The competition formed as the FA Premier League on 20 February 1992 following the decision of clubs in the Football League First Division to break away from The Football League, which was originally founded in 1888, and take advantage of a lucrative television rights deal.This deal will be worth £3 billion as of 2013–14, with BSkyB and BT Group securing the rights to broadcast 116 and 38 games respectively. The Premier League is the most-watched football league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643 million homes. In the 2010–11 season the average Premier League match attendance was 35,363, the second highest of any professional football league other than the German Bundesliga, and stadium occupancy was 92.2% capacity. The Premier League ranked second in the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) coefficients of leagues based on performances in European competitions over the last five years.

The Football League Championship (often referred to as the Championship for short, or the npower Championship for sponsorship reasons) is the highest division of The Football League and second-highest division overall in the English football league system after the Premier League.The Football League Championship was introduced for the 2004–05 season, having been previously known as the Football League First Division. According to Deloitte, in the 2004–05 season it was the wealthiest non-top flight football division in the world, and the sixth richest division in Europe.The winners of the Football League Championship receive the Football League Championship trophy which is the same trophy as the old First Division champions were handed prior to the Premier League’s inception in the 1992–93 season.