The Eredivisie is the highest league of professional football in the Netherlands. The league was founded in 1956, two years after the start of professional football in the Netherlands.
The top division consists of 18 clubs. Each club meets every other club twice during the season, once at home and once away. At the end of each season, the club at the bottom is automatically relegated to the second level of the Dutch league system, the Jupiler League (First Division). At the same time, the champion of the First Division will be automatically promoted to the Eredivisie. The next two clubs from the bottom of the Eredivisie go to separate promotion / relegation play-offs.
The play-offs are played in two groups. Each group has one Eredivisie club and three high-placed clubs from the Eerste Divisie. In both promotion/relegation play-off groups, each club plays a home-and-away series with the other clubs. The winner of each play-off group plays in the following season's Eredivisie, with the other teams going to the First Division.
Since the start of the Eredivisie, it has built up a worldwide reputation as one of the more respected and most entertaining football leagues to watch. With fans who love watching football and a country that is full of football fanatics, the Eredivisie with its offensive minded football is loved throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Furthermore, it has been viewed as a famous place for talented youth to come and make a name for themselves and be able to take the next step in their careers.
In the first season of the Eredivisie (1956), PSV player Coen Dillen wrote history by scoring the most goals in one season by a single player (43 goals). This record still stands to this day. His team however, didn’t win the championship, it was Ajax who became the Eredivisie’s first champions. Since then Ajax has managed to win the title 33 times, while PSV falls in second with 23 and Feyenoord comes in third with a total of 14 championships.
These three teams would dominate the Dutch football competition for years and are known as the ‘traditional top three’. In fact, between 1981 and 2009 no other team would win besides these three. In 2009, AZ Alkmaar put an end to this trend. The following year FC Twente would win their first championship every, once again beating out one of the ‘traditional top three’ of the Eredivisie.
Source Information: https://eredivisie.eu/more/history/