A Premiership Chief Executive has told the Daily Record that ‘probably some of the biggest clubs we have’ are going to go burst if no fans are allowed to attend Scottish football matches in the next six months.
The warning comes after Lockdown restrictions were tightened yesterday by the Governments in London and Edinburgh.
Football has been caught up in the measures with trial events and the phased return of fans, initially planned for September 14 but put back to October 4 now shelved on both sides of the border.
The new season started with an expectation that clubs would have some fans back by now with a phased return towards perhaps 50% capacity before the turn of the year.
Half of the clubs in the SPFL Premiership struggle to attract 5,000 home fans to matches but for Celtic the issue is far greater with over 50,000 fans regularly inside their 60,000 stadium.
Celtic have been pushing for test events since the end of June but are now facing the real prospect of no fans back before the turn of the year.
The Record reports:
Scottish football could be weeks away from a “catastrophic” collapse after Boris Johnson revealed fans could be locked out of the game for the next six months.
The grave warning came from one senior top-flight figure as part of a special Record Sport probe into the potentially ruinous ramifications of Tuesday’s raft of new virus restrictions rubber-stamped simultaneously in both Westminster and Holyrood.
And we can reveal panic-stricken clubs from all over the country – and across all four divisions – now fear they could be forced to the wall unless they receive an emergency cash bailout from the Scottish government.
After announcing in the House of Commons the return of supporters could be put on hold until April 2021 the Prime Minister revealed talks over a crisis funding package will take place between England’s major sporting bodies and the Department for Culture Media and Sport.
But while England’s mega-rich Premier League chiefs are expected to be involved in the discussions, there are currently no such plans for Scotland’s clubs to be given similar assistance from the government in Edinburgh.
Attendance at Scottish football is a devolved matter so the final decision rests with Holyrood but clubs believe First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is extremely unlikely to let fans back in before Westminster does.
And one Premiership chief executive told us: “This has been a very bleak day for the professional game in this country and the consequences will be catastrophic unless there is urgent government intervention.
“Six months without fans? Let’s be blunt, we don’t have six months. Clubs are going to go bust – a lot of them – and probably some of the biggest clubs we have. The next two months are going to be critical.
“First, academies will have to be stopped, player development will have to be stopped and all community coaching programmes will have to be stopped. Then, after all of those cuts have been made, clubs will take it in turns to go to the wall.
“That’s the scenario our game is now facing. If there are no fans then there will need to be a government subsidy of some sort to replace lost revenues. If not then Scottish football as we know it will simply not survive.”
The prospect of no fans before Christmas increases the importance of the Europa League with Celtic collecting around £6m directly from UEFA for topping their group last season with four victories and a draw.
