The EPL "derives most of its power from the simple truth that more people want to watch it than any other league," according to Sam Pilger of BLEACHER REPORT. Per Football-Marketing.com's '11 data, on average, each Premier League game has a global audience of 12.3 million people, "which far outstrips La Liga, the Bundesliga and Serie A." In fact if you added together the average global audience per game for these leagues -- La Liga with 2.2 million (via EPFL-Euroleagues.com), the Bundesliga (via '12's economic report) with 2 million and Serie A (via Alessandro Baroncelli and Raul Caruso) with 4.5 million -- it still would not overtake "the all-powerful Premier League." This exposure "gives the Premier League an unprecedented power" to negotiate both its centralized TV-rights deal and the clubs' individual sponsorship deals. On the actual pitch, the EPL is not as dominant, and for all its global appeal, "astronomical" TV deals and the wealth of its sides, "the majority of the very best players in the world still seek to ply their trade elsewhere." The great success of the Premier League "is that it manages to be the best league in the world without the best players." The power and enduring appeal of the Premier League "is not in the quality of its football but rather in the excitement it provides and its inherent competitiveness" (BLEACHER REPORT, 2/6).
