Soccer, or football depending where you are in the world, has yet to burst through the United States and Canadian markets where spectators will choose to focus on baseball, basketball, hockey or American football. At first glance, the North American sports spectator, excluding Mexico, views soccer as low scoring, slow moving and lengthy.
Delving into the sport and its leagues, there are many aspects of the beautiful game that are extremely exciting and even superior to that of the North American big four sports. One way to look at this is the league structure for soccer around the globe. The best example of this can be found within the most popular league in the world, the English Premier League (EPL).
Televised in over 200 countries worldwide, the EPL is seen as the globe's most followed sports league. Made up of 20 teams from all over England, each team plays 38 games in total, playing each team in the league twice (once away, and once at home). There are no divisions or conferences like in North American leagues and no playoffs at the end of the season. This means whoever has the most points at the end of the season is the winner. Simple enough, but what really makes the Premier League, as well as other European leagues, such as the Serie A in Italy or La Liga in Spain, are the structure of the leagues, structures which make it exciting for fans from teams who are not always leading the pack.
England’s football governing body, the Football Association (FA), sanction two major domestic tournaments each year. These are the League Cup (or Carling Cup) and the FA cup. The League Cup is the smaller of the two domestic cups and 92 teams take part. This includes the 20 teams of the EPL and the 72 clubs of the Football League, which is made up of three separate leagues: the Championship Division, League One and League Two, which each have 24 teams. The winner of the League Cup earns a Europa Cup spot, as well as a spot in the Intercontinental European club tournament, if the winning team has not earned that spot by other means.
The FA cup has a total of 762 teams from all around England competing and includes the major professional teams within England as well as smaller semi-professional and amateur weekend clubs. Much like the League Cup, the winner, if not already qualified, will earn a spot in European competition. Domestic tournaments such as these are seen throughout all the national leagues within Europe.
The further a team succeeds within the competitions, the more revenue earned through advertising, television revenue and stadium attendance. This can lead to a team buying players and improving the squad. The EPL teams are the favourites to win both these domestic cups, but these domestic tournaments create not only excitement from the minnow teams competing against the giants, but also EPL teams who may not be competing for the league title.
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