League reconstruction: Let's hear your view

[edinabear]

The middle 8 league is complete and utter tosh. No one has anything to play for at that stage. Waste of time.

I would only be for increasing the bottom tier if there was at least 1 automatic relegation to a restructured lower league and a playoff place.

[ftk]

The middle 8 league is complete and utter tosh. No one has anything to play for at that stage. Waste of time.
I would only be for increasing the bottom tier if there was at least 1 automatic relegation to a restructured lower league and a playoff place.

The top 4 in the middle league would get promoted and the bottom 4 relegated. All to play for?

[LongTimeLurker]

On 2017/01/22 at 17:47, ftk said:

I heard a rumour the spfl is in advanced talks with bt sports to try to bring in again the 12-12-18 league reconstruction with top 2 league's splitting into 3. Start when the new tv deal starts.

If that format worked, the Austrians would still be doing it. The big problem is that teams at the bottom of the first group of 8 and the top of the third group of 8 wind up playing a lot of games that are largely meaningless to them, but very important to their opponents. Think the format to watch, because Doncaster has commented on it as being something he is paying attention to, is the new Danish 14 team top flight approach:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016–17_Danish_Superliga

as that minimises the danger of clubs like Hibs, Hearts and Dundee United getting relegated, but should still give them four Old Firm games. That would probably mean 14-10-18 and they could then push to add two colt teams to make it 14-10-10-10.

[BFTD]

Just out of idle interest, why is there an 18 team bottom division in this scenario? I've been assuming the answer to be "f**k 'em - who cares", but I may have been dreadfully unfair.

Also, f**k minimising the danger of clubs getting relegated. A surefire method of allowing the bigger clubs to go to seed if ever I heard one.

[ftk]

If that format worked, the Austrians would still be doing it. The big problem is that teams at the bottom of the first group of 8 and the top of the third group of 8 wind up playing a lot of games that are largely meaningless to them, but very important to their opponents. Think the format to watch, because Doncaster has commented on it as being something he is paying attention to, is the new Danish 14 team top flight approach:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016–17_Danish_Superliga
as that minimises the danger of clubs like Hibs, Hearts and Dundee United getting relegated, but should still give them four Old Firm games. That would probably mean 14-10-18 and they could then push to add two colt teams to make it 14-10-10-10.

Why do we have to have the most complicated league in Europe? 14-14-14 play each other 3 times. Simples!

[HibeeJibee]

Any league system that takes paragraphs to explain has got issues. See the UEFA Nations League.

Same applies to the Danish experiment which was apparently negatively received by fans there (and remember it was replacing an unfair model of 12 team playing 33 games and providing more matches). People here grumble about a split with 5 matches to go - in which all clubs carry-over all points - and moan about teams in the Bottom 6 having more points than teams in the Top 6.

Goodness only knows how you'd explain and sell to Scottish clubs and fans a model that divides with 10 matches to go, into a Top 6 and 2 parallel groups of 4... with the top 2 finishers in each group then going into playoffs for EL slot with 3rd in the Top 6 - entirely bypassing those clubs finishing 4th, 5th & 6th in the Top 6... and the bottom 2 in each group falling into a 3-stage series of relegation playoffs that needs a flowchart to explain. Plus it drops clubs from 38 regular season games to only 36 or 32.

It's also worth noting Danish Superliga attendances are down 23% on last season... 8 clubs are down 10% or more... Of the 11 clubs present from last season 10 (Aarhus the exception) are down on average 19% each.

Edited January 27, 2017 by HibeeJibee

[ftk]

Apparantly bt are keen changing the league to 12-12 as they want a new format to kick-off their new tv deal as well as showing a lot more championship/ middle 8 games. Sky and bt show 60 games just now but the new deal would see a significant increase in live games.

[RedLichtie86]

If BT are wanting to offer a new deal as part of a this shite 12 12 18 setup, they need to offer a huge carrot in return.

If the offered £100-150M a season, then i could see most chairmen voting in favour regardless of what the fans thoughts are. Would be a huge increase in funding.

[BFTD]

16 minutes ago, RedLichtie86 said:

If BT are wanting to offer a new deal as part of a this shite 12 12 18 setup, they need to offer a huge carrot in return.

If the offered £100-150M a season, then i could see most chairmen voting in favour regardless of what the fans thoughts are. Would be a huge increase in funding.

Is Dr Evil in charge at BT Sport these days?  

[RedLichtie86]

Well we are getting something like £15M a season just now.

[ftk]

If BT are wanting to offer a new deal as part of a this shite 12 12 18 setup, they need to offer a huge carrot in return.

If the offered £100-150M a season, then i could see most chairmen voting in favour regardless of what the fans thoughts are. Would be a huge increase in funding.

Can't see bt paying that much? Think spfl will be happy with 20% increase per match.

[RedLichtie86]

Can't see bt paying that much? Think spfl will be happy with 20% increase per match.

I cant see them paying that much either. Especially as they see a 1% increase as a (In the voice of cockwomble) "fantastic deal for scottish football"

Dont think 20% increase will cut it either. An extra £3M a year isnt going to do much.

[ftk]

I cant see them paying that much either. Especially as they see a 1% increase as a (In the voice of cockwomble) "fantastic deal for scottish football"

Dont think 20% increase will cut it either. An extra £3M a year isnt going to do much.

Maybe the way to go is to set up a ppv channel or spfl subscription channel. Not calcuted if this would create more income though. We keep comparing our tv deal with England but they are getting silly money.

[RedLichtie86]

Maybe the way to go is to set up a ppv channel or spfl subscription channel. Not calcuted if this would create more income though. We keep comparing our tv deal with England but they are getting silly money.

I doubt they would go down the ppv route as many would be scared of a collapse like when Setanta did. Would be ARMAGEDDON!

But at £15M a season just takes the piss. I would accept double that.

[Doink]

After reading about reconstruction on almost a yearly basis i opted out this until now.

The money on offer could/will become of little relevance as what will start happening  is kick off times will change (not at first admittedly) .

Take a couple of teams currently not in the top tier Falkirk  and Livingston  . Games of this lesser stature will be shown on Tuesday at 2pm. You just need to look around europe and notice clubs getting little crowds simply because of odd kick off times.

The money will be mainly distributed among the higher profile clubs with the Little Jimmys getting very little only hoping for much .

  

  

[BFTD]

Anyone have a figure for the annual combined revenues brought through the turnstiles by the SPFL clubs? I'm curious about how many fans would have to stop going to games before the administrators would become concerned that chasing TV money at the expense of all else has been a bad idea. Presumably the SPFL has done its own research to work out how much they can afford to piss fans off before it becomes a problem for their members...at least, you'd hope so.

I'd work it out myself, but I've a feeling that one of our magnificent Stattos will have already been there and done that  

[effeffsee_the2nd]

think there is some over reaction here. cant see how it would be in any broadcasters interest to show crap games at crap times.  as for increasing the number of games I would imagine if they are going to be shelling out big bucks then those extra games will be the old firm's home games which are still mostly 3pms barring the odd exception or when they play each other, cant see them splashing out for more st johnstone v Dundee on a Friday night at a half empty MacDiarmid park.

[Jacksgranda]

6 minutes ago, effeffsee_the2nd said:

think there is some over reaction here. cant see how it would be in any broadcasters interest to show crap games at crap times.  as for increasing the number of games I would imagine if they are going to be shelling out big bucks then those extra games will be the old firm's home games which are still mostly 3pms barring the odd exception or when they play each other, cant see them splashing out for more st johnstone v Dundee on a Friday night at a half empty MacDiarmid park.

As big a crowd as that, eh?

[ftk]

I doubt they would go down the ppv route as many would be scared of a collapse like when Setanta did. Would be ARMAGEDDON!

But at £15M a season just takes the piss. I would accept double that.

Was having a think about a Pay per view channel. If you could have an average 75,000 people watching each round of fixtures worldwide that would generate 28.5m obviously still needing to exclude production costs. Think these viewing figures would be easily achievable. Not sure how having every game live on ppv would impact on crowds though?

[Pride_of_the_Clyde]

I was initially very receptive to the 12-12, 8-8-8 proposal when it was first discussed a few years ago.

I've very much cooler on it now though - you will essentially have no winner of the Championship. You'll also have no team(s) relegated from the Premiership, they'll go into a sort of purgatory with promotion and relegation determined later.

IMO though, 12-12-18 is a better format than present. It is an oxymoron that the country's premier league has more teams than any other division. Semantics and that principal aside, I think the format of divisions should align so far as possible. More than anything though, I want a setup with three national leagues, four is too many. A larger bottom tier should also make the transition to SPFL football easier for promoted teams and may encourage the automatic relegation of the bottom SPFL side (and perhaps playoffs with the second bottom).

So why not simply have a 12 team Championship mimic the current Premiership? Or ideally, have both tiers split top six/bottom six at 22 games and play each other home and away (as it should be) for an additional 10 matches = 32. You get a proper relegation and promotion fight in the Premiership and Championship. And yes I know you lose some matches in that format but the rest is sensible no?