Twenty years ago, the Premier League was approved, an event described as football's 'big bang' moment
In 1992, the English Football Association met the power brokers of the domestic game at their headquaters in Lancaster Gate, London. The meeting ended with an announcement that a historical deal had been struck, allowing the top teams to form a new tier of football called the Premier league.
With the new season scheduled to kick off in August of the same year, TV companies needed to move quickly to tie the Premier League clubs into a multi-million pound deal. In return for exclusive broadcast rights, the clubs would now get an unprecedented windfall, which would help them lure some of the best footballing talent to the Premier League.
By allowing the breakaway to happen, the English FA claimed to have acted in the interests of the national team - if the Premier League stuck to its promise to pare down the number of elite teams, initially from 22 to 20, the players would be less exhaused and this should give the national team a better chance of European and World cup success.
A lot of talk about dismantling the old league system in favour of a 'super league' had been bandied about in the 1980s. Step forward the 'Big Five' (Arsenal, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur); these clubs claimed that they earned and spent the most and wanted to form an elite divison so they could do more of the same. The main obstacle, as they saw it, was their affiliation to the Football League, which had organised league football for over a century.
It was a ruling in the High Court that really turned things in favour of the 'Big Five'. A judgement in 1991, handed down by Justice Rose, cleared the way for a split between the top divison and the three tiers below it.
Following the ratification and final approval by the Football Association in February 1992, the next step for the Premier League founders was to avert a players' strike.
With the players back on side following an agreement over pay and conditions, the Premier League clubs now faced another showdown. A meeting was held at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in Bayswater with the TV companies vying for exclusive rights to screen live Premier League matches.
ITV were the frontrunners, but in a shock move BSkyB, backed by Rupert Murdoch, tabled an incredible �304m bid for the five-year deal and blew their rivals away. The BBC, who had thrown their lot in with the BSkyB bid, were given the highlights package so they could revive the popular Match of the Day programme. Greg Dyke was furious as ITV got nothing.
With contracts signed, BSkyB splurged on a glossy advertising campaign to get armchair football fans signed up in time for the new season. With some of the best games no longer available on terrestrial TV, some expressed their wider concerns about exclusive deals, including Sebastian Coe, the newly elected Conservative MP, who said: "I think it is wrong that only two million [satellite] dish owners get access to such major sporting events." Others were just saddened that the simple tradition of teams kicking off at three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon had gone because of TV scheduling.
The inaugural Premier League kicked off in August 1992 with Arsenal tipped by many to win it. Manchester United were crowned champions at the end of the season. Here's how the Guardian previewed the 1992-1993 campaign:
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