Promotion and Relegation are integral parts of football’s sporting and financial models. While many of the largest teams don’t worry about the possibility of relegation, its existence drives the competition. If those drivers were to leave, the game would suffer the apathy of the fans. That is why even the world’s largest league, the Premier League, has a major financial issue: an uncompetitive pyramid.
For a second consecutive season, all three of the teams that were promoted from the Championship, English football’s penultimate division, are going to be relegated the following season. In an effort to catch up to the Premier League, there is a massive financial boon that comes with promotion.
Some teams, like Nottingham Forest, spent most of their promotion money buying better players, while other teams must allocate the funds differently. Nottingham Forest were criticized for buying so many players before the 23/24 season, but those efforts have borne significant fruit in the form of a potential top-four finish.
Not only are newly promoted teams all going down, but the way they’ve been uncompetitive is alarming. Southampton celebrated equaling Derby County’s dismal record points total of eleven, and Ipswich Town and Leicester are all but mathematically relegated with five games to go. Most worrying for the gap in quality is that the Championship teams all came off record-breaking seasons.
The beauty of English football, and the game in general, is that teams can come up and stay up, such as with Brentford or Bournemouth. Those two teams, with small stadiums and budgets, were promoted in the last four seasons and have been consistently successful.
When the Super League was formed four years ago, and then quickly abandoned by most of the teams, the fans were outraged at the ‘same team’ model. Applying an American model of sports, meaning no promotion or relegation, to historic and beloved teams was met with vocal retaliation by fans. They viewed it as antithetical to the game itself, as well as recognized it as a shameless cash grab.
That same concern, however, is now evident in the largest football league in the world. The troubling cycle is not just occurring in England, but the Premier League’s continuing financial prowess is where the gap would widen most dramatically. The idea that the Premier League is becoming its own Super League is not novel, but that was more so applied to the other leagues rather than within English football.
While the concern rages on about the Premier League, fans of the EFL Championship are experiencing an outrageously exciting season. Up until the most recent matchday, every team in the table could still have been promoted or relegated this season.
Essentially, each game is enormous because all the teams are so close at their respective ends of the table. Teams below the Premier League are competing with each other equally, but this only serves as evidence that the gulf is growing larger. Another telling sign will be if the newly relegated Premier League teams go back to dominating in the Championship.
As football becomes more financially commercialized, the spirit of the game shrinks away, and a stagnant football pyramid is evidence of that. The rise of small teams and the slaying of giants are what make football romantic and captivating.
Consequence means engagement. If the same teams keep succeeding without a shake-up, then the game risks losing a key part of what makes it special: mobility.
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