Premiership and Football League 2004-2005
By 2004 the Premier League had become one of the strongest and most successful in the world, generating enormous sums from TV rights and sponsorship. The Football League clubs benefitted from a TV rights deal with ON Digital, but when the consortium led by ITV collapsed, many clubs faced severe financial problems. At the same time, Nationwide Building Society decided to end their sponsorship of the Football League. Coca Cola stepped in and the League attempted to reinvent itself as the home of grass roots football. In the process, the Divisions were renamed once again. Two clubs now exchanged places between the League and the Conference each season so the lower divisions now included some unfamiliar names and colours. Generally, kits were a great simpler than they had been a decade earlier, with discrete piping and straighforward collars. Stockings now featured all sorts of innovative features, including badges, club names, vertical stripes and contrasting reverses.
