The English Premier League season just ended like a Hollywood script: a title race settled on the final day, a refereeing scandal involving video assistants, and a 'spying' controversy at Southampton that ended with the club being expelled from the play-offs and fined £200mn. English clubs reached the finals of all three major pan-European competitions — Aston Villa lifted the Europa League, Crystal Palace are bound for the Conference League play-off, and newly crowned domestic champions Arsenal will face Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final. And yet, the Financial Times argues, the league's contribution to Britain itself can still go under-appreciated.
The numbers are striking. Premier League clubs generate roughly £10bn a year in gross value added to the UK — a 14-fold increase since the 1998/99 season, according to Ernst & Young. Clubs and players, who earn on average more than £4mn a year, contribute £4.4bn in annual tax revenue, equivalent to the salaries of more than 100,000 NHS nurses. The league supports an estimated 104,500 jobs. In the 2023/24 season alone, it pulled in £1.7bn in international broadcast revenue — roughly matching the rest of the UK television sector combined.
But here's the catch: this kind of dominance is recent. When the top tier launched in 1992, English football was crawling out of a 1980s nadir of hooliganism and crumbling stadiums. Higher quality on the pitch and a more polished product on screen fuelled a renaissance, attracting billions of viewers and, with them, international investors. Foreign money allowed English clubs to outspend Europe's other leagues; this season, transfer spending hit a record £3.1bn — more than the Italian, German, French and Spanish leagues combined. The women's game has seen rising attendance and revenue too, and stadium-led regeneration projects from Brighton to Manchester have helped revive city neighbourhoods well beyond London.
The league is also one of Britain's most powerful exports of image. Surveys by Yonder Consulting suggest close to 90 per cent of international viewers say the Premier League improves their perception of Britain. The league, the FT notes, is often more renowned globally than older British icons such as Oxbridge, the BBC and even the monarchy — a sentence that, a generation ago, would have been unthinkable.
The story isn't all upbeat. Fans complain about soaring ticket prices. Governance concerns dog wealthy foreign owners — Abu Dhabi-backed Manchester City, the country's dominant club, faces over 100 charges of alleged financial-rules breaches. And the cruel irony lingers: England's men's national team has not won a major international trophy since 1966. Still, when Britain's wider economic and cultural clout on the world stage looks to be waning, the Premier League stands out as a rare rising asset. Britain, the FT concludes, is not good at celebrating its successes — but football is one that it should.
While Britain frets about industrial decline and a fading global role, one homegrown product keeps conquering the planet — and it isn't tea, finance, or even the BBC. It's football.
The 2024/25 Premier League season ended in cinematic fashion: a title race decided on the final day, a refereeing scandal, and English clubs reaching the finals of all three big European competitions. Aston Villa won the Europa League, Crystal Palace are headed for the Conference League play-off, and new domestic champions Arsenal will face Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League.
But the Financial Times argues the league's economic punch is even bigger than its sporting one. Premier League clubs generate roughly £10bn a year in gross value added to the UK economy — a 14-fold jump since 1998/99 — contribute £4.4bn in taxes (enough to pay more than 100,000 NHS nurses), and support around 104,500 jobs.
The Premier League is less a sports league than a globally franchised cultural product — closer in business model to Hollywood than to a normal industry.
If you're thinking about careers — in media, data analytics, marketing, law, urban planning, or finance — sport is now a serious sector, not a hobby industry. The Premier League also shapes how the rest of the world sees Britain, which in turn affects everything from tourism to whether foreign students apply to UK universities. When a country's biggest cultural export is something teenagers actually watch, that matters.
Britain's traditional sources of global clout — empire, manufacturing, even the City of London post-Brexit — are all in long-term decline. The Premier League is one of the few areas where the UK is genuinely world-leading and still growing. Watch for two second-order effects: regulatory fights over how clubs are owned and financed (especially state-backed ownership), and pressure from rival leagues — particularly Saudi Arabia's Pro League — trying to copy the formula by buying their way in.