What is Superpesis

What is Superpesis 

Superpesis is the top division of the Finnish national Pesäpallo league system. It was created in 1990 after league restructuring and replaced the old Championship Seires, which ran from 1922 to 1989. There are 14 teams in the men’s Superpesis series and at the end of the regular season there is a playoff series to determine the league champions and a playoff series to determine who is demoted to/promoted from the second tier Ykköspesis.

Due to the impact of the Coronavirus the Superpesis regular season and post season has been altered for 2020.

Regular season 

In the regular season, each team plays a total of 24 matches. Due to the impact of Coronavirus the teams that a team will play against are limited as follows.The teams are divided into four geographical blocks and play the opponents as set out below:

A (South - 4 teams)

Hyvinkään Tahko; Kankaanpään Maila; Kouvolan Pallonlyöjat; Manse PP, Tampere


B (West - 3 teams)

Koskenkorvan Urheilijat; Seinäjoen JymyJussit; Vimpelin Veto


C (East - 3 teams)

Imatran Pallo-Veikot; Joensuun Maila; Kiteen Pallo -90


D (North - 4 teams) 

Kempeleen Kiri; Pattijoen Urheilijat, Raahe; Siilinjärven Pesis; Sotkamon Jymy


The 24 regular season games are arranged in such a way that East teams will not play West teams and North teams will not play South teams. The pattern is as follows:


 Group Own group   Other Groups   Will not play
 A 12 games
(4 against each team)   		B - 6 games
(2 against each team)  

C - 6 games
(2 against each team) 		 D
 B 8 games 
(4 against each team)   		 A - 8 games
(2 against each team)  

D - 8 games
(2 against each team) 		C 
 C 8 games 
(4 against each team)   		 A - 8 games
(2 against each team)  

D - 8 games
(2 against each team) 		 B
 D 12 games 
(4 against each team)   		 B - 6 games
(2 against each team)  

C - 6 games
(2 against each team)		 A

Playoffs

The top 8 teams at the end of the regular season advance to the playoffs. The first round of the playoffs is a shortened series (best of 3 series), where  the top 3 teams get to choose their first round opponents from the 5th to 8th place teams as follows:

1. The winner of the regular season will be the first to choose his semi-final pair 5.-8. Positioned in.

2. The runner-up in the regular season will choose his pair from the remaining teams in positions 5-8.

3. The third place finisher in the regular season will choose his pair from the remaining teams in places 5.-8.

4. The last pair is made up of the two remaining teams.

The teams that win in the first round will advance to the semi-finals where they will play a best of 3 series. The best placed team in the regular season plays the lowest ranked, and the second pair is made up of two other first round winners. The winners move on to the finals and the losers play off in a bronze place series. The final and bronze series are again the best of 3.



Relegation

Usually there is at least 1 team that is relegated or faces relegation to Ykköspesis (the second tier) and 1 or more teams from Ykköspesis’ will be promoted to take their place. In 2020 however there will not be any team relegated, but teams from Ykköspesis can still be promoted.

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