|
Karl
Senior Member
USA
914 Posts |
 Posted - Apr 21 2002 : 07:59:28 AM
|
I know this is an old rant of mine from Law Stud Says, however it has also generated some very heated discussion amongst fans of many Scottish Clubs.
What follows is the original article, then on the next page a Rangers fan writes his response and after on page 3 a Dunfermline fan gives his verdict.
If anyone else would like to send me their point of view on the issue we give it a fair hearing in here.
The Case For Expelling The Old Firm
The recent row at the SPL offices about how much of a cut of the TV revenue Rangers and Celtic should get, appears to have focused many minds on the wisdom of having the big two involved in the Scottish game.
The SPL say they believe that the next TV deal, due at the end of next season, could be worth as much as £30 million per season. Many believe that is an impossibly high figure already, but with Rangers and Celtic demanding a large cut of that money, said to be anywhere between £9m and £12m, it appears ever more likely that greed will kill off the SPL.
I read an article in The Scotsman this morning by Glenn Gibbons. It was a good article in that it was thought provoking, but to be honest it stated the obvious.
He made the point that when the SPL was founded Rangers and Celtic actually cut the percentage of their take from the TV kitty in order to allow the SPL to be set up quickly. He said that the problem this time comes because both of those clubs will look to go back to their full rates that they enjoyed before the SPL.
This is all fair enough but you need to look further back in history to see the real picture.
Rangers and Celtic have been the biggest draw in the Scottish game since the demise of Queens Park in the late 19th Century. Their support was always larger and the power they had within the game was always more than all the rest. However more recently the two clubs have been demanding more and more unearned cash from the game and Scottish Football has allowed them to get away with it.
For example, gate receipts. For years now Old Firm fans, pundits, officials and everyone else has told us that Scottish Football needs a strong Rangers and Celtic. They told us that the smaller clubs all hang on to the coat tails of the big two and because of that they were always held back in the game. They told us that we should be grateful to the supports of the big two for keeping us afloat.
Now they were right. If you go back in time to the early 1970's for example, when gate money was shared and TV Revenue and was non existent, there can be little doubt that a side like St.Mirren, visiting Ibrox or Parkhead with 100,000 spectators filling the ground, would have been more than grateful for their 50% of the gate. However more recently you would think that the power of the big two would actually diminish.
Rangers and Celtic put forward a motion to scrap the split gate arguing that they were the home club and as such the majority of the support were their fans. Scottish Football caved and allowed the Old Firm to carry on with this motion. So today you have to ask just what Rangers and Celtic mean to the Scottish game.
Lets carry on using St.Mirren as an example. This season they have traveled to Ibrox once and played Celtic at Parkhead twice. Official figures from Parkhead suggest that on the days when St.Mirren visited, Celtics gate receipts were actually higher than those for the visit of Rangers. Now sure, I won't suggest this means there were more St.Mirren fans in the ground, but the need for segregation was less so Celtic could pay less for policing, and yet fill more seats.
Now Celtic would have taken in around £1.2 million from each visit St.Mirren made. Crowds of 60,000 paying on average about £20 per ticket make up this massive figure. Yet lets say St.Mirren had decided not to turn up. Gate money would have had to have been refunded and Celtic would actually have made a huge loss.
You see my point is that in order to make that £1.2m Celtic actually needed an opposition. An opposition that they would refuse to pay !
Rangers are exactly the same. Again for the visit of St.Mirren there were more than 50,000 at the game, yet St.Mirren didn't receive a penny.
Now for the return match at Love Street. St.Mirren lay out a fortune in policing costs and sit back to expect a full house. A typical St.Mirren gate has around 4,000 St.Mirren fans in the ground. 3,000 season ticket holders and around about 1,000 stragglers will turn up for a match between St.Mirren and St.Johnstone with the away support making up the rest. So with a capacity of 10,600 they can look forward, at best, to Rangers or Celtic bringing 6,500 fans paying £20 each. Approximately £200,000 as opposed to the normal £120,000 per match ! Take from that the increased cost of policing and you are looking at the Old Firm being worth around £150,000 in total this season.
Hardly a case for the argument that St.Mirren actually need Rangers or Celtic at all.
Of course then you have the TV companies. Much welcome revenue comes in from the split of the TV Revenue. The last deal signed was worth £45 million over four seasons. £11.25m per season out of which a club like St.Mirren would expect to receive on average around £600,000.
You would think then that if the SPL managed to get £30 million per season for our national game then that St.Mirren would get £1.8 million. Not so ! Nope St.Mirren, despite the 300% increase in money taken in, would still be lucky to get £600,000. Why ? Well the Old Firm believe they are worth at least £12 million per season each, leaving just £6 million for the other 10 to sort out.
Now, pause for thought. Lets say you were the owner of Sky TV. You have a slot to fill on a Sunday evening. You are offered a pretty poor product with little doubt from the start of the season that it will be a two horse race. You are told it will cost you £30 million per year. Would you buy that product ? Or would you prefer to offer a Scottish top flight without Rangers and Celtic, £6 million to watch a lower grade of player show plenty of endeavor and have the excitement and drama unfold as the season progresses, with absolutely no-one knowing what twist and turns lie ahead.
Even accounting for the increased viewing figures the Old Firm derbies are still only worth a few million. Perhaps if you could make all four fixtures Pay Per View it would be worth more but no-one will let you. So which option do you go for ?
Lets even assume that they look at subscriptions to Sky TV when they do the math. How many new subscribers do they get for an Old Firm match ? I would venture not many would be the answer. Lets face it those that have Sky TV will watch the game if they can't get a ticket while many others will head for the pub but I have yet to come across an individual who's sole reason for getting