Scottish League Cup

The Scottish League Cup (also known as the Viaplay Cup for sponsorship reasons) is a football competition open to all Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) clubs. First held in 1946–47, it is the oldest national League cup in existence. The competition had a straight knockout format but became a group and knockout competition from 2016–17.

Scottish League Cup
Founded1946
RegionScotland
Number of teams45
Current championsCeltic
(21st title)
Most successful team(s)Rangers
(27 titles)
Television broadcastersViaplay
2023–24 Scottish League Cup

Rangers are the record holders of the cup, winning 27 times. Celtic are the current holders, winning their 21st title after beating Rangers 2–1 at Hampden Park on 26 February 2023.

The domestic television rights are held by Viaplay, whose predecessor company Premier Sports replaced BT Sport from the 2019–20 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 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 three best runners-up progress into the second round, where they are joined by the five 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 Stadium. 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 in the season leading to two-legged knock-out rounds, attracted much criticism. In the mid-1980s the tournament was revamped to a shorter, single elimination knock-out format 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.

From the 2016–17 edition the League Cup reverted to a group stage format, with single-elimination knock-out in the last 16 onwards.[2]

Previous finals
Main article: List of Scottish League Cup finals

Sponsorship

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

Period Sponsor Name
1946–78No sponsorScottish League Cup
1979–81Bell's whiskyBell's League Cup
1981–84No sponsorScottish League Cup
1984–92Skol LagerSkol Cup
1992–94No sponsorScottish League Cup
1994–98Coca-ColaCoca-Cola Cup
1998–99No sponsorScottish League Cup
1999–2008CIS InsuranceCIS Insurance Cup[6][7]
2008–11The Co-operative InsuranceCo-operative Insurance Cup
2011–13Scottish GovernmentScottish Communities League Cup[8][9]
2013–15No sponsorScottish League Cup
2015QTS GroupThe Scottish League Cup presented by QTS (semi-finals and final only)[10]
2015–16Utilita EnergyThe Scottish League Cup presented by Utilita[11][12]
2016–21BetfredBetfred Cup[13][14]
2021–2022 Premier Sports Premier Sports Cup[15][16][17]
2022–present Viaplay Viaplay Cup[17]

Trophy

Before the competition's official inception, the Scottish Football League awarded the Southern League Cup winners a trophy that had been borrowed from the Scottish Football Association. In the summer of 1946, the Scottish FA asked for the return of that trophy, which became the Victory Cup.

This left the Scottish Football League without a cup for their new tournament. On 15th January 1947, long-term Clyde, and then Scottish Football League, chairman John McMahon donated the three-handled trophy that is still used to this day.[18][19]

During the 1980s when Skol lager sponsored the competition, a second trophy known as the Skol Cup was also awarded. After the 1987–88 competition when Rangers won their third Skol Cup, they were given the trophy permanently 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 final example of this 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. Since this privilege has been discontinued, some winners have missed out on European football qualification the following season, including 2015–16 winners Ross County who have still never qualified for European football in their history. Additionally Ross County and East Fife are the only League Cup winners to have never played in a UEFA club competition.

Performance by club
Scottish League Cup winners by club[20]
Team Winners Runners-up Years won Years runners-up
Rangers 27 9 1946–47, 1948–49, 1960–61, 1961–62, 1963–64, 1964–65, 1970–71, 1975–76, 1977–78, 1978–79, 1981–82, 1983–84, 1984–85, 1986–87, 1987–88, 1988–89, 1990–91, 1992–93, 1993–94, 1996–97, 1998–99, 2001–02, 2002–03, 2004–05, 2007–08, 2009–10, 2010–11 1951–52, 1957–58, 1965–66, 1966–67, 1982–83, 1989–90, 2008–09, 2019–20, 2022–23
Celtic 21 15 1956–57, 1957–58, 1965–66, 1966–67, 1967–68, 1968–69, 1969–70, 1974–75, 1982–83, 1997–98, 1999–00, 2000–01, 2005–06, 2008–09, 2014–15, 2016–17, 2017–18, 2018–19, 2019–20, 2021–22, 2022–23 1964–65, 1970–71, 1971–72, 1972–73, 1973–74, 1975–76, 1976–77, 1977–78, 1983–84, 1986–87, 1990–91, 1994–95, 2002–03, 2010–11, 2011–12
Aberdeen 6 9 1955–56, 1976–77, 1985–86, 1989–90, 1995–96, 2013–14 1946–47, 1978–79, 1979–80, 1987–88, 1988–89, 1992–93, 1999–00, 2016–17, 2018–19
Hearts 4 3 1954–55, 1958–59, 1959–60, 1962–63 1961–62, 1996, 2012–13
Hibernian 3 8 1972–73, 1991–92, 2006–07 1950–51, 1968–69, 1974–75, 1985–86, 1993–94, 2003–04, 2015–16, 2021–22
Dundee 3 3 1951–52, 1952–53, 1973–74 1967–68, 1980–81, 1995–96
East Fife 3 0 1947–48, 1949–50, 1953–54 —
Dundee United 2 5 1979–80, 1980–81 1981–82, 1984–85, 1997–98, 2007–08, 2014–15
Kilmarnock 1 5 2011–12 1952–53, 1960–61, 1962–63, 2000–01, 2006–07
Motherwell 1 3 1950–51 1954–55, 2004–05, 2017–18
Partick Thistle 1 3 1971–72 1953–54, 1956–57, 1958–59
St Johnstone 1 2 2020–21 1969–70, 1998–99
St Mirren 1 2 2012–13 1955–56, 2009–10
Livingston 1 1 2003–04 2020–21
Raith Rovers 1 1 1994–95 1948–49
Ross County 1 0 2015–16 —
Dunfermline Athletic 0 3 — 1949–50, 1991–92, 2005–06
Falkirk 0 1 — 1947–48
Third Lanark 0 1 — 1959–60
Greenock Morton 0 1 — 1963–64
Ayr United 0 1 — 2001–02
Inverness Caledonian Thistle 0 1 — 2013–14

