Austria Tipico Bundesliga predictions and odds

If you want to bet on a sport, you must know its ins and outs. The leagues, the teams, the players… New information never stops pouring in, and it can be a bit overwhelming. That’s why we here at Betting Fellow are making these league overviews. None of them will instantly make you know everything there is to know about a country’s football, but they can act as a sort of cheat sheet to get you started.

We’re continuing our overview of European professional football leagues with the Austrian Football Bundesliga.

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Austria Tipico Bundesliga Predictions

29/05/2022

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Austrian Football Bundesliga History and General Info

This is the top-tier national league in Austria, and it consists of the 12 biggest and most successful association football teams in the country. And yes, we realise that the name is a bit of a mouthful and will be annoying to repeat throughout this article – but it is important to note that most top-tier national sports competitions in Austria are dubbed Bundesliga, and it is just as important to differentiate it from its somewhat more famous cousin in Germany.

This league ranks as the twelfth best national league in Europe, as per UEFA’s association coefficient rankings. It reached the 16th position at the end of the 2015-16 season, which means it also gained its first spot for the UEFA Champions League the next year.

It is currently known as the Tipico Bundesliga, due to a sponsorship deal with the bookmaker Tipico.

The first efforts towards creating a unified national league in Austria began at the very start of the 20th century. The efforts resulted in the introduction of the first Austrian football championship in 1911. The very best teams at the time competed as parts of the First Class, as part of the same championship.

From 1924, the league was considered professional and changed its name to the First League. It is also important to note that Austria is officially a federation of 9 states. Back in the day, only teams from Lower Austria – the state of Vienna and its surroundings – were allowed to compete. This lasted to 1937, after which the league was elevated to a truly national level. At this point, the Austrian Football Association was responsible for how the Austrian Football Bundesliga was run and managed.

The second half of the 20th century saw Austrian football divided over many issues, such as representatives of amateur and professional clubs not agreeing on how the Austrian Football Bundesliga should be managed. As such, the current format of this league, and its status as the undisputed highest level of football in the country, did not come about until 1974.

In 1991, the league was reconstituted as a federation, meaning they were largely independent of most of the other levels of the competition. They are still part of the Association, only they carry their own responsibilities as a separate entity.

A typical championship year is divided into two smaller seasons: an autumn season and a spring season. Typically, all of this lasts from July to June next year.

The Austrian Football Bundesliga has a fairly standard format. The 10 teams each play every other team twice, once on home ground and once away. They are then ranked based on acquired points, where every game won awards a team 3 points, and a draw game awards only 1.

At the end of the season, the team with the least points is relegated to the Second League (Currently known as the Sky Go Erste Liga).

The best-placed team is named Austrian champion and qualifies for the UEFA Champions League along with the runners-up. The 3rd and 4th placed teams enter the qualification rounds for the Europa League, along with the winner of the Austrian Cup.

The most decorated team in the history of the Austrian Football Bundesliga is Rapid Wien with 32 titles and 26 second places. Behind them is Austria Wien with 24 titles and 19 runner-up positions, followed by Red Bull Salzburg with 13 titles.

The overall top scorer throughout the league’s history is Hans Krankl, who played for several teams throughout his career. He is an extremely prolific striker with 270 goals over 361 appearances. Next in line is Ivica Vastić with 187 goals over 441 appearances.

The record for most appearances instead goes to Heribert Weber with an impressive 579 matches total.

Austrian Football Bundesliga Title Challengers

The Austrian top-flight is easily one of the most one-sided top-tier national leagues in Europe. Austrian Bundesliga outright betting is about as exciting as it is predictable. Salzburg, backed by Red Bull’s massive funding, outclasses every other team by a considerable margin. We don’t see this state of affairs as likely to change any time soon, and top bookmakers online agree. As such, we suggest trying to find a Top 3 Finish or similar betting market.

A Salzburg outright winning bet is priced at just over 1.10, occasionally going up to 1.16. To be fair, these are longer odds than last season, but that seems like a moot point.

There are 3 other teams seen as contenders for the top spots. There’s still some excitement to be had – remember, the runners-up also get a crack at the Champions League. These three teams are Rapid Vienna, Sturm Graz, and LASK Linz. As a reference, all of these are priced in the 9.00 to 13.00 range to win the Austrian Bundesliga. The exact odds vary depending on the bookmaker.

