The Scottish Premier League has been pressing ahead with its preferred 12-12-18 league reconstruction model and is offering substantial financial inducements to SFL clubs to support the plan.
At the moment, an SFL club finishing top of the Irn-Bru First Division receives a paltry £70,000 as reward. The SPL plan would award any club finishing top of the new "Championship 12" a sum of around £400,000, with the promise of more money to come in the 14-game play-offs between February and May.
An SPL strategy group has also suggested nominal names for the three "groups of eight" which would split into sections after 22 games. They are the "Super 8", the "Play-off 8" and the "National 8".
The SPL clubs will meet tomorrow to hear more about the proposals, and it looks increasingly likely the plan will find approval and go to a vote some time in early 2013.
"We want to make the proposal attractive to as many aspiring SFL clubs as possible, and financially appealing to them," said an SPL source yesterday. "We think this is the way to go."
However, a previously mooted idea to bin the SPL brand and go for a fresh identity in time for any redesigned campaign has met resistance.
Although some clubs feel the SPL has been tarnished by recent controversies – including the fall-out over Rangers – others still believe the SPL is an established and appealing brand among its international broadcast partners, and that its name should be retained.
In the proposed league redesign, the "Play-off 8" would be potentially the most dramatic and nerve-racking of the various parts. Unlike the "Super 8" and the "National 8" the idea is that the "Play-off 8" would have all previous points tallies scrubbed and resume again on zero points.
It would be a 14-game fight to the death to decide which four clubs gained entry to the following season's Top 12 and which four re-entered the second tier or "Championship" level. The SPL even believe there might be fresh broadcast income to be derived from the "Play-off 8" series.
One note of resistance to it all, however, remains those clubs lower down the SFL who are set against any pyramid system being introduced at the bottom level.
The SPL, in tandem with the SFA, think that a pyramid system, in which clubs can be ejected from and admitted to the Scottish professional leagues, is the way ahead. Many SFL clubs, however, want the current 42-club leagues to remain hermetically sealed to ensure their own survival. The SPL requires SFA approval for any league redesign it proposes and wishes to implement.
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