Currently Europe has the top 5 soccer leagues and all of them give a tough competition to each other. However, when it comes to the best out of these 5 including the English Premier League (EPL), it becomes quite difficult to figure out. Therefore, we have done a comparison between the 5 soccer leagues of Europe in order to determine which one is the best soccer league of Europe in the world.
The 5 soccer leagues of Europe are EPL, Bundesliga, La Liga, Ligue 1, and Serie A. This comparison is based on the performance of all the 5 soccer leagues in their previous 5 seasons starting from 2010/11 to 2014/15.
Since Europe has the best soccer leagues in the world, we have decided to compare only the soccer leagues of Europe. The reason why Europe soccer leagues are the leading ones around the world is because of the support, past glory, and top players in these leagues.
We have judged each Europe soccer league on the basis of their match attendance, television deals and viewership, competitiveness, and performance in European competitions. So, let us have a look at how the English Premier League scores against all the other Europe Soccer leagues.
Match attendance
We have rated all the Europe soccer leagues according to the average match attendances. The EPL has the highest number of match attendance amid all the other Europe soccer leagues. It saw nearly 13.75 million spectators attending the soccer games during the 2014/15 season.
After the English Premier League, the second in line is Bundesliga with 13.3 million spectators. Although, the Bundesliga league has consistently seen higher average number of match attendance than the Premier League in the recent years, it is in the second place in terms of the average match attendance in the 2014/15 season. Nevertheless, the German league saw an average crowd of 43,484 as opposed to 35,729 for the English Premier League in the recent years.
At the third place is La Liga with 10.2 million spectators in its 2014/15 campaign. The Spanish league has relatively smaller match attendance in comparison to the top 2 soccer leagues. Its average match attendance for the past 5 seasons is 28,581. The Ligue 1 league in France comes at fourth place, leaving behind Seria A in average match attendance.
Television deals and viewership
We have compared the 5 Europe soccer leagues on the basis of the TV rights value and the average TV audience. The EPL is currently at the top of television rights deal in Europe. Plus, it also has the best TV viewership among all the soccer leagues with nearly 12.3 million people watching every EPL soccer match. This is why the Premier League is so highly marketed and its television rights are of the highest value.
On the second number is Serie A, which has the next largest Television viewership with an estimated number of 4.5 million viewers. On the third number is La Liga, which is followed by the Bundesliga. Although, the La Liga league does not have TV rights, it allows the participating teams in the league to settle their own television rights with the telecaster.
This shows that the money that soccer clubs earn in Spain is somewhat uneven as opposed to teams in Germany, Italy, France, and England. Moreover, the Italian league also has a reasonably high value of TV rights. Plus, the leagues signed a new contract for the 2016/17 season, which was apparently worth $1.28 billion.
Competitiveness
We have judged the competitiveness of the 5 different Europe soccer leagues by calculating the average difference of points between the first and the last place and the first and the fourth place. The average number of points for every season can be seen as the minimum number of points that are required to end up in a mid-table spot.
In terms of competitiveness, the Ligue 1 soccer league has the minimum number of difference between the first and the last place, which is 55.6 points. Ligue 1 is the most competitive soccer league as compared to other Europe soccer leagues.
On the second number is EPL as depicted by its decent statistics. In the previous 5 seasons, the Premier League has maintained an average difference of top 4 points of 14.4 that is the lowest among all leagues. The third in line is the Bundesliga league, which is followed by La Liga. The last is Serie A on the competitiveness scale of Europe soccer leagues.
Performance in European competitions
We have estimated the performance of different soccer leagues in European competitions by calculating the number of times that the teams from a soccer league have reached the knockout rounds of the Europa League or the UEFA Champions League beginning from the 16 round to the finals.
La liga is on the top of the performance charts as they have performed consistently well in the Europa League as well as the Champions League. Plus, the teams of this league reached the finals 8 times in the previous 5 seasons.
The next in line is the Bundesliga league, which comes second in Europe. On the third number is the English Premier League, as the teams of this league have only featured 3 times in the finals. Plus, their record in the Europa League is also not so good. On the fourth number is the Serie A league, which is followed by Ligue 1.
Now, we know how the EPL performs as compared to other European Leagues. It certainly stands out in terms of television right deals and viewership.
