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Scottish League Cup

Founded	1946
Region	Scotland
Number of teams	44
Current champions	Celtic (18th title)
Most successful team(s)	Rangers (27 titles)
Television broadcasters	BT Sport
2018–19 Scottish League Cup

The Scottish League Cup, currently known as the Betfred Cup for sponsorship reasons, is a football competition open to all Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) clubs. The competition had a straight knockout format but became a group and knockout competition from 2016–17.

Rangers are the record holders of the cup, winning 27 times. Celtic are the current holders, after beating Aberdeen 1–0 at Hampden Park on 2 December 2018.

Currently, the domestic television rights are held by BT Sport who replaced BBC Scotland from the 2016–17 season.

Format

Historically, the Scottish League Cup has oscillated between being a straightforward single-elimination knockout tournament and having an initial group phase. Since the 2016–17 season, the League Cup has used a group phase format. The current format has eight groups of five teams playing each other once in a round-robin format.^[1] The forty teams playing in the group stage consist of the 38 league clubs who are not participating in UEFA competitions, along with two teams from outside the league.^{[1][note 1]} In the group phase, three points are given for a win and one point for a draw. If matches are level after ninety minutes, a penalty shoot-out is held with the winning team gaining a bonus point.^[1][2] The groups are regionalised: there are four groups in the North section, and four in the South section, with three pots for each regional section – top seeds, second seeds, and unseeded clubs. Each group will consist of one top seed, one second seed, and three unseeded clubs.

The eight group winners and four best runners-up progress into the second round, where they are joined by the four clubs participating in UEFA competitions.^[1] The tournament then adopts a single-elimination knockout format. There are no replays, which means all drawn matches are decided by extra time and a penalty shootout, if necessary. The semi-final matches are played on a neutral ground, determined by the location and size of supports involved. The final game is traditionally played at Hampden Park in Glasgow, though due to renovations some finals have been played at other venues, such as Celtic Park or Ibrox. The new format also allowed the SPFL to reintroduce the two-weekend winter break in January. Along with the newly designed tournament, a new television deal for it was announced as BT Sport took over rights from BBC Scotland.^[2] In February 2016 the SPFL announced the League Cup final would be moved to November.^[1][3]

History

The cup has its origins in a regional cup competition called the Southern League Cup which was introduced in 1940 when wartime restrictions led to a suspension of the Scottish Cup. This tournament was largely regional and did not involve all of the teams who comprised the Scottish Football League prior to the outbreak of war. The first official Scottish Football League Cup was contested during the 1946–47 season, when Rangers defeated Aberdeen in the final.^[4]

The competition was very popular with supporters during the first few decades of its existence. The tournament consisted of 8 or 9 groups consisting of 4 or 5 teams. The groups were seeded into 2 sets with the top 16 teams in Division 1 making up the first four Groups. This guaranteed that 4 'top' teams would play 4 'lesser' teams in the quarter-finals.

Extra games when the Premier League was formed and expanded European competitions meant that by the early 1980s, its long-winded format, which involved group rounds played early on in the season leading to two-legged knock-out rounds similar to the modern UEFA Champions League, attracted much criticism. In the mid-1980s the tournament was revamped to a shorter, single elimination knock-out style with a final played prior to Christmas, which provided the excitement of a cup final early in the season.

During the 1999–2000 competition, the semi-finals and final were moved to the springtime to avoid the congestion of fixtures caused by the early rounds of the UEFA club competitions and Scotland's representatives in Europe were given automatic byes until the third round of competition.

Previous finals

Sponsorship

The League Cup has been known by different names due to sponsorship:^[5]

Trophy

Since the competition's inception, the winning team has always been awarded the famous three-handled trophy known simply as the Scottish Football League Cup. However, during the 1980s when Skol lager sponsored the competition, a second trophy known simply as the "Skol Cup" was awarded concurrent to the first trophy. During the 1987–88 competition when Rangers won their third Skol Cup, they were given permanent possession of this trophy and a new "Skol Cup" with a slightly different design was introduced the following season.

European qualification

Until 1995, the winners of the Scottish League Cup were granted a place in the UEFA Cup, although this privilege was rarely invoked as the winning teams usually qualified for Europe by some other means such as winning the League Championship or Scottish Cup. The most recent example was Raith Rovers who represented Scotland in the 1995–96 UEFA Cup after winning the League Cup the previous season as a First Division club. This privilege has since been discontinued due to the reduction in the number of European places granted to Scottish clubs.

Media coverage

Scottish League Cup matches are currently shown live by BT Sport in the United Kingdom and Ireland.^[2] In Australia, the Scottish League Cup is broadcast by beIN Sports. The 2009 Scottish League Cup Final was shown live on SBS due to a fixture clash on previous hosts' Setanta channel.^[2]

From the 2016–17 edition, the Scottish League Cup rights were awarded to BT Sport following the new format announcement. BT Sport will screen six group stage matches throughout July and seven matches from the knockout stages including both semi-finals and the final itself.^[2]

Notes

References