Scotland Premiership predictions and odds

Width of knowledge is just as important as depth when it comes to sports betting. Sticking to the tried-and-true teams and leagues can only get you so far. Besides, it’s generally believed that smaller leagues are the ones where true value bets can be found.

Getting to know all the teams and players is not easy, though. It takes time, patience, research – but to get you started, you can find simple overviews of different leagues right here with Betting Fellow. In this article, you will read all you need to know about Scottish Premiership betting.

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Scotland Premiership Predictions

19/05/2024

19/05/2024

19/05/2024

18/05/2024

18/05/2024

18/05/2024

Scotland Premiership Results

The Scottish Premiership History and General Info

The Scottish Premiership is currently the top division of the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL). Currently, it is named in honour of one of the world’s biggest bookmakers and the league’s main sponsor – The Ladbrokes Premiership. It consists of Scotland’s 12 best professional football clubs, and only 16 clubs have ever played in it since its founding in 2013.

From this perspective, 2013 might seem very recent, relatively speaking. This is because the history of the football league system in Scotland is long and complicated. As such, it can be a bit difficult to track records and histories in Scotland, but bear with us – we’ll try to explain as simply as possible.

It all started back in 1890 with the founding of the SFL – the Scottish Football League. It changed a few names due to sponsorship deals over the years, but it remained the home of top-level football in Scotland for the better part of a century. It consisted of two divisions for most of its history, until a third was added in 1975, and then a fourth in 1994.

For the 1997/98 season, however, the highest tier clubs broke away and formed a separate league because they felt they weren’t getting their fair share of the proceeds. This action mirrored what happened with the English Premier League in the early 90s.

In 1997, the Scottish Premier League was formed to represent the top-level professional clubs. This league consisted of the 19 most successful teams, although only two of them – Celtic and the Rangers – ever managed to win it. Tiers 2 through 4 remained with the Scottish Football League. This sort of system remained in place until 2013 when the two organisations finally agreed to a merger. This resulted in the SPFL, and thus the Scottish Premiership.

There’s a lot more nuance and a lot of smaller changes here, but this should give you a solid idea of the league’s history. Now, let’s get into how it works:

A season lasts from August until May and is split into two phases. During the first phase, all 12 teams play against each other three times and are ranked using the classic system of 3 points per win, 1 point per draw. This means a total of 36 games, where each team plays twice at home and once away, or vice-versa.

For the second phase, the teams are split into two groups – the ‘top six’ and the ‘bottom six’. They then proceed to play five games each, once against each club in their group, and are again ranked in a similar fashion. While the points carry over from phase 1, a team in phase 2 is only ranked against other members of its own group – even if they end up having more or fewer points then a member of the other group.

During the pre-season, there is a system of “seeding” that tried to ensure that every team will play twice at home and twice away. The lowest-placed team is then relegated to a lower tier and swaps places with the winner of the Scottish Championship. The club in eleventh place also plays two-leg playoffs with the Championship play-off winners to earn a place in the next season.

So far, Celtic from Glasgow has won every single season of the Premiership since its inception in 2013. Combined with the 44 titles they had before with the SFL and SPL, they have an impressive 51 titles total. The true record for the number of titles over all of these leagues are the Rangers FC, however, with 54. Their last victory was back in the 2010/11 season, though, so they have technically not won a single Premiership. The third club in this ranking would be Aberdeen, with only 4 – the last of which was back in 1984.

The all-time top scorer during the 7 years of the Premiership’s existence is Celtic’s Leigh Griffiths with 77 goals over 141 appearances. If we take into account the Scottish Premier League since 1998, however, that record would go to the Rangers’ Kris Boyd with 225 goals. We should also probably mention Celtic’s legendary footballer Jimmy McGrory; although he does not hold any league-specific records, he is the all-time best goal-scorer in British top-tier football, with 550 goals at a club and international level.

Scottish Premiership Derby Matches

Old Firm

The Old Firm is not just a name for the two of Scotland’s biggest and most successful football clubs – it is also the name of one of the fiercest rivalries in the world of football. We already talked about how the division between the two supporter groups follows the lines of sectarian division in Scotland. As a result, this rivalry is deeply embedded in Scottish culture and has proven to have a great appeal all over the world.

Both Celtic and the Rangers come from Glasgow, and they have 104 Scottish League championships between the two of them. To millions of fans, this is not just the biggest derby in Scottish football – this derby is Scottish football.

Scottish Premiership Biggest Stadiums

Celtic Park

Celtic’s famed base of operations, the Park is an all-seater stadium with a capacity of 60,411 dedicated solely to football. This makes it the largest stadium in Scotland, and eight-largest in the UK. Originally, it was opened in 1888 in the Parkhead area of Glasgow. The club has changed several venues since, and the current iteration’s construction was completed in 1998.

Ibrox Stadium

The third biggest stadium in Scotland with a capacity of 50,817. (The second would be the famous Hampden Park, which is used for very prestigious events – but not Premiership matches.) Home of the Rangers, Ibrox was the site of an infamous disaster in 1971. It was largely rebuilt afterwards and became an all-seater stadium with no athletics lanes.