WATCH: Elgin City, Brora Rangers, Ross County and Caley Thistle enter Premier Sports Cup group stages draw at 1pm today
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SCOTTISH football's League Cup competition, now known as the Premier Sports Cup, will be drawn at Friday lunchtime.
The group stages draw takes place at 1pm and can be viewed live on YouTube.
The 40 clubs will be drawn into eight groups of five, with seedings based on last season’s final league positions then split on a geographical basis.
Each group will consist of one top seed, one second seed and three unseeded clubs.
Elgin City will be joined by Highland League champions Brora Rangers and League 2 new boys Kelty Hearts as unseeded clubs in the north half of the draw.
Ross County are north seeds along with Dundee United, Hearts and Livingston.
Caley Thistle are one of the four second-seeded clubs.
North section first seeds
1 Livingston
2 Dundee United
3 Ross County
4 Heart of Midlothian
North section second seeds
5 Dundee
6 Raith Rovers
7 Inverness Caledonian Thistle
8 Arbroath
North section unseeded clubs
9 Alloa Athletic
10 Cove Rangers
11 Montrose
12 East Fife
13 Peterhead
14 Forfar Athletic
15 Elgin City
16 Stirling Albion
17 Cowdenbeath
18 Brechin City
19 Brora Rangers
20 Kelty Hearts
South section first seeds
21 St Mirren
22 Motherwell
23 Kilmarnock
24 Hamilton Academical
South section second seeds
25 Dunfermline Athletic
26 Queen of the South
27 Ayr United
28 Morton
South section unseeded clubs
29 Partick Thistle
30 Airdrieonians
31 Falkirk
32 Clyde
33 Dumbarton
34 Queen's Park
35 Edinburgh City
36 Stranraer
37 Stenhousemuir
38 Albion Rovers
39 Annan Athletic
40 East Kilbride
The eight group winners and three best runners-up will join European qualifiers Rangers, Celtic, Hibernian, Aberdeen and St Johnstone, the current holders, in the last 16.
The draw will be shown live by Premier Sports via their FreeSports channel. FreeSports is available on Freeview HD channel 64, Sky HD channel 422, Virgin HD 553, TalkTalk 64, BT Vision channel 64 and is also available on the FreeSports Player — www.freesportsplayer.tv
The group stage fixture list and TV selections will be confirmed next week.
Group stage dates
MD1: Weekend of July 10/11
MD2: Midweek of July 13/14
MD3: Weekend of July 17/18
MD4: Midweek of July 20/21
MD5: Weekend of July 24/25
