One of the biggest areas of English football is the fierce competition to win the Championship title. Lifting the EFL title in the second tier guarantees a place in the Premier League the following season.
That promotion puts the winner through to join the ranks of elite teams like Manchester City, Liverpool, and Manchester United. It’s the place that every team competing in the Championship wants to be, but there is no easy path to get there.
The Championship winner odds are all about who finishes at the summit when the season is done and dusted. It is one of two automatic promotion places from the division, but the one that gets the title.
Naturally, getting across the line and lifting the title as early as possible, means that the pressure of a promotion chase eases. That can have an important bearing on matches at the end of the season.
It’s common when a team has achieved a certain objective, like winning the Championship, for their form and results to start slipping away. Intensity levels can drop as there is nothing at stake in fixtures any more, which can lead to unpredictable results in matches towards the end of the campaign.
The Championship outright odds are posted well ahead of the start of a new season. That long-term ante-post view is an interesting projection of who is likely to be the strongest contender in the race for the title.
But what teams are commonly at the front of the pack in Championship outright winner odds? More often than not, it is the three teams who dropped from the top flight through Premier League relegation.
There is a gap in quality between the top two tiers on the English pyramid. So a poor campaign in the Premier League doesn’t necessarily mean that a team is going to struggle on the return to the Championship. Very often, it is the complete opposite.
There are always twists and turns throughout a Championship season, regardless if that is in the title race, the fight against relegation or in the push for a Championship playoff spot.
Teams come into and fall out of form regularly. But as the season takes shape, some pictures start to get drawn about how the title race may shake out.
So the Championship outright market remains active throughout the campaign, with the latest odds for the listings, reflecting what is happening at the current point of the season.
Odds are tied into probability, so if there is a team that has come racing out of the blocks, winning 10 of their first 13 games, for example, then they are going to be strong early contenders to win the title.
The Championship is one of the most demanding leagues in the world, and it is the biggest outside of Europe’s Big 5. Season after season it is a tremendously competitive landscape and therefore one of the most popular for pre-season picks in Championship betting and football betting in general.
However, the Championship outright odds market is just one angle of the action at the summit for betting coverage. Other markets that give coverage of Championship winner odds can be found in the following areas:
The previous First Division of English football underwent a rebranding ahead of the 2004-05 season to become known as the Championship. There are 24 teams in the division, as it was when the big change happened.
The top two spots in the Championship get automatic promotion to the Premier League. But the EFL Championship trophy only goes to the top-placed team. There is a third promotion spot available to get to the Premier League. That is through the Championship playoffs, a four-team mini-tournament between the teams that finish 3rd-7th.
Some big names in English football have been crowned Championship winners since that inaugural 2004-05 season, such as Newcastle United, Leicester City, Sunderland, Norwich, Wolves and West Bromwich Albion.