CELTIC’S DESTINY IS OURS TO CONTROL: HERE IS HOW WE START
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
One of the unfortunate side-effects of the last few days’ hysteria, after the latest tenants took up residence at the stadium John Brown played for, is the reminder that far too many Celtic fans and Celtic-aligned media presences continue to assess everything we do in direct comparison to what Rangers do or do not do.
This needs to change. We should be looking and planning far, far above and beyond anything they do.
Any real rivalry died with the old Rangers in 2012. The only times they’ve got close to Celtic since have been when we’ve allowed them to, by letting an entirely self-induced malaise take hold.
Celtic Need to Press On and Invest in Our Own Future, Regardless of What Other Teams Do
So, what exactly can Celtic do?
In short, we have to speculate to accumulate.
We have been far too fiscally cautious and, as I will outline below, it is at a point now where this is actively costing the club money.
My fellow ACSOM contributors and I were having a wee back and forth discussion about this yesterday and we’ve come up with some ideas.
So, let’s put them out there and see what the rest of you think.
An immediate priority must be the stadium and surrounding area.
As I mentioned in another recent post, one of the areas where Rangers will, probably, improve with their new owners is in the area of marketing and commerce.
If Celtic could even begin an upgrade on Celtic Park, something that has reportedly been under consideration within the club for quite some time, just the extra revenue from that alone would, in due course, eclipse anything Rangers new owners could do monetarily. Celtic could easily accommodate 70 or 80,000 fans if we had the capacity to do so.
More importantly however, would be to not just increase the stadium’s capacity but also make the necessary improvements to take us to UEFA 5-star status. Celtic Park would then qualify as a potential venue for future European finals, Euro Championship matches, not to mention the knock-on benefits of having a top-class concert and conference venue for non-football businesses to use as well.
This goes beyond just the stadium itself, there’s also the issue of all the prime space around it. We need fan zones, proper matchday food and beverage facilities outside the stadium. A combined museum and hotel complex could also figure into this.
Again, these are substantial investments, but they are all things that would pay for themselves and more in a relatively short space of time.
Another key area is fan engagement. We have a full-time SLO, who by all accounts does a fantastic job within the very limited scope and resources he has to work with.
We need several fan liaison officers and it starts with our Ultra groups.
So many of the flashpoints between the Green Brigade and The Celtic Board could have been avoided over the years if they just had a better mechanism to talk with each other directly.
Having a liaison officer appointed specifically for dealing with organized fan groups is common practice in places like Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, and Germany.
Teams in these countries have realized that it is not only easier, but also more lucrative to engage productively with fan organizations.
The ultimate goal should be direct fan representation on the board, but I don’t see that happening under our current owners, unless the SFA actually had the courage to change the rules and make it mandatory. Again, this is highly unlikely.
Our youth development set up needs a complete overhaul. We simply haven’t produced anything like the number of players we should for the first team, and any that we had were very quickly poached by clubs in bigger leagues because we didn’t do enough to keep them.
There’s probably a whole separate article in that, so we’ll revisit the youth development aspect of things another time.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, because this was one area were Rangers had an edge on us even before The Americans showed up, is increasing value for both season ticket holders and club members.
A Celtic season ticket should include access to all matches. Not just the men’s first team. Include the women’s team and the B team and the youth team.
These 3 other strands of Celtic’s set-up all struggle to attract sizable crowds as it is, so the club wouldn’t be losing much money. However, the goodwill it would generate and the prospects for improved merchandize sales and so on (every parent and child in attendance is a potential shirt or scarf sale), would more than compensate for this.
It would also take care of another bugbear of mine. So often over the past couple of seasons the men’s first team, the women’s first team and sometimes the B team play not only on the same day, but sometimes within an hour or two of each other.
For fans like me, who would gladly watch all three games if they could this, is a very frustrating and completely unnecessary obstacle to doing so.
Again, its also costing Celtic money. More Celtic games, at any level, means more opportunities for revenue generation.
I could go on and on but this is become a rant, so I guess I should leave it here for now. These are just a few small ideas a group of us came up with over the course of an hour or two. Imagine how many more initiatives like this Celtic could think up if they made that little bit of effort and actually brought in some marketing professionals to look at all this.
Perhaps the takeover at Rangers is the proverbial rocket up the rear that Celtic have been needing for years. It would be sad if that’s what it took to shake our board into actually acting on any of these ideas, but any action would still be a positive step forward.
I guess for now we’ll just have to wait and see.
