ODD Ballklubb

Skien sits on the Skagerrak coast in Telemark, and for well over a century its football has belonged to one club. ODD traces back to 1894, when a football section split off from the sports organisation Idrætsforeningen Odd, itself founded nine years earlier. For a stretch in the 1990s the club traded on the name Odd Grenland, after a share company was set up to commercialise the operation, before the board reversed course in January 2013 and restored the original Odds Ballklubb.

What sets the club apart in Norway is the cup. ODD holds the record for NM Cupen wins, twelve in all, though most of them belong to a run early in the twentieth century — six triumphs between 1903 and 1919 alone. The league title has never followed; two second-place finishes, in 1950/51 and 1956/57, are as close as the club has come. The last cup was lifted in 2000, under coach Arne Sandstø.

Longevity shows up in the names attached to the club as much as in the trophy count. Steffen Hagen made 591 appearances between 2006 and 2025, more than anyone else in the club's history, while further back Einar Gundersen scored 175 goals across the 1910s and 1920s. Home games are played at Skagerak Arena, an 11,767-seat ground, in the club's white and black. Supporters know the team as Oddrane, and the fixture against Tønsberg, the Grenlandderby, still carries the old local weight, alongside meetings with Sandefjord.