Hibernian CEO Dan Barnett says he has raised the idea of increasing Celtic’s Easter Road allocation at the club’s fan forum.
The club initially reduced away allocations in March 2024, citing increased demand for home tickets and complaints from shareholders about “abhorrent behaviour” from travelling fans.
Celtic’s allocation was initially slashed from the full South Stand (approx. 3,800–4,000 seats) to 2,930 tickets, but it was then cut even further to less than 1,500 due to “high demand” last year.
This demand clearly hasn’t lasted, however, with the Hibs chief confirming that the club are exploring a potential increase.
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Hibs CEO Dan Barnett says club are ‘working with fans’ on Celtic allocation increase
Via the Hibs Observer, Barnett said on the potential of an increase: “We’ve raised it with the fans forum.
“We’ve been very open and honest about what we want to do in principle, versus what the impact is from a revenue perspective.
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“We’re working with the fans to make that decision together in terms of the position we adopt and whether it’s worth doing it that way.”
“It equates to around between £150,000 and £200,000 a year if our fans do not take up the allocation that’s not allocated to the offer.
“We’ve also made the decision to freeze season ticket prices for next season, which could have been an incremental revenue driver for us, but we feel strongly that we want to keep football accessible for everybody, and we want to reward that loyalty.
“So far, it’s paying off. We broke our records for season tickets last year, and we’re tracking well ahead of that for this season.”
It remains to be seen if Celtic are to travel to Easter Road in one of their two away matches to be played after the split.
The Hibees are due to play three home games in their last five, but could be made to come to Celtic Park thrice as the SPFL face a headache over allocating fixtures to the top three.
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A trend in reducing Celtic’s away allocations
Throughout recent years – particularly since Covid – there has been a trend in Scottish Premiership clubs (aside from the obvious example of Rangers) reducing away allocations to Celtic fans.
Hibs were beaten to it by their Edinburgh rivals Hearts, who cut the allocation of the Roseburn Stand to just 650 seats in 2021.
Both St Mirren and Kilmarnock changed the traditional allocation of two stands at either end of their stadiums to just one.
Motherwell and (especially) Livingston remain the two standouts in terms of giving away a large portion of the stadium when the big boys come to town.
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