It's absolutely not a game of pure chance, nor a level playing-field each year. Owners can decide how much to invest each year (unlike the US MLS) subject to some limits (UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations) on how much. And many of these teams have been bought/sold/had stock market IPOs multiple times in that period. And also each team has widely differing revenue streams from TV rights (across all competitions, including Champions League and Europa League) and merchandise sales, with which to fund player salaries/transfers and stadium renovations.

If you redo this table to quote PL first/second/third/fourth position per £ pound invested, (or total points in a season (3 for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss)) you get a different picture, e.g. for 2023-4 season: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-13446423/...

And even the Financial Fair Play regulations are nowhere close to the measures common in most American sports, like salary caps. They’re mostly intended as a speed bump for foreign oil magnates and Red Bull throwing all their money into their clubs and automatically winning everything.

Not even that, it's to prevent clubs going bankrupt all the time.

Without rules, every club is going to invest huge sums betting on achieving a top result that would give return on investment, and only a few can achieve that each year.

Investors throwing lots of money at the sport is a feature, not a bug, from the viewpoint of the people involved in the sport. So by itself that doesn't need to be prevented.

> They’re mostly intended as a speed bump

Sadly aren't even succeeding at that given City's 115 charges (dating back to 2008!) and various clubs with their self-sponsorship shenanigans.

That’s how some people drive over speed bumps!

> subject to some limits (UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations)

Unless you have enough oil money to just... not care about the rules.

Winners get money and money buys good players. So I think that's the source of the distribution.