While it is no one of the most popular football leagues in the world, the outlook among pay per head bookies wasn’t always so bright for the English Premier League. Despite having significant success in prior decades, the 1980’s represented a low point for English football, when poor facilities and extreme hooliganism culminated with the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985. The Football League First Division was the top football division in England, but it was lacking behind Italy’s Serie A and the Spanish La Liga, even before the Heysel incident led to English clubs being banned from European competition.
However, by the 1990’s there was a turnaround that coincided with a strong performance by England at the 1990 FIFA World Cup. In the same year, the ban on English clubs from participating in European competition was lifted, and only one year later Manchester United won the UEFA Cup as sports betting underdogs in 1991. There were improved conditions at the actual stadiums, and television money played an important role in the re-development. As the stadiums improved and the match attendance rose, so did the attendances and more money began to flow in to the league. Fast-forward to today and those struggles are a distant memory, as the top 20 clubs in England compete every year to be crowned the best, and while it has come so far over the years, it’s important to remember the origins of the English Premier League and everything it has endured to get to this point as one of the stronger Betonline wager draws.
