight their dots of both teams that played that day. It will also reveal the game in the matrix below. Hovering over the bar chart will highlight the team in the line graph.
The leagues consist of 20 teams that compete in a double round robin. Each team play each other team twice, home and away, for a total of 38 games. The matrix to the left shows how each team fared against each other team. Looking across a row one can see how each team did during their home games. Looking down a column column indicates how they did in their away games. Certain teams like Arsenal in the year 2000 fared significantly better at home. Winning 15 games at home but only 5 on the road. Click on the score to learn more about a game.