Background 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. 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. 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. It was highly unlikely that either Celtic or
Rangers would ever be involved in a relegation battle, given their historic dominance. For example, in the first season of operation (
1975–76),
Dundee United and
Aberdeen only avoided relegation on
goal difference and
Dundee did go down, for the first time since the 1930s. Aberdeen made those points in conjunction with a proposal to cut relegation to one club, but this did not attract enough support. A proposal by
East Fife to revert to the old two division setup attracted nearly as much support as the Aberdeen plan. This meant that clubs retained all of the revenue from their home attendances, and were able to vary the cost of admission for different opposing clubs. The Scottish Football League did not reform the Premier Division, instead leaving the league with just the First, Second and Third Divisions. ==Competition structure==