The 2025-2026 English Premier League season begins Friday, August 15 with defending champions Liverpool hosting Bournemouth at 3 p.m. ET on USA Network and NBC ’s Spanish-language channel, Universo.

This summer marked the 40th anniversary of English football’s nadir. At a time of rampant hooliganism, fatal stadium tragedies and a ban from all European competition, an editorial in The Sunday Times infamously derided football as “a slum sport played in slum stadiums increasingly watched by slum people.”