STEALTH LAUNCH OF LATEST CELTIC ADIDAS MERCHANDISE SHOWS IMMEDIATE IMPACT OF FAN ACTION
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- Sep 12
- 2 min read
There’s been a lot for Celtic fans to talk about this week. And, as expected, almost none of the conversation has emanated from the club’s leadership.
However, many hope, and believe that the united front shown by such a huge swathe of the Celtic support on Wednesday night at the fans’ meeting was a turning point.
It seems that the message sent out by that meeting and all the discussions around it has punched through even in the seemingly impenetrable veil of willful ignorance that shrouds the Celtic Board room.
New Celtic Adidas Merch Dropped Yesterday, but You Wouldn’t Know it
Since the extended Celtic Adidas contract was announced towards the end of last season, we have been subjected to an almost endless barrage of new kits, training wear, golf and baseball gear, you name it, Adidas have probably slapped a Celtic logo on it and put it in our store for a vastly inflated price.
Fans have repeatedly expressed frustration that Celtic refuse to engage with us on any meaningful issues, such as pricing, access to media content, transfer policy, the future of the manager and our major players. Yet whenever they have new tickets, or merchandise to sell us. the emails come flying in at a breakneck pace.
That stopped yesterday. Yes, Celtic announced new merchandise through most of their official channels, but there was no media blitz, no bombarding of us with YouTube videos, twitter posts of unsolicited emails saying “Buy! Buy! Buy!”.
For once, somebody at Celtic actually read the room. What little promotion was given to the new merch was, I would guess, probably the bare minimum required to fulfill our contractual obligations to Adidas.
This is how it should be every time. However, unlike Celtic’s recent backpedaling on pay-walling of video content, I highly doubt this is the new norm. This is a temporary measure, another act of desperation from a board who will do absolutely everything to avoid having to actually have an honest and open conversation with fans about the future of our club.
What we have here is a board firmly in damage control mode, but with so little experience of exercising this control, that the measures they take seem positively amateurish.
This is what happens when you have leadership who are far too used to getting their own way all the time, every time, without question.
They’ll want to return to “normal” as soon as they can. Unfortunately, for the Celtic Board, that ship has sailed. The unprecedented way fans have come together in the past 7 days tells me that “back to business as usual” is no longer an option.
We’ll find out what Brendan Rodgers has to say about all this later today. Have your popcorn ready for that one.
