St Johnstone CEO Fran Smith has opened the door to a potential U-turn on Celtic’s allocation at McDiarmid Park next season.
On Wednesday, it was confirmed that Celtic would be given three stands along with Rangers on trips to face the Perth side upon their return to the Scottish Premiership next season.
This goes against a current trend in Scottish football which has seen a number of clubs reduce away allocations for the Glasgow clubs.
Given that the decision was unpopular among some St Johnstone fans, Smith has given an update.
The decisions are yours…
St Johnstone CEO Fran Smith: Celtic decision has caused ‘anger’ among fans
Smith admitted to Saints TV: “Look, we’re never going to get everything right at the club.
“From the ownership, to the board, to the leadership group, we’ll make decisions that we think are in the best interests of the club as a business and financially.
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“At times we have to take the social and emotional connection out of things, but yeah, we get things wrong.”
He continued: “There’s anger out there with fans. I want to take a minute to let people understand the decision-making process and where we can, as a leadership group, take those thoughts and continue discussions to see if there’s any slight tweaks or amendments we can make to things.
“Relegation to the Championship cost us over £1.7 million and that will be reflected in any decision-making that we make in the future.
“We’ve got to make sure that the club remains sustainable. We wanted to be open and honest from the beginning that we would consider three stands for Category A – Rangers and Celtic games.
“The reason being is we tried it the other way two seasons ago and we had empty stands. We then filled the stands for the Celtic game and we won.
“We took £200,000 from that. There were 2,600 season tickets last season. There are 3,200 seats in the main stand.
“With the 2,600 and hospitality, this stand still has the capacity to make sure that every single season ticket holder, when moved from the East Stand, will have a seat in the main stand.
“There’s a way that you can make the club pivot on this and make us not do it. That’s by having more season tickets than seats available in the main stand — because when that happens, we would have to rethink our strategy around that.
“By giving Category A games extra space to fill, we could bring in an extra £500,000 a year. Any profits we make from these decisions will go straight on to player payroll.
“That’s what we’re trying to do – put a better product on the park to allow us to retain our Premiership position and start to challenge.”
How much of a difference did the Green Brigade make to the Celtic Park atmosphere?
Let us know in the comments if you were at the game.
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.
Along with St Johnstone, 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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