Leeds, England: An aerial photograph of Elland Road was taken before a Premier League match. [+] Leeds United vs Manchester City on April 30, 2022. (Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images)
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Following the relegation of Burnley and Sheffield United, and Leeds United’s loss to Southampton in the play-off final, just five teams will feature from the north of England in the 2024/25 Premier League season.
This is the lowest representation from the North since the league was renamed in 1992.
Only four clubs from the North West of England and one club from the North East and Yorkshire, Newcastle United, will take part in the 2024/25 season.
In contrast, there are seven clubs from London and four from the south and south-east of England, including East Anglia.
The remaining four clubs are from the Midlands.
Only twice in the previous Premier League seasons have there been fewer than seven clubs from the north – mainly South Yorkshire, Cheshire and Greater Manchester – in 2022/23 and 2015/16.
In 2008/09 there were eleven northern clubs in the Premier League, four from Greater Manchester – Wigan Athletic and Bolton Wanderers were both in the top division – and three from the North East.
By contrast, the 11 teams from the south next season will be the most in Premier League history.
Seven London clubs will be in the Premier League from the 2022/23 season onwards, the most in the Premier League’s 20-team era, while the promotion of Ipswich and Southampton means there will also be an increase in the number of other southern sides next season.
With Everton being the only northern team likely to be involved in a relegation battle, with Burnley, Leeds United and Middlesbrough all mentioned as potential promotion contenders from the EFL Championship, the number of northern teams is likely to increase again by 2025/26.
However, the Premier League’s overall shift from north to south is not just a trend specific to this season but a wider one.
The industrial towns of the North and Midlands are the traditional strongholds of English football, and all twelve founding members of the Football League were from the Midlands or North-West. Most of the surviving professional football clubs in England can trace their origins back to before 1880, also from the North or Midlands.
This traditional dominance continued into the Premier League’s early years, when there were more northern than southern teams in the league for most seasons up until 2012/13, but since then there has only been one season, 2015/16, when there were more northern teams than southern teams, and this year there are more than twice as many southern teams as northern teams.
This change may be due in part to the increasing importance of broadcast revenues and the decreasing importance of ticket revenues in team finances. Ten of the top 20 teams in England by attendance are from the North, five from the Midlands and five from the South. Thirteen Northern teams had average attendances of over 20,000 last season, compared with 11 from the South and nine from the Midlands.
The creation of the Premier League meant clubs could earn more from broadcasting rights deals, but it was only after 2010 that these deals really began to proliferate.
Clubs in the south, and particularly London, are also able to earn more revenue per fan, through both ticket prices and other spending: Fulham, West Ham United, Brighton & Hove Albion, Crystal Palace and Bournemouth all charged higher top-flight season ticket prices than Everton last season.
London clubs can easily generate income through other sources such as concerts and other sports matches: Tottenham Hotspur has recently hosted American football matches, and Fulham also regularly hosts international matches.
There is a good chance there will be more than five teams in the Premier League in the coming seasons, but the difference in revenue between the top flight and the Championship will be so large that it will become increasingly difficult for clubs currently shut out of the Premier League to regain a foothold in the top tier of English football.
That means it’s unlikely we’ll see more than 10 northern teams in the Premier League over the next few seasons.
