A study of every Premier League, LALIGA and Serie A season from 2006-07 to 2025-26 — 1,200 club campaigns in all — shows LALIGA sets the highest bar for survival, averaging 38.4 points against England’s 34.8. The Premier League asks for the fewest points yet has the worst survival rate for promoted clubs, at just 53.3%, and is the only league of the three where every promoted club has gone down in a single season — something that’s now happened twice in a row, in 2023-24 and 2024-25.
For two seasons running, the Premier League’s relegation battle was barely a battle. In 2023-24 and again in 2024-25, all three promoted clubs went straight back down, and the drop zone was settled long before May. In 2024-25 the last relegated club finished 13 points behind the first safe one.
Then 2025-26 went the other way. West Ham, after 14 seasons in a row in the Premier League, went down on 39 points. That total would have kept them up in eighteen of the previous nineteen seasons.
The Premier League’s relegation picture has changed more in three years than in the 10 before it. That raises a question worth answering properly. Is a points total that keeps you up in England worth the same in Spain or Italy? And does a newly promoted club have a better chance in one league than another?
To find out, we compiled every final table in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A from 2006-07 to 2025-26: 60 league seasons, 1,200 club campaigns, 22,800 matches and 180 promoted clubs.
Method: The survival line is the points total of the best relegated club, plus one. That is the minimum needed to be certain of safety. It is a better measure than the 17th-placed club’s total, which only shows what that club happened to earn. All figures use official standings, including points deductions. We have only analysed the big leagues with 20 teams and no relegation playoffs.
La Liga Is the Toughest League to Stay In, at 38.4 Points
Across the 20 seasons, the survival line averages 38.4 points in La Liga, 35.5 points in Serie A and 34.8 points in the Premier League.
The 3.6-point gap between Spain and England is worth about a win and a draw over a season, and it holds across the whole period rather than coming from a few odd years. La Liga set the highest bar of the three in 15 of the 20 seasons. The Premier League set the lowest in 12 of 20.
The medians show the same thing: 39 points in Spain, 36 in Italy and 35 in England. A club that would have been comfortably safe in the Premier League on 36 points would have gone down in Spain in nine of the last 20 seasons.
Serie A is the surprise here. Italian football has a long reputation for defensive, low-scoring matches, which should mean more draws and a tighter table. On this measure, it is much closer to England than to Spain.
The averages set the level. What they hide is how differently each league moves around it, and that is where the three start to look nothing alike.
Premier League: The Lowest Floor in Europe, and a 14-Point Swing
England has produced both extremes in our data. The survival line fell to 26 points in 2024-25, when Leicester went down on 25. That is the lowest figure in any of the three leagues across the full 20 seasons. A year later it was 40 points, after West Ham were relegated on 39.
That 14-point jump between two seasons is the biggest move anywhere in our data. No other league is close. Spain’s biggest single-season change was 8 points, and Italy’s was 6.
The Premier League has also needed 32 points or fewer on four occasions, twice as often as La Liga. In 12 seasons out of 20, Premier League teams have needed the fewest points among the three leagues to survive relegation.
La Liga: A Floor of 30, and 40 or More in Nine Seasons
Spain is expensive to stay in, and it stays that way. The survival line has reached 40 points or more in nine of the 20 seasons, against two in England and one in Italy.
The floor is higher too. La Liga’s lowest survival line in 20 years is 30 points. The Premier League’s is 26.
The highest figure in our whole dataset came in 2010-11, when Deportivo La Coruna were relegated on 43 points. That meant 44 points were needed to be certain of safety. Deportivo are also behind the Spanish low mark, going down on 29 points in 2017-18.
Spain does move around. The line has changed by five points or more in nine separate seasons, more often than either of the other two leagues. It just moves within a higher range.
Serie A: The Narrowest Range, Nine Points in Twenty Years
Italy is the most predictable of the three leagues. The Serie A survival line has ranged from 31 to 40 points, a nine-point range in comparison to 14 points in both England and Spain.
It has changed by five points or more only once in 20 seasons. La Liga has done that nine times and the Premier League five.
The Italian high came in 2006-07, when Chievo were relegated on 39 points. The low came in 2021-22, when Cagliari went down with 30 points. A club planning a survival season in Italy can aim for roughly the same target most years. In England, that would be a risky assumption.
Promoted Clubs: Only 53.3% Survive in the Premier League
The survival line figures suggest England should be the easiest place to arrive for newcomers. It is not.
Of the 60 clubs promoted into the Premier League since 2006-07, 32 survived their first season back. That is 53.3%, barely better than a coin toss. In La Liga, promoted clubs have a success rate of 70%, and in Serie A, 60%, from the same 60-club sample.
Season-by-Season Survival
The season-by-season numbers make the gap wider still. La Liga has had all three promoted clubs survive in five separate seasons, more than either of the others, and has never had fewer than one stay up. Serie A managed all three twice, in 2006-07 and 2007-08, and has also never had a season with all three promoted clubs not surviving the drop. Its most common result, in 12 of 20 seasons, is two of three surviving.
England is the only one of the three leagues to have had a season where no promoted club survived. It has happened twice, back to back, in 2023-24 and 2024-25. England has also had seven seasons where only one of three stayed up. Spain has had three. The Premier League does manage clean sweeps, three of them, but its one-survivor and no-survivor seasons outnumber them three to one.
What Have We Learned?
- La Liga is the hardest of the three leagues to stay in. At an average of 38.4 points against England’s 34.8, La Liga demands for an extra win and a draw more for the positive outcome, and it has set the highest bar in 15 of the 20 seasons we looked at. The gap holds across the whole period rather than coming from a few unusual years.
- The Premier League asks for the fewest points and still treats promoted clubs the worst. It is the cheapest of the three leagues to survive in and the least likely to keep its new arrivals. England is also the only league in our study to lose all three promoted clubs in a season, and it has now done that twice in a row.
- The obvious explanation for that does not hold up. The usual assumption is that England’s biggest clubs take so many points that fewer are left at the bottom. Our data does not support it. The top six take 42.5% of all points in the Premier League, 42.4% in Serie A and 42.1% in La Liga, which is effectively the same. The English top-six share has also stayed flat across the 20 seasons rather than going up.
- Serie A sits between the other two on both measures, and is the most predictable of the three. Its survival line averages 35.5 points, between England’s 34.8 and Spain’s 38.4, and 60% of its promoted clubs survive, between England’s 53.3% and Spain’s 70%. It is also the steadiest league in our data. The Serie A survival line has stayed within a nine-point range for two decades, against 14 points in both England and Spain, and it has moved by five points or more only once in 20 seasons. A promoted club in Italy has a clearer idea of the target than one in England.
This article first appeared at RG.org.
About Vyom Chaudhary
Vyom Chaudhary is a football data journalist and digital PR specialist with more than a decade of experience covering the global game. His work combines statistical analysis, data storytelling and original research, with studies featured by leading international publications, including Reuters, Bloomberg, The Guardian, BBC, The Times and ESPN. A former head of football content and marketing at RunRepeat, Vyom has produced data-driven features on topics ranging from World Cup trends and player performance to football economics and fan culture. Full bio
