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The Championship play-off final is widely regarded as the most lucrative match in all of football. Should a team win –as Fulham did last season against Aston Villa- it will earn itself at least £190 million.
Just about all of that money comes from having a share in the numerous TV contracts the Premier League has signed of late. However, just because a club is suddenly flushed with cash it doesn’t mean it can ride out the gauntlet and avoid relegation the following season.
Since the founding of the Premier League in 1992, 47% of newly promoted teams were able to avoid relegation. While this percentage may sound higher than expected, keep in mind that a newly promoted team only needs to finish among the top 17 teams.
While there’s nearly a 50-50 chance of a newly promoted team staying up, those odds become significantly worse during the second season. Only 13% of teams that complete two consecutive seasons in the Premier League are able to kick-off three successive seasons in the top flight. That number continues to decrease until a team’s 5th season when the likelihood of finishing among the top 17 teams increases to 18%.
At the beginning of the new Premier League season, the mangers of Wolves, Fulham, and Cardiff City will all share a magic number - 40. Since the 1999/00 season, only one relegated club managed more than 40 points.
In fact in 14 of the last 17 seasons, teams have only needed a mere 37 points to survive the drop. Should the newly promoted teams manage a paltry average of a point per game they’d have a pretty good chance of staying in the world’s best soccer league.
To bolster a squad, managers tend to look to the transfer market. However, spending big doesn’t necessarily translate to avoiding relegation. Analysis carried out by Mirror Football found no correlation between the amount a newly promoted club spent and remaining in the top flight. On average newly promoted clubs that stay in the Premier League spend £24.8 million while those that are relegated dish out £24.7 million.
Relegated teams looking to bounce right back up are put in a promising position due to parachute payments. The season after being relegated a team earns 55% of what it would’ve made had it stayed in the top flight. That number drops to 45% during the second year outside the premiership and then down to 20% if the relegated team spent more than one season in the Premier League.
Despite these payments, only a fifth of teams relegated from 1986-2014 returned to the top division in the following season. Interestingly enough, 12 of the 85 teams relegated between 1986-2014 went on to win the Championship within three years of relegation, while 11 had the opposite trajectory and were relegated to League 1.
With the newest edition of the Premier League getting underway on the 8th of August we’ll have to wait and see if the three newest members of the league have what it takes to compete in the world’s richest and most competitive division.
