Short answer: Norway’s love affair with English football was built on a Saturday ritual. From 1948 the national pools coupon asked Norwegians to predict 12 football results, and English league fixtures became a staple of it. From 1969 to 1995 the state broadcaster NRK showed one of those coupon matches live every Saturday afternoon in a programme called Tippekampen. Generations of Norwegians grew up with Wolves, Stoke, West Brom and Derby, which is why so many of Lincoln City’s 2026/27 Championship opponents still have supporters’ clubs in Norway.
Turn up at almost any English ground on a Saturday and there is a fair chance you will hear Norwegian in the away end or the club shop. It is not a new thing. Norway has had a relationship with English football for more than half a century, and it is older and stranger than the Premier League era suggests. It is rooted in a paper coupon, a Saturday 4pm kick-off on Norwegian television and a habit of picking an English team at the age of seven and never letting go. With the Imps now in the second tier for the first time in 65 years, a lot of those old Norwegian favourites are suddenly on Lincoln’s fixture list.
The coupon that started it: Norwegian pools since 1948
Norsk Tipping, the state-owned games company, ran its first football pools round on 13 March 1948. The idea was the same as on Littlewoods or Vernons coupons in Britain: predict the outcome of a list of matches and share a prize pool with everyone else who got them right. The Norwegian encyclopedia entry describes the game in one line:
“Spillet går ut på å spille på («tippe») riktig resultat i flest mulig av tolv fotballkamper som er oppført for en spilleomgang.” (The game consists of predicting the correct result in as many as possible of twelve football matches listed for a round.) – Source: Wikipedia (Norwegian), “Tipping”
Each match on the coupon is marked H, U or B: hjemmeseier (home win), uavgjort (draw) and borteseier (away win). It is exactly the 1X2 system that football odds still use today, just with Norwegian letters. If you want to see how those three outcomes translate into modern prices, along with handicaps and goal lines, there is a Norwegian walkthrough of how home, draw and away prices work on a football match that starts from that same 1X2 grid.
The key detail for English fans is the calendar. Norway’s own league is played roughly from spring to autumn, so for much of the winter there are no domestic games to fill a coupon. English football filled the gap. English league matches became a regular part of the Saturday coupon, and Norwegians learned the names of English provincial clubs long before they could find their towns on a map. The link went so deep that Norway’s top division itself was named Tippeligaen, after its pools sponsor, from 1990 to 2016.
From the pools coupon to fixed odds
The pools coupon still exists, and alongside it Norwegians can now play fixed odds on the same matches. In Norway that market belongs to the state operator Norsk Tipping, whose odds game is simply called Oddsen. Its old pre-match product, Langoddsen, and its live product, Liveoddsen, have been folded into that single brand. The age limit is 18, and the logic is the one any pools player would recognise: pick a match, pick an outcome, see the possible return before you hand it in. This plain-language guide to how Norsk Tipping’s Oddsen game works explains pre-match and live play and what happened to the old product names.
Tippekampen: English football live on NRK, 1969 to 1995
The second half of the story came in 1969. NRK, the public broadcaster, began showing one live English match every Saturday, chosen from that week’s pools coupon. The programme was called Tippekampen, “the pools match”, and it ran for 370 episodes.
“Programmet besto av direktesendte fotballkamper fra England og ble sendt mellom klokken 16.00 og 18.00.” (The programme consisted of live football matches from England and was broadcast between 4pm and 6pm.) – Source: Wikipedia (Norwegian), “Tippekampen”
That 4pm slot is no accident. A 3pm kick-off in England is 4pm in Norway, so Norwegians were watching the traditional Saturday afternoon fixture live at a time when supporters in Britain could not see it on television at all. The very first Tippekampen, on 29 November 1969, was Wolverhampton Wanderers against Sunderland, a 1–0 home win commentated from a studio in Oslo. The last, on 8 April 1995, was Nottingham Forest against West Ham.
