£5m insurance payout for Celtic

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You may remember back in the early days of the global pandemic there was a lot of chatter about insurance in Scottish football, who had it and who didn’t, including from Celtic supporters.

Alan Patullo reported in The Scotsman way back in March 2020 that only six clubs in Scotland’s top four divisions held the necessary insurance to cover losses due to the unfolding Covid-19 crisis, as Scottish football shut down for the season.

It now seems that Celtic were certainly one of those. A deep dive into the club’s 2020/21 accounts by football finance expert ‘SwissRamble‘ today revealed to supporters that Celtic received a healthy £5m in additional operating income representing “a recovery derived from Business Interruption coverage”, helping the club mitigate the loss of income due to the global crisis.

That Celtic received this money is obviously a good thing. The club clearly had the foresight to have an ironclad policy in place, in stark contrast to the majority of Scottish football.

This may be one of the reasons why Celtic didn’t deem it necessary to take up the Scottish Government on a significant loan, as the rest of the Scottish Premiership did, including rivals Rangers.

A sum of £5m certainly wouldn’t have covered all the losses as a result of matches being played behind closed doors and fewer commercial opportunities, owing to the pandemic. However, it takes a fair chunk out of them.

As SwissRamble states in the Twitter thread, Celtic are in pretty good shape financially despite the challenges facing football over the last 18 months. The club are expected to return to profit in the next set of yearly accounts, primarily as a result of impressive player trading, which far exceeds what’s happening at Ibrox.

Ultimately, for many supporters, all that matters is success on the field. However, over the last decade up to last season, Celtic found a way to both be extraordinarily successful and financially prudent.

The club invested heavily in new players over the summer, bringing talents such as Kyogo Furuhashi and Carl Starfelt to the club. With an important January transfer window ahead, the way Celtic have handled themselves financially during the pandemic will hopefully pay off.

In other news, “Born to wear the Celtic jersey”; Kris Commons is blown away by Ange signing.