Champions Hockey League continues to grow in popularity

03 Mar 2019 | Fredrik Pålsson

The Champions Hockey League (CHL) has grown into Europe’s most prestigious ice hockey competition since its first staging during the 2014/15 season.

Most leading bookmakers cover the CHL, offering a variety of markets include ante-post odds, match betting and group winner prices.

A total of 32 teams from different European first-tier leagues participated in the 2018/19 CHL, with top Swedish team Frölunda HC lifting the trophy for the third time in five years.

The CHL features 24 teams from the six founding leagues – the Swedish Hockey League, Finnish Liiga, Swiss National League A, Czech Extraliga, German DEL and Austrian/international EBEL.

The remaining slots are filled by the national champions from seven other European nations, along with the winners of the Continental Cup.

The number of places per league is allocated with the help of the CHL league ranking. This calculates the performance of teams each season and the better they perform, the more spots a league can achieve. The six founding leagues are ranked 1-6, while all the challenger leagues follow in accordance.

A total of 125 games are played over the course of 13 game days between August and February. The 32 teams are split into eight groups, with each team playing home and away for a total of six games during the Group Stage. The top two teams in each advance to the Round of 16.

All matches in the Play-Off Stage are two-game, home-and-away aggregate scoring series, while the final held at the home venue of the team with the best accumulated record during the entire tournament.

Swedish clubs have dominated the CHL since its inception, with Frolunda HC the most successful having won three of the four finals they have appeared in.

Lulea (Sweden) and JYP (Finland) have also won the CHL, highlighting that Scandinavian sides are well-worth following in the outright betting market for the competition.

However, the 2018/19 tournament showed that the balance of power may slowly be shifting, with Red Bull Salzburg the first Austrian side to reach the semi-final.

Red Bull Munich went one better by becoming the first German side to progress to the final, meaning that ante-post betting on future CHL tournaments should be ultra-competitive.