Look down the list of early broadcasts and it reads a lot like Lincoln’s 2026/27 fixture list.
| Tippekampen no. | Date | Match (result) | Where the club is in 2026/27 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 29 November 1969 | Wolverhampton Wanderers 1–0 Sunderland | Wolves: Championship, relegated from the Premier League |
| 3 | 13 December 1969 | Leicester City 1–2 Cardiff City | Cardiff: Championship, promoted alongside Lincoln |
| 6 | 10 January 1970 | Stoke City 0–2 Liverpool | Stoke: Championship |
| 7 | 28 February 1970 | West Bromwich Albion 3–3 Wolverhampton Wanderers | Both in the Championship |
| 9 | 14 March 1970 | Chelsea 5–1 Watford | Watford: Championship |
| 14 | 28 November 1970 | Nottingham Forest 2–4 Derby County | Derby: Championship |
| 34 | 18 March 1972 | Birmingham City 3–1 Huddersfield Town | Birmingham: Championship |
Wolves appear again and again in the early years, and that kind of exposure leaves a mark. Plenty of Norwegian fans of a certain age can trace their club back to a Saturday afternoon in front of NRK. If you are heading to Molineux or The Hawthorns this season, our guide to Lincoln City’s away trips to Wolves, West Brom and Stoke covers tickets and travel.
Today the Saturday ritual looks different, but the shape is the same. Norwegian fans plan their weekends around English kick-offs, Premier League games sit on Viaplay almost every Saturday from August to May, and English matches are still a regular sight on Norwegian coupons. A Norwegian overview of what is usually on sports TV in Norway on a Saturday shows how English football still anchors the day, with domestic football and winter sport built around it.
From TV habit to supporters’ clubs
The television habit turned into something more organised in the 1980s. The Supporterunionen for Britisk Fotball, an umbrella body for Norwegian supporters’ clubs of British teams, was founded on 15 March 1986. One of its two founders came from the Norwegian Derby County supporters’ club, which tells you how far down the leagues the affection reached. Many of the union’s member clubs were set up during the 1990s, and since 1991 its members have played each other in their own tournament, the Supportercupen.
What has not changed is the clock. A Saturday 3pm Championship game is a 4pm kick-off in Oslo, exactly as it was in 1969.
A Norwegian fan’s guide to an English Saturday
- Mind the clock. Norway is one hour ahead of the UK all year round. A 3pm kick-off is 4pm in Oslo; a 7.45pm midweek game is 8.45pm.
- Pick a club with a story. Most Norwegians inherit a team from a parent, a grandparent or a Tippekampen memory. Lincoln City, with their first second-tier season since the early 1960s, are as good a story as any.
- Join a supporters’ club. Norwegian branches organise group trips, ticket allocations and pub screenings, and many are members of the national supporters’ union.
- Book away days early. Allocations for the bigger Championship grounds can go quickly, so check each club’s ticket release dates well before you book flights.
- Learn H, U and B. Home, draw, away. It is the same three-way result whether you are filling in a coupon or arguing about a match in the pub.
Why it still matters for a club like Lincoln
The Norwegian connection is a reminder that English clubs have audiences far beyond their own postcodes. Clubs that were on Norwegian television in the 1970s still have Norwegian members today. Lincoln were not among the regular Tippekampen sides in that era, but the Championship is a different shop window. Every Saturday this season the Imps’ results will sit on coupons and score tickers in Norway next to the names those fans grew up with. For a club that, as one long-time supporter put it on these pages, has only got better over 40 years of supporting Lincoln City, a few new friends in Scandinavia would not go amiss.
FAQ
What was Tippekampen?
A Saturday programme on Norwegian state television that showed a live English league match every week from 29 November 1969 to 8 April 1995. The match was taken from that week’s pools coupon, and 370 games were shown in total.
Why were English matches on the Norwegian pools coupon?
The Norwegian season runs roughly from spring to autumn, so English league football filled the coupon through the winter months, and it became a fixture of the game in its own right.
What do H, U and B mean on a Norwegian coupon?
Hjemmeseier (home win), uavgjort (draw) and borteseier (away win). They are the Norwegian equivalent of 1, X and 2.
What time do English 3pm kick-offs start in Norway?
4pm. Norway is one hour ahead of the UK throughout the year, as both switch clocks on the same dates.
Who runs sports betting in Norway?
The state-owned Norsk Tipping holds the exclusive right to sports betting and pools in Norway. Its fixed-odds game is called Oddsen, and the age limit is 18.