The Scottish Premiership features the leading teams from across Scotland. While teams from Wales take part in the English football divisions, this is not the case in Scotland. There have been some calls for Scottish teams to also be part of leagues with English teams, but this is yet to gain much momentum.
The format of the Scottish Premiership
The Scottish Premiership is naturally the top division in the range of Scottish Professional Football Leagues (SPFL). Twelve teams battle it out in the Scottish Premiership, with a total of 38 games taking place each year.
Just like with most domestic leagues, if a team wins a game it will receive three points. When a team draws a game, both sides will receive one point and there are no points handed out for a loss. There are also no bonus points in place depending on how many goals are scored or conceded in a fixture.
The league table is first and foremost dictated by the total number of league points a given team accumulates throughout the year. If teams finish the season level on points, then goals difference will be looked at and then the total number of goals scored.
If there is still a tie between two teams, then there will be a playoff game that takes place to dictate which team finishes higher in the rankings. However, there will only be a play-off if the finishing position in the table will dictate who wins the title, who qualifies for Europe or if it involves the relegation of one of the teams.
The team that finishes at the foot of the Scottish Premiership table at the end of the season will be automatically relegated. The Scottish Championship winner will take this relegated team’s place in the Scottish Premiership. There is also a play-off system in place in the Scottish Premiership.
This sees the team in 11th position of the standings playing the winner of the Scottish Championship play-offs in a two-leg series. Whichever team comes out on top on aggregate over the two legs will then play in the Scottish Premiership the following season.
The number of European competition places the Scottish Premiership gets each season changes depending on Scotland's UEFA country coefficient ranking. For the 2018/2019 season, the Scottish Premiership teams had a single entry into the qualifying stages of the UEFA Champions League and three entries into the UEFA Europa League.
The history
The Scottish Premiership has been around in its current form since July 2013. A merger took place between the Scottish Football League and the Scottish Premier League to form this new division. There have been a dozen teams in the leading division of Scottish football since the 2000/2001 season.
The first Scottish Premiership season took place in 2013/2014, with Celtic being the only winner of this league title since the Scottish Premiership started. Over the course of the six seasons of the Scottish Premiership, Aberdeen finished the season in second place on four different occasions.
There is a split format to the leading division on Scottish football which prevents teams from having to play each other four times. As part of the first phase of the league, each team plays one another a total of three times. After the first 33 games, there will be a split in the league into two sections with six teams in each.
Each team in these sections will play one more game against the other five teams in their a split of the table. The points achieved earlier in the season still apply to the split tables. However, a team cannot move outside of its split table.
Betting on the Scottish Premiership
Football is massively popular in Scotland. The teams have a diehard fan base and this lends itself to exciting games that are full of passion. By placing bets on these Scottish Premiership games, it adds even further to the excitement fans get when watching the games.
While Celtic are clearly out in front, the rest of the league is pretty even in terms of competitiveness. This presents exciting betting opportunities in many different markets. Even Celtic have been slipping up more in recent times, with a lot of bettors taking advantage of the likes of handicap markets in fixtures in which Celtic are involved.
Bookmakers focus a good amount of resources on Scottish Premiership games, with in-game betting being a particular favourite among fans as it allows them to place bets based off what they are seeing in real-time during these games.
