CELTIC TV’S VIDEO GAME STYLE APPROACH TO CONTENT WON’T WORK
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- Jun 28
- 3 min read

In addition to my daily ramblings on here about Celtic, I’m also quite an avid video games enthusiast (insert gratuitous plug for my YouTube Retro Gaming Channel here).
However, you’ll probably notice I only play games from the past, because, quite frankly, the approach to monetization in modern gaming has driven me away from the hobby.
So, I was very disappointed to see this week that Celtic TV seems to be taking the same “pay to play” attitude that has ruined so many of my favorite video games and also left the newspaper industry in tatters as well.
Celtic TV Starts Paywalling Content That has Always Been Free
If you're wondering what I’m ranting about, go and watch Benjamin Nygren’s “exclusive first interview as a Celtic player” on the club’s YouTube channel.
It’s a bit shorter than usual, isn't it?
Infact, we only get to see about 1 minute of the interview, and Benjamin only speaks for about half of that.
If you want to see the full, 8 minute interview, which is normally available on the club’s social media accounts and YouTube Channel, then you need to buy a subscription to Celtic TV.
In media circles, this is called “Paywalling”. It has become an all-too-common practice among newspapers, streaming services, and as I mentioned before, video games.
In an age when almost anything can be monetized, I understand that Celtic want to maximize their revenue from every possible source, and Celtic TV is one of those sources.
However, you do that by creating more, and better quality original content. You don’t do it by just suddenly announcing that fans now have to pay you for something they’re used to getting for free.
Let me use a video game example to demonstrate. I grew up playing a lot of fighting games, but Mortal Kombat was always my favorite.
Mortal Kombat always featured a plethora of different characters. At the peak of the franchise, in 2006, the PlayStation 2 version of the game featured 62 characters. Most were available from the start, others you could access by completing challenges, winning certain fights, etc. However, they were all in there. You bought the game and that was it.
Skip forward to today. The latest version of this game launched on PlayStation 5 with just 23 playable characters. There were a further 12 characters available, but you had to pay more for them. This is on top of a game that already cost 70 quid for the basic version.
Data-mining by those in the know showed that most of these “extra” characters were already in the game’s code at launch, they were simply blocked off to force players to pay more.
Again, much like Celtic TV, had the developers of 2023’s Mortal Kombat 1 just included all the completed content at launch, then people would have been happy to pay for any extras they sold later on. But they didn't do that.
Closer to home, we see newspapers like The Herald, The Times and others employ similar methods. Show readers an interesting slice of a story, then demand they pay a subscription to read the rest. The story is there, it’s done, but they’re actively blocking you from seeing it to try and squeeze more money out of you.
This model didn't work for video games (Mortal Kombat 1 was abandoned less than 2 years into what was supposed to be a 5 year cycle of content because no-one was buying it), it isn't working for newspapers (people just go elsewhere to read the same stories for free) and it won’t work for Celtic TV.
Consumers have, for years, rejected these strong-arm tactics, and just as that reality is beginning to set in for industries like gaming, newspapers and TV, and other, less invasive, monetization methods are explored, Celtic TV decides to take up this broken and thoroughly detested business model.
People expect to go on Celtic’s YouTube channel and see a full interview with our new signing. They don’t expect a “bait and switch” plea for more money to watch the same content they’ve always got for free.
2 years ago, Mortal Kombat fans voted with their wallets and, finally, publishers listened and stopped pushing paywalled content. The same thing will inevitably happen with Celtic TV.
I just hope it doesn't take them 2 years to see sense, and realize that Celtic TV subscriptions aren't spiking like they expected them to.