The Russian soccer league regularly finishes between the sixth and eighth place in the UEFA club coefficients. That is a good indication of the performance of the Russian Premier League; it also means that Russia always has an automatic spot in the UEFA Champions League and can also launch several clubs into the Europa League.

With new stadiums having been built recently for the World Cup in 2018, the tournament has quickly gained momentum, promising some of the most exciting matches the country has to offer. Nearly every Premier League club now has a state-of-the-art arena that can accommodate a reasonable number of spectators and is ranked in the top UEFA category.

For the past few seasons, the Russian Premier League and other European leagues are being played on an "autumn-spring" calendar from July to next year's May.

Due to the harsh Russian winter, the season is interrupted between mid-December and the end of February.

A handful of teams dominate the Russian championship

For the past three seasons, Zenit St. Petersburg has won the league title. There have been four different winners since 2005, with CSKA Moscow and Zenit St. Petersburg sharing the majority of the championships.

Betting on the winner is popular, considering only a small handful of teams are regarded as true title contenders each season.

The seasons are regularly marked by numerous Moscow derbies as there are 4 Moscow teams this season: Spartak, Lokomotiv, Dynamo and CSKA.

Recommended bets in Russian Premier League

Even though the league consists of only 16 teams, the last two teams of the season go directly down to the FNL, the second division, while the thirteenth and the fourteenth team of the league participate in a relegation playoff at the end of the season where four teams go down in all.

This means that matches are often played with determination and motivation in order to avoid the dreaded relegation.

In a quarter of the games since the season's beginning, the score is 0-0 at halftime, while the most frequent score at the final whistle is 1-1. Interestingly, these consistent results have happened in 15% of the games this season.