England's second tier outdraws most top divisions in Europe
No league outside a country's top flight earns more money than the EFL Championship. In 2023-24 it pulled in 12.7 million spectators, an average of 23,048 a game, making it the fifth most watched league in Europe. Among second divisions only Germany's 2. Bundesliga draws bigger crowds per match.
Twenty-four clubs from England and Wales contest the division, each playing 46 matches between August and May. The top two go straight up to the Premier League, and a play-off decides the third promotion place; until 2025-26 it involved the teams from third to sixth, and from 2026-27 it expands to include seventh and eighth. The bottom three drop into League One. The winners lift the old Football League trophy that went to English champions before the Premier League began in 1992.
The Championship name arrived in 2004-05 as a rebrand of the old First Division. In that first season Sunderland took the title and Wigan Athletic, who had only joined the Football League in 1978, won promotion to the top flight for the first time. Reading set a Football League record the following year with 106 points. Leeds United became the first club under the new branding to enter administration in 2007, losing 10 points and going down.
The biggest crowd for any Championship fixture came at the 2014 play-off final, when 87,348 saw Bobby Zamora's stoppage-time goal send Queens Park Rangers up at Derby's expense. Newcastle recorded the highest club average, 51,106, in 2016-17. Some clubs have climbed remarkably fast: Brentford were in League Two in 2009 and reached the Premier League in 2021, while Nottingham Forest escaped after 14 straight Championship seasons despite sitting bottom eight rounds into 2021-22.
Across the era, Cardiff City, Derby County and Queens Park Rangers share the record of 20 seasons in the division, and Ipswich Town's run from 2004 to 2019 is the longest unbroken stay. Rotherham United have been relegated from it five times. In July 2026 Premier League clubs approved a proposed 10-year partnership with the EFL reportedly worth 1.5 billion pounds.
Source: EFL Championship
