Promotion, relegation and The Rest

The Premier League has twenty clubs. Each season three go down to the Championship and three come up. TopFlight fully accounts for this dynamic.

Every contender has a token

Every English club with a plausible path to the Premier League has a token, from the Championship down, created at the inception of TopFlight. The twenty clubs in the Premier League get paid every day, by place in the table. A club outside the Premier League earns nothing until it is back in the twenty.

The market maker quotes the twenty clubs TopFlight opens with and keeps quoting them wherever the table takes them.

Promotion

When a club is promoted, its token starts earning from the first match day after which the official Premier League table includes the club.

Relegation

Relegation does not end a club's token. It carries on trading and the market maker carries on quoting it. What changes is the pay: the daily pay follows the Premier League table, so a club outside it is paid nothing until it is back in. Its price in the meantime represents the market's view on the possibility of a return to the top flight; both the chance of it, how soon and how well the club will do. Once the club is back in the Premier League, the token is paid again from the first daily table it appears in.

The Rest

TopFlight's market maker currently quotes twenty clubs. The other 144 clubs with a token have no quote from it yet and any market maker may quote them. Every other club in English football shares one token, The Rest.

No market maker currently quotes The Rest, so today it has no price of its own. The board shows it as whatever the twenty quoted prices leave of the $1, and that figure covers the 144 unquoted clubs too. It is paid nothing today, because the daily pay goes to the twenty places in the Premier League table and no club behind The Rest is in it. Today it is not bought on its own: it comes inside every Field.

Prices and trading describes the Field.

Any club not in the top six levels of English football for the 2026-27 season is represented by The Rest; The 164 clubs lists the ones with a token.