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The Football League Championship (often referred to as the Championship for short or the Sky Bet Championship for sponsorship reasons) is the second-highest division overall in the English football league system after the Premier League. Each year, the top finishing teams in the Championship are promoted to the Premier League, and the lowest finishing teams are relegated to League 1. The Football League Championship, which was introduced for the 2004–05 season, was previously known as the Football League First Division (1992–2004), and before that was known as Division Two (1892–1992). The winners of the Championship receive the Football League Championship trophy, the same trophy as the old First Division champions were handed prior to the Premier League's inception in 1992. The Championship is the wealthiest non-top flight football division in the world and the seventh richest division in Europe. With an average match attendance for the 2014–15 season was 17,857, the Championship ranked slightly ahead of the German 2. Bundesliga as the most-watched secondary league in the world.〔http://comparetheleagues.com/〕 In the 2014–15 season, A.F.C. Bournemouth were the division champions, Watford were the runners up, and Norwich City were the promotion play-off winners. ==History== :''For history before 2004, see Football League First Division after 1993 and Football League Second Division before that year'' In its inaugural season of 2004–05, the Football League Championship announced a total attendance (including postseason) of 9.8 million, which it said was the fourth highest total attendance for a European football division, behind the FA Premier League (12.88m), Spain's La Liga (11.57m) and Germany's Bundesliga (10.92m), but beating Italy's Serie A (9.77m) and France's Ligue 1 (8.17m).〔(First class second division ) TheFA.com〕 The total figures were aided somewhat by the presence of 24 clubs, compared to 20 clubs in both Serie A and Ligue 1, and 18 in the Bundesliga. A major factor to the competition's success comes from television revenue. On 30 September 2009, Coca-Cola announced they would end their sponsorship deal with the Football League at the end of the 2009–10 season.〔(Coca-Cola end Football League sponsorship deal ) ''The Guardian'', 30 September 2009〕 On 16 March 2010, npower were announced as the new title sponsors of the Football League, and from the start of the 2010–11 Football League season until the end of the 2012–13 season, the Football League Championship was known as the ''Npower Championship''.〔(Football League names npower as new sponsor ) BBC Sport, 16 March 2010〕 On 18 July 2013, UK bookmaker Sky Bet announced that they signed a 5-year agreement to sponsor the league.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Football League Championship」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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