10,000 signed up to the waiting list according to the club ?. So with us already have 53k STH’s, we could have 63k STH’s if we had the capacity. This raises a lot of talking points so much so, that this is your warning that this is about to be a lengthy blog.
For a start, where are all the existing STH’s a lot of home games. Despite having sold out most of the stadium in advance, the LIvingston game showed there was probably only about 40k there. Yet in Brendan Rodgers first season, you seldom seen an empty seat. We have people signed up waiting to get a ST & some of the current ones only seem to have secured them in order to guarantee their tickets for the European & Sevco games. Granted a lot of our STH’s do live further away and make a lot of effort to get to games so that is fair enough where they are concerned.
Also, if we have this potential to sell that number of ST’s, shouldn’t the club be looking at rebuilding the main stand to increase the capacity to 70k?
If we did that, then we’d definitely leave Sevco and the rest lying in our wake for years to come. I’m sure Dermot Desmond & the other rich and influential Celtic shareholders could agree to contribute the money between them for an interest free loan to fund such a project.
Or if they can’t separate their love for the club from their business heads then make it a very very low interest loan. This way we can build the stand without it impacting on our transfer budget. After all, if we were to have a 70k capacity stadium with at least 64k ST’s sold if not more (remember demand will be high for 10 in a row), then the increased revenue would help us have a bigger transfer budget to help us in Europe & as shareholders they would see a return in their dividends.
So how much would a stand cost. I’m merely speculating here, but Hearts new stand was supposed to cost £12m and that was to hold 7,290 fans. Now our current main stand holds around that number of fans…in fact I think it’s about 7,700 roughly. The cost rose for Hearts Stand to be £15m according to the club at their AGM. So a new main stand for us would cost between £20m-£25m you’d imagine. We’d want it to look plush as well as being able to hold 18k fans.
It would also cause the club a headache as such a project would not just happen in a few weeks. You’re probably looking at a season away from Celtic Park. Now there is only one stadium in Scotland that can accommodate the number of STH’s we have & that’s Murrayfield. A colleague of mine suggested staying at Celtic Park but can you imagine the hassle of us playing with a restricted 52 capacity? You’d have to lose some STH’s for the year. Plus keeping a small area for away fans. A lot of the business fans would have their noses out of joint because obviously the board would be taking up the best seats in the north stand for them and their cohorts.
Although should we be looking to build a new stand anyway? We currently have sold our ST’s out and we still have a huge number of empty seats that allows our rivals to ridicule us for. Wouldn’t this be worse in a bigger stadium even if the majority of seats were sold? As one of my fellow Celtic friends used to say, when the ST sales dropped, you didn’t hear people saying we should remove a stand. Is 60k just the right number for us and we should accept that our ST sales are likely to fluctuate and 60k is a comfortable number for us?
Thoughts?
