England's Goal Rush

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Nobody went short. Sky, a satellite-TV broadcaster that is part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, forked out around $350 million to air the élite's first five seasons in Britain. (Having previously struggled for both cash and viewers, Sky's nascent business was given an enormous boost by snatching the football rights.) The game was transformed. For fans accustomed to the stodgy — albeit free — coverage offered by terrestrial channels, Sky's whizzy stats and graphics brought football up to date, and made it much more entertaining. Fans were treated to fireworks and dancing girls at grounds. For football, says Simon Chadwick, co-director of the Birkbeck Sport Business Centre, part of the University of London, the 1990s "was a monumental decade — probably the most important since [the setting up of the Football League] in the 19th century."

As player salaries have ballooned, talented foreign players have made a beeline for England; there are now more than 300 overseas players on Premier League clubs' books. When the four top teams clashed one weekend in January — Liverpool against Chelsea, and Arsenal against Manchester United — players from 18 different countries, from Togo to Norway and Serbia to Brazil, took to the turf in those two games alone. Businesses have been keen to cozy up, too. Current league sponsor Barclays Bank recently committed $125 million in a new three-year deal, up 15% from its present agreement. As the presentation of the game changed, so did its fan base. Lured by the refurbished stadiums, Sky's clever marketing and the arrival of better players, new bottoms occupied the Premier League's shiny new seats. Among the converts were more women and those with cash. "It was clear the new fans were more affluent," says John Williams, director of the Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research at the University of Leicester.

To see the new face of football, there's no better place than Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United. The ground has been expanded three times in the last 12 years, and now holds 76,000 compared with just 44,000 in the early 1990s. There are two dozen suites hosting between 44 and 700 on a match day, and 164 boxes, costing between $34,000 and $300,000 each for a season. There's fine dining — you can get smoked halibut and quails' eggs with caviar in the Gallery. Even the canvasses on the restaurant's walls are up for sale. There's similar grandeur on offer at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge stadium, too, where business leaders are escorted to their suite by glamorous women in sharp suits.

For all its success at home, it is the Premiership's global reach that sets it apart from other sports leagues. That reflects good business sense. "We're a small island with a relatively small population," says Richard Scudamore, ceo of the Premier League. In Britain, "there's going to be limited domestic growth" for teams. But while the indicators at home are "fairly maxed out" — match-day attendance, for instance, averages 92% across the League — Scudamore says that recruiting the legions of potential foreign fans offers "huge global scope."

The nature of the game helps. Purists have often mocked the English style of football, but with its fast pace and all-action style, it is undeniably exciting — especially in markets where football is relatively novel. Ask Dittha Jumpakaeg, p.r. manager for the Liverpool Thailand Fan Club. The Bangkok local doesn't remember exactly how old he was when he first watched Liverpool on TV, but he was hooked by the side's dazzling control. "It seemed the other side never touched the ball,'' he says. (They didn't.) Germany's Bundesliga occasionally aired in Thailand, Dittha says, but the German matches seemed slower, the players older. "Thais," he adds, "like a fast-paced game." (In 2004, then Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra actually tried to buy into Liverpool.) Now some 41 million of Manchester United's estimated 75 million fans worldwide are in Asia, according to MORI, and in a report for England's Football Association this year, academics at Warwick Business School found that 14% of Chinese football fans polled said they owned a Manchester United shirt.

Of course, translating an Asian fan base into revenue isn't simple. Club shirts are easy to counterfeit. Wander down traffic-choked Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok, and toy-shop owner Sombat Jingrap will sell you a knockoff Arsenal, Liverpool or Manchester United shirt for $25. (You'll have to get in line — he offloads 300 in a good month.) The real thing can cost three times that. Some clubs have outsourced shirt sales. In return for giving Nike its global kit merchandising rights, Manchester United gets an annual royalty fee; last season the club netted more than $40 million from the deal.