Scottish Football League Premier Division

The Scottish Football League Premier Division was, from 1975 until 1998, the top division of the Scottish Football League and the entire Scottish football league system. It lay above the Scottish Football League First, Second and (from 1994) Third divisions.

The Scottish Football League (SFL) was formed in 1890, initially with 12 clubs. More clubs joined the league soon afterwards, which was split into two divisions (Division One and Division Two) in 1893. A third division was added in 1923, but this lasted only three years before it collapsed under heavy financial losses. From 1926 until the Second World War, the SFL returned to two divisions. A third division, including some reserve teams, was added in 1949. The withdrawal of the reserve teams in 1955 saw a return to two divisions, with 37 clubs split almost evenly.

Following a decline in attendances in the early 1960s the SFL management committee wrote to its member clubs in early 1965 proposing change to a three division setup, with 14 clubs in the top flight. The committee proposed to allocate clubs to each division based on attendance, rather than league position at the end of the previous season, because previous proposals had failed due to uncertainty about where clubs would finish in a given season. This proposal failed to attract enough support, as did one made the following year for a 16 club top flight.

The dominance of Celtic in the late 1960s and early 1970s led to criticism that the league had become too predictable. Most of the major clubs, including Celtic, recorded drops in attendance in the 1972–73 season. In the summer of 1974, the clubs voted in favour of a three division setup, with 10 clubs in the top tier. It was decided to name the top flight as the Premier Division because many of the clubs had bad memories of the previous incarnations of Division Three, which had included reserve teams and had not lasted. The allocation of the clubs in the new divisions was determined by their league position in the 1974–75 season.

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