CEV Champions League Preview & Betting Guide

CEV Champions League Preview

The reigning champions, Itas Trentino will have their work cut out defending their title in the 66th edition of the tournament, it was their first title since 2011 which was a third consecutive title having also won it in 2009 & 2010.

The Polish clubs will be mounting an attack, especially Jastrzębski Węgiel who lost back-to-back finals in 2023 & 2024, they will be looking to make up for those defeats in this year's competition.

Most Successful CEV Champions League Nations

1. Italy (20 Wins / 18 Runners-Up)
2. Soviet Union (15 Wins / 3 Runners-Up)
3. Russia (10 Wins / 4 Runners-Up)

Since Trentino won three on the bounce between 2009-11, there have only been two Italian winners who were Civitanova (2019) and Trentino (2024), six others have made it to the finals and all six have been beaten, four of those by a Russian club, there have also been four third-place finishes for Italian clubs since too so they are usually thereabouts.

CEV Champions League Past Winners

The success of ZAKSA Kędzierzyn-Koźle in 2021 was only the second time a Polish team has won the tournament, the last coming back in 1978 when Płomień Milowice were successful and they backed that up with success in both 2022 & 2023. The 2023 final was the first since 2015 not to feature an Italian team, however, Trentino made it to the 2024 final where they were successful.

CEV Champions League Betting Tips

The league round of the tournament will feature five groups, each consisting of four teams who will play each other home and away, this means each team will play six games during the group stages, each group consisting of a total of twelve games meaning the group stage of the tournament will have a total of sixty games giving the OLBG volleyball tipsters more than enough chances to share their CEV Champions League predictions. You will find these tips on the main Volleyball Predictions page, alternatively, if you only want to see tips from those who have shown a profit over the past year on volleyball then head over to the Best Volleyball Tipsters page.

Five-Year Favourite Statistics

One plain thing to see is the consistency of the favourites over the last five years, rounded to the nearest whole number, the favourites had a success rate of at least 72% in three of the last five seasons with the 2022-23 season a bumper year with 81% of favourites winning.

• 2019-20: 50-64 (78.13%)
• 2020-21: 45-58 (77.59%)
• 2021-22: 47-65 (72.31%)
• 2022-23: 63-78 (80.77%)
• 2023-24: 54-79 (68.35%)
• Overall: 259-344 (75.29%)

Five-Year Set Score Statistics

Just under one in four games over the past five seasons have finished with a 3-0 victory for the assigned home team which proves one thing, that is that home-court advantage really does seem to be a big favour, however, a 3-0 win for the away team is the second most featured outcome meaning 45% of the games have finished in either a 3-0 or 0-3 whitewash scoreline.

• 3-0: 87 Games (24.72%)
• 0-3: 73 Games (20.74%)
• 1-3: 59 Games (16.76%)
• 3-1: 47 Games (13.35%)
• 3-2: 43 Games (12.22%)
• 2-3: 35 Games (9.94%)

CEV Champions League Most Wins

The Soviet Union in the early years of the tournament recorded a lot of success, between 1959 and 1991, a total of fifteen winners came from there, thirteen of those championships going the way of CSKA Moscow who is the most successful team with more than double the number of titles than their nearest rival Zenit Kazan (6).

Other Volleyball Blogs

Here are some other tournaments that we cover in the world of Volleyball.

• FIVB Volleyball Mens World Championship
• FIVB Volleyball Women's World Championship
• CEV Women's Champions League
• Women's European Volleyball Championship
• Men's European Volleyball Championship
• FIVB Volleyball Women's World Cup
• FIVB Volleyball Men's World Cup