2020/2021 Scottish Cup

[G51]

7 minutes ago, C. Muir said:

With lower league football no closer to hearing any potential returns to even training never mind games thus looking more likely to not even re-start at all, I honestly can't see the cup going ahead. Either cancel it or start where we left off next season. Although clubs already out will moan if it's the latter. 

Can we afford to simply cancel it though? Presumably we'd have to refund broadcast partners and sponsors, or extend their deals by another year for free. Given the inflationary pressure on football sponsorship and rights, that'll cost us a decent whack.

[Les Cabbage]

This would probably never happen but this is what I would love;

• Scrap next seasons Betfred Group Stages and make it an unseeded knockout cup

• Play the games in July instead when the group stages would be

• Games every 3 days 

The only issue would be for the teams who finish 2nd, 4th and 5th who will have European Qualifiers during that time but surely fixtures could be flexible and moveable depending on how that pans out?

I’ve not sat out and worked through the dates so I don’t know if it’s plausible but the SFA will not want to cancel it completely and miss out on revenue from it.

[craigkillie]

The SPFL have a (fairly lucrative) commercial deal for the Betfred Cup which includes several live group stage games on TV, so I can't see it being scrapped.

[Salvo Montalbano]

Was it ever mentioned what the new deal was worth? I know the old BT deal was decent (and with the BetFred money it meant the winners of the League Cup got more in Prize Money than the Scottish Cup winners) but Premier Sports surely didn't pay as much and you'd imagine BetFred will pay less if there are fewer viewers watching the games and so hearing/seeing their branding.

[craigkillie]

Was it ever mentioned what the new deal was worth? I know the old BT deal was decent (and with the BetFred money it meant the winners of the League Cup got more in Prize Money than the Scottish Cup winners) but Premier Sports surely didn't pay as much and you'd imagine BetFred will pay less if there are fewer viewers watching the games and so hearing/seeing their branding.

The total prize money for the competition this season was up 17% to £2.6m. I'm not sure why you'd assume the Premier deal was less money, I'd have assumed it was more given that they presumably outbid BT (and maybe some others).

https://spfl.co.uk/news/spfl-announces-17-increase-in-betfred-cup-cash

[G51]

Still very into the idea of a March Madness-style knockout tournament over 2/3 weeks to resolve this.

Unfortunately it looks almost impossible to accommodate that and the playoffs.

 

[true fan]

When covid goes get all the remaining teams in Hamden on one day. Whole tournament played in 1 day. Every fixture in every round is decided by penalty shoot out only. If it’s equal after 5 penalties each the tie break procedure is 2 v 2 head tennis - first to 1

[RandomGuy.]

Anyone remember the Masters tournament Sky used to host? Think it was just a rip off of the Tennents Sixes.

Either way.

5 a side tournament, hosted over a weekend, to decide the Scottish Cup winner. 30 minute games.

Clark

Kerr

McCann - Wotherspoon

Melamed

There's our 5 a side team.

Edited February 28, 2021 by RandomGuy.

[Binos]

Disappointing not on proper telly

[Binos]

2 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

Anyone remember the Masters tournament Sky used to host? Think it was just a rip off of the Tennents Sixes.

Either way.

5 a side tournament, hosted over a weekend, to decide the Scottish Cup winner. 30 minute games.

Clark

Kerr

McCann - Wotherspoon

Melamed

There's our 5 a side team.

Tennant's sixes were great

 

[Salvo Montalbano]

The total prize money for the competition this season was up 17% to £2.6m. I'm not sure why you'd assume the Premier deal was less money, I'd have assumed it was more given that they presumably outbid BT (and maybe some others).

https://spfl.co.uk/news/spfl-announces-17-increase-in-betfred-cup-cash

I assumed the Premier deal was less than BT was paying because Premier Sports have far fewer subscribers and so will not make as much money from subs, advertising and sponsorship; because when BT took on the Cup they were spending over the odds for live sport rights as a loss-leader for their broadband and IPTV offerings; when BT took on the rights Rangers were in the group stage (at least in the first season) so they rights may have cost more as a result; that BT offered roughly the same money they were spending on the SPFL League TV deal but for far more games, indicating that they either weren't serious about Scottish football or felt they had over paid for that coverage at least; that BT cut back on many of their sports rights to focus on the Champions League, Rugby Union Premiership and WWE (FFS); that there was no announcement of any "record-breaking" sum for the League Cup (indeed it was announced at the same time as the Sky contract was for the Premiership and was included in the release about that as well as the BBC Scotland and MG Alba deals) and that there seems to be no source online that indicates how much it is worth.

[G51]

Today is the day they were supposed to make a decision on the Scottish Cup, but there's no word on it yet.

[bennett]

The only fair and reasonable solution is to award the cup to celtic, they'd have won it anyway @SFA. 

 

[G51]

Sturgeon just announced that the Scottish Cup can restart.

So.. how's this going to work?

I'm all for @RandomGuy.'s five-a-side idea tbh. The world needs to see a McGregor/Aribo/Kamara/Kent/Morelos fives team.

[craigkillie]

If the lower leagues agree to cut their season back to 18 games there's plenty of time for it. There are no Premiership fixtures scheduled between 21st March (the final pre-split fixtures) and 17th April (the first post-split fixtures). The internationals take up the first weekend of that, but we have four potential matchdays after those (3rd/4th April, 6th/7th April, 10th/11th April and 13th/14th April) in which we could easily get Rounds 2-5 completed in one big Scottish Cup fortnight.