Media coverage

Scottish League Cup matches are shown live by Viaplay in the United Kingdom and Ireland.[17][2][16][21] 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] In sub-Saharan Africa, the Scottish League Cup matches are shown live by ESPN

List of broadcasters
Period Channel
2002–04Five[22]
2004–16BBC One Scotland[23]
2016–20BT Sport[24]
2020–22Premier Sports[17][25][26]
2022–presentViaplay[17]

Notes
  1. For the 2017–18 season, these two additional teams were East Kilbride and Buckie Thistle, who had won the Lowland League and Highland League respectively in 2016–17.

References
  1. "Scottish League Cup: New seeded group stage draw on Friday". BBC Sport. 26 May 2016.
  2. "New League Cup format and TV deal". SPFL. Archived from the original on 22 March 2017. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
  3. "Scottish League Cup final returns to November date". BBC Sport. Archived from the original on 29 June 2017. Retrieved 13 February 2018.
  4. Ross, James M. (10 April 2015). "Scottish League Cup Finals". Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation. Archived from the original on 31 October 2013. Retrieved 6 July 2015.
  5. "SFL League Cup Final Results 1946–47 – 2006–07" (PDF). scottishfootballleague.com. Scottish Football League. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 May 2008. Retrieved 9 December 2013.
  6. "Scottish League Cup sponsor boost". BBC Sport. 7 January 2009. Archived from the original on 8 August 2017. Retrieved 4 February 2009.
  7. "Co-operative Insurance end Scottish League Cup deal". BBC Sport. 28 September 2010. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
  8. "Scottish Government crime seizures to fund League Cup". BBC Sport. 21 March 2011. Archived from the original on 7 August 2014. Retrieved 21 March 2011.
  9. "Neil Doncaster insists companies want to sponsor the SPFL and League Cup". STV Sport. 12 July 2013. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 29 August 2013.
  10. "Scottish League Cup finds sponsor for final stages". BBC Sport. 19 December 2014. Archived from the original on 19 December 2014. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
  11. "Utilita Energy to back League Cup". spfl.co.uk. Scottish Professional Football League. 14 October 2015. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
  12. "Scottish League Cup: Energy firm Utilita agree sponsorship deal". BBC Sport. 14 October 2015. Archived from the original on 15 October 2015. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
  13. "Betfred backs Scottish League Cup". spfl.co.uk. Scottish Professional Football League. 10 May 2016. Archived from the original on 16 May 2016. Retrieved 10 May 2016.
  14. "£1m Scottish League Cup sponsorship deal agreed with Betfred". BBC Sport. 10 May 2016. Archived from the original on 1 June 2016. Retrieved 10 May 2016.
  15. "Premier Sports to sponsor League Cup". spfl.co.uk. 27 April 2021. Archived from the original on 27 April 2021. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  16. "Premier Sports to sponsor Scottish League Cup from next season". BBC Sport. 27 April 2021. Archived from the original on 27 April 2021. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  17. "PRESS RELEASE: VIAPLAY CUP". spfl.co.uk. 1 November 2022. Retrieved 1 November 2022.
  18. "Hall of Fame - The Dunn Family". Clyde FC. Archived from the original on 28 July 2020. Retrieved 28 July 2020.
    "HIBERNIAN AND THE LEAGUE CUP". Hibernian Historical Trust. 19 September 2017. Archived from the original on 28 July 2020. Retrieved 28 July 2020.
  19. "League Have a New Cup". Aberdeen Press and Journal. 16 January 1947. p. 3 – via British Newspaper Archive.
  20. Ross, James M. (2 April 2020). "Scotland - List of League Cup Finals". Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation. Archived from the original on 31 October 2013. Retrieved 1 November 2020.
  21. "SPFL secures ground-breaking broadcast deals | SPFL". Archived from the original on 7 August 2019. Retrieved 7 January 2020.
  22. "Channel 5 seals CIS Cup rights". Archived from the original on 27 April 2021. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  23. "BBC Scotland extends League Cup coverage". Archived from the original on 27 April 2021. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  24. "BT Sport to broadcast new look SPFL League Cup". Archived from the original on 29 April 2021. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
  25. "Satellite broadcaster Premier Sports to screen Scottish Cup along with BBC Scotland after striking deal with the SFA". IrishTimes. Archived from the original on 23 January 2021. Retrieved 5 December 2018.
  26. "Hearts and Hibs to compete for Premier Sports Cup after SPFL strike sponsorship deal with broadcaster". Archived from the original on 27 April 2021. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
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