Soccer Football - Scottish Cup - Final - Celtic v Rangers - Hampden Park, Glasgow, Scotland, Britain - May 25, 2024 Celtic fans in the stands Action Images via Reuters/Jason Cairnduff
St Johnstone will discuss the prospect of INCREASING Celtic’s ticket allocation to McDiarmid Park from next season.
As it stands Celtic supporters get the stands behind both goals and a small section of the Geoff Brown Stand.
That leaves the East Stand, facing the television cameras to the home support, more often than not there are more coloured seats picked up by the cameras than fans.
When Celtic visited St Johnstone at the end of September the crowd was given as 7,036 with the away sections full to capacity.
Across the SPFL clubs have been reducing away allocations, Celtic will get less than 600 tickets to Tynecastle on Saturday, but it seems that there is some light in the tunnel regarding future trips to Perth.
Discussing the issue with The Sun, Saints CEO Fran Smith said:
We’ve got Rangers in a couple of weeks, and Celtic again later in the season. Hopefully there will be another game against Rangers in the top six after that.
Economically, if we’re not going to fill the East Stand, why wouldn’t we think about maximising income?
You’re talking about being £75k better off for one game, which is a player. Of course, the rest of the board might not agree with me. That’s the important thing.
We’ll discuss it as a board and discuss it with fans’ groups again. There are a few options for us.
One of them is giving St Johnstone fans the Geoff Brown Stand and the Ormond. We’d make £35k more doing it that way.
There’s also the possibility of season tickets without Old Firm games. I’ve got to think about the club more economically.
If people want a better product on the park, then we need to bring income in. So that could, potentially, include extra Old Firm income.
It’s always going to be a contentious one for the club. It’s one we have to speak about again as a board, and we need to involve the fans to make sure we make the right decision.
There is bound to be some opposition to increasing away allocations with the Fair City Unity (St Johnstone’s Ultras) currently housed in the East Stand at the area closest to the North Stand.
Having your own territory is vital in Ultras culture but there is no reason why a significant section of the East Stand couldn’t be given to Celtic fans next season.
It’s not easy to segregate access and internal facilities in the East Stand which is why it is always given to one set of fans or the other rather than divided – the Main Stand was designed for split allocation but the East Stand wasn’t. St Johnstone’s owners were talking a good game about filling the place with their own fans and limiting away support allocations as recently as the summer. This is a very quick change of tack as the new American owners crunch the cold, hard numbers.
Think other clubs are regretting cutting our seats at away fixtures, well a reality check is the best medicine.
A sensible CEO at St.johnstone then…
Well apart from using the term ‘O#* F£#m which is as defunct as the do-do !