That would only leave the semis to fit in before the final on the 8th May. Those could probably be played on the weekend of 1st May, or even the midweek of the 4th/5th May.

The only slight stumbling block is Rangers potentially playing in the Europa League QF on 8th/15th April, which wipes out both midweek dates in the "superfortnight ". Fortunately their Round 3 tie is already set (ie not reliant on a rescheduled R2 game), so that could be played on 3rd/4th April, meaning their R4 tie could be played on 10th/11th April. The QF (if Rangers make it) could then be squeezed in somewhere before the SF - there's currently nothing scheduled on the midweek of the 19th/20th April, for example.

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

I was hoping that County were going to dodge our inevitable humiliation against Buckie.

[true_rover]

If the lower leagues agree to cut their season back to 18 games there's plenty of time for it. There are no Premiership fixtures scheduled between 21st March (the final pre-split fixtures) and 17th April (the first post-split fixtures). The internationals take up the first weekend of that, but we have four potential matchdays after those (3rd/4th April, 6th/7th April, 10th/11th April and 13th/14th April) in which we could easily get Rounds 2-5 completed in one big Scottish Cup fortnight.
That would only leave the semis to fit in before the final on the 8th May. Those could probably be played on the weekend of 1st May, or even the midweek of the 4th/5th May.
The only slight stumbling block is Rangers potentially playing in the Europa League QF on 8th/15th April, which wipes out both midweek dates in the "superfortnight ". Fortunately their Round 3 tie is already set (ie not reliant on a rescheduled R2 game), so that could be played on 3rd/4th April, meaning their R4 tie could be played on 10th/11th April. The QF (if Rangers make it) could then be squeezed in somewhere before the SF - there's currently nothing scheduled on the midweek of the 19th/20th April, for example.

Whilst there are no Premiership games scheduled in that period, there are 3 Championship games. You would need to cram at least a couple of them into midweeks beforehand - might not work out great for those teams.

[G51]

26 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

If the lower leagues agree to cut their season back to 18 games there's plenty of time for it. There are no Premiership fixtures scheduled between 21st March (the final pre-split fixtures) and 17th April (the first post-split fixtures). The internationals take up the first weekend of that, but we have four potential matchdays after those (3rd/4th April, 6th/7th April, 10th/11th April and 13th/14th April) in which we could easily get Rounds 2-5 completed in one big Scottish Cup fortnight.

That would only leave the semis to fit in before the final on the 8th May. Those could probably be played on the weekend of 1st May, or even the midweek of the 4th/5th May.

The only slight stumbling block is Rangers potentially playing in the Europa League QF on 8th/15th April, which wipes out both midweek dates in the "superfortnight ". Fortunately their Round 3 tie is already set (ie not reliant on a rescheduled R2 game), so that could be played on 3rd/4th April, meaning their R4 tie could be played on 10th/11th April. The QF (if Rangers make it) could then be squeezed in somewhere before the SF - there's currently nothing scheduled on the midweek of the 19th/20th April, for example.

Is there any sign the lower leagues are going to do that? They likely will have to (something has to give), but I didn't think it was a slam dunk.

Sounds good apart from that. A March Madness-style Scottish Cup fortnight? Hell yeah.

[craigkillie]

14 minutes ago, true_rover said:

42 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

If the lower leagues agree to cut their season back to 18 games there's plenty of time for it. There are no Premiership fixtures scheduled between 21st March (the final pre-split fixtures) and 17th April (the first post-split fixtures). The internationals take up the first weekend of that, but we have four potential matchdays after those (3rd/4th April, 6th/7th April, 10th/11th April and 13th/14th April) in which we could easily get Rounds 2-5 completed in one big Scottish Cup fortnight.
That would only leave the semis to fit in before the final on the 8th May. Those could probably be played on the weekend of 1st May, or even the midweek of the 4th/5th May.
The only slight stumbling block is Rangers potentially playing in the Europa League QF on 8th/15th April, which wipes out both midweek dates in the "superfortnight ". Fortunately their Round 3 tie is already set (ie not reliant on a rescheduled R2 game), so that could be played on 3rd/4th April, meaning their R4 tie could be played on 10th/11th April. The QF (if Rangers make it) could then be squeezed in somewhere before the SF - there's currently nothing scheduled on the midweek of the 19th/20th April, for example.

Whilst there are no Premiership games scheduled in that period, there are 3 Championship games. You would need to cram at least a couple of them into midweeks beforehand - might not work out great for those teams.

The games are going to have to get played at some point, so it's not a case of if we have to rearrange fixtures, but rather how we rearrange fixtures. The Championship has a less congested schedule than the Premiership in general. It's also only two rounds of Championship games, not three - both sets could easily be moved midweek.

[true_rover]

The games are going to have to get played at some point, so it's not a case of if we have to rearrange fixtures, but rather how we rearrange fixtures. The Championship has a less congested schedule than the Premiership in general. It's also only two rounds of Championship games, not three - both sets could easily be moved midweek.

Is there also the potential the final could move back to give a bit more space for games to be played? Obviously it would need a different venue if it was the case.