FC Red Bull Salzburg

Up until 2013, Salzburg would occasionally end up with 2nd place in the Bundesliga rankings. Those days are long behind us, and the Red Bull-backed club has won every single championship since then. It’s not really surprising, either – they have more than 4 times the funding of their closes competitors. They ended the 2020/21 season with a 17/1/4 record and more than 20 points over the runners-up.

All of these facts point to a very simple truth – this is the dominant team of the competition and the hard favourites in any matchup the Austrian top flight can throw at them. Their lacklustre performance in international competitions is the only thing that somewhat dampens their dominance. That said, their Champions League group was very difficult, and they were knocked out of the Europa League by Villarreal, who went on to win the proceedings.

Their lineup is fairly heavy on the attacking side, and you can expect a lot of goals in almost any Salzburg match. Examples include the centre-forward duo of Sekou Koita and Mergim Berisha and midfielders like Brenden Aaronson and Mohamed Camara.

The biggest transfers in this squad for the 2021/22 season are Patson Daka and Enoch Mwepu, who moved to Leicester and Brighton, respectively.

Rapid Wien

Although Rapid are traditionally one of the country's most successful teams, the 2016 – 2019 period saw them slip somewhat. They’ve had some ups and downs, but the previous two seasons brought them up to form as Austria’s most consistent runners-up. They had a decent run in 2020/21, with final records showing 13/6/3. With that in mind, coach Dietmar Kühbauer will be heading the team for another year.

Though few can claim they’ll be stepping on Salzburg’s toes any time soon, it’s still a fairly decent squad. Most signs seem to point at Rapid as being the second team to be sent to the Champions League again. That said, they haven’t been able to get to the Group Stage in 2020/21, which is likely their main goal.

Unlike Salzburg’s massive funding, this team is spearheaded by a promising crop of local players. The most eye-catching members are centre-forwards Ercan Kara and Taxiarchis Fountas. However, the pair of backs Maximilian Ullmann and Filip Stojkovic are arguably more important for the squad’s buildup-based strategy.

As far as transfers go, it’s been a fairly quiet summer. Attacking midfielder Yusuf Demir was loaned to Barcelona’s B team, which is likely the most notable change in the lineup.

LASK Linz

Although they’ve captured the hearts of many fans with their recent comeback, consistency still seems to be a major issue for Linzer. Their best result in recent memory is 2nd place in 2018/19, though the season’s strange structure due to Covid-19 is partly to blame. Still, they managed to climb up to 3rd last season, marking them as possible contenders for a Champions League qualification.

As opposed to most of their strongest opponents, defence remains LASK’s greatest strength. They have just over 20 concessions in 2020/21, which is a record even Salzburg struggle to match. A weaker attack leaves them with not nearly as many victories, though, which is an issue coach Dominik Thalhammer is eager to tackle. Rising star strikers did not really work out last season, though, so he’s taking a more balanced approach this time. Forwards Christoph Monschein and Alexander Schmidt were brought in to round out a fairly wing-heavy lineup.

However, team captain Alexander Schlager remains the high point of the whole roster as one of the league’s most impressive goalies. Dario Maresic will also be playing as centre-back on loan from Reims.

SK Sturm Graz

Speaking of inconsistent performances, every new season seems to be a coin flip with Sturm. Still, beating out LASK last season for 3rd place caught many by surprise. Especially considering the disastrous performances in 2018/19 and 19/20. Graz are a bit of a wild card, but most bookies give them slightly shorter odds than LASK or Rapid.

Head Manager Christian Ilzer moved this team away from the defensive focus into a fairly midfield-heavy sort of approach. Apparently, this worked out great, and the lineup is overall very similar to what we saw last season. Standout examples include Jon Gorenc Stankovic and Otar Kiteishvili. The roster is rounded out by striker Kelvin Yeboah and defenders Gregory Wüthrich and Amadou Dante.

David Nemeth’s loan has ended, though, so the backline may be a bit weaker this season.

Austrian Football Bundesliga Relegation Favourites

On the flip side, these are some teams considered most likely to be relegated into the second tier of the Austrian league system.

SK Austria Klagenfurt

The road this club took to the Bundesliga is a fairly strange one. Namely, they were placed 3rd in the second flight. Both of the better-placed teams failed to apply for a Bundesliga license, so here they are. Overall, though, that doesn’t boast well for the Carinthian team, despite their victory over St. Pölten. They have limited resources and haven’t played in the top flight since the early 2000s, and even that was under a different name and composition.

WSG Tirol

Tirol were actually set to be relegated last season but managed to avoid that fate. SV Mattersburg filed for bankruptcy in summer 2020, allowing Tirol to stick around. Let’s look at some facts, though. First of all, they were a freshly promoted team in 2020/21, and most bookies doubted their chances of staying up despite them winning the second flight. Combined with their limited resources, it’s questionable whether the considerable lineup changes will be enough to keep them around.

Austrian Football Bundesliga Top Players

Another important thing you need to consider for Austrian Football Bundesliga betting is the individual players – this can give you a solid idea of a team’s playstyle, which can be key information depending on the market you decide to go for.

Sékou Koïta

Deemed the league’s most valuable player, Koita is certainly an impressive young striker. He’s one of the cogs in Salzburg’s devastating offensive machine and was one of the league’s top goalscorers last season despite limited time on the pitch. Still, it was one of his first real shots at proving himself, and with 17 goals, he did not disappoint. With Daka off to the Premier League, he’ll likely have even more time in the spotlight this season.

Alexander Schlager

As the team captain and unshakeable goalkeeper for LASK, Schlager is widely regarded as the team’s leader in more ways than one. He is widely regarded as one of the Austrian national team’s greatest assets and boasts more appearances than any other member of LASK’s lineup.

Maximilian Wöber

Wöber first came into the limelight playing for Ajax. He proved his incredible game sense and potential in the international theater. Although it’s hard to get as much attention as part of Saltzburg, he’s still an incredible defender with plenty of room for growth – after all, Wöber is only 23. Some of the worlds biggest clubs have come to the same conclusion – Liverpool and Bayern Munich have both expressed interest in signing him.

Austrian Football Bundesliga Rising Stars

Now we’ll turn attention to some of Bundesliga’s most promising young talents. These players are all great in their own right, but we’re predicting that their time is yet to come.

Karim Adeyemi

Salzburg are hardly strapped for options when it comes to strikers, and we’re certain 2021/22 is the year Adeyemi finally gets to shine. The first 3 games of this season saw him score no less than 5 times, proving he is more than worthy of becoming Europe’s next big star. Multiple sources cite him as one of the world’s most promising footballing wunderkinder, so you can expect to see more of Adeyemi.

Brenden Aaronson

This 20-yeard-old attacking midfielder was recently transferred to Salzburg from Philadelphia Union in what was named the highest-paid fee for an American homegrown player. Though he barely recorded any time on the pitch due to his late entry in January 2021, he has recorded seven goals and five assists. All of this brought Aaronson three trophies across two countries in seven months. His skill on the ball garnered him the nickname Medford Messi, and he might just end up being one of the very few football stars from the US.

Austrian Football Bundesliga Derby Matches

Wiener Derby

This derby is probably the biggest of its kind in Austria, and is the matchup between the two biggest teams from the capital of Vienna: FK Austria Wien and SK Rapid Wien. Although their glory days are behind them, these are still the most decorated teams in Austria’s history, making for some very exciting matches.

Support today is mainly split along geographical lines: the northern and western parts of Vienna are Rapids’, while the city’s couth is synonymous with FK Austria. However, historically speaking this rivalry has some sociological underpinnings, which explains its importance to Austrian football culture. Namely, Rapid was founded as the “Worker’s Club” of Vienna, leaving Austria as the “bourgeois” team.

In a similar fashion, a lot of Austria’s cities have their own city derbies. These include the Graz derby between Grazer AK and Sturm Graz, the Linz Derby between FC Blau-Weiß Linz and LASK Linz, and several smaller ones.

Austrian Football Superliga Best Stadiums

Red Bull Arena

Also known as the EM-Stadion Wals-Siezenheim and, during UEFA club football event, as Stadion Salzburg. This is, somewhat predictably, the home ground of Red Bull Salzburg. It was opened in 2003 and can host just over 31,000 spectators.

Allianz Stadion

This stadium was built on the site as the old Gerhard Hanappi Stadium to be the new home of Rapid Wien. To comply with UEFA’s sponsorship regulations, it also sometimes uses its non-commercial name Weststadon. Construction started in 2014 after a ceremonial demolition of Rapid’s previous home and was finalised in 2016. The Allianz Stadion can house 28,000 people.