Premier League behemoth now bigger and richer than ever

It has been 30 years since England's 'Big Five' (Arsenal, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham) led a breakaway from the Football League to rebrand the division as the Premier League.

Rupert Murdoch's satellite service Sky Television went big on the TV rights, landing a £304m five-year deal and throwing the kitchen sink at its innovative coverage to sprinkle some glitter on a game that had crawled out of the 80s under a cloud. The Premier League has never looked back.

Over the next three seasons, international rights will be worth over £5.05 billion (€6 billion). The broadcast rights in the UK alone will be worth £5 billion.

Games are shown in 212 countries, accessible to over 600 million people, and they feed insatiable media coverage that churns out content 24/7.

The league has usurped Serie A and La Liga as the promised land for most of the world's best talent. Money talks, and the Premier League has had a megaphone to its lips for years now.

Back in '92, Sky Sports trumpeted their coverage with the tagline, 'it's a whole new ball game', but really the early seasons were indistinguishable from what had gone before, certainly in terms of the standard on the pitch and the players competing. It was a division full of British and Irish footballers.

The Premier League's launch photo, which had a player from each of the 22 clubs (reduced to 20 in 1996), included grizzled old warhorses like Vinnie Jones, John Wark and Andy Ritchie.

Sky tried all sorts to jazz things up. A TV audience that had previously been accustomed to watching Des Lynam and Jimmy Hill chewing the fat over the intricacies of the 4-4-2 system were suddenly being treated to half-time fireworks displays, parachutists landing on the pitch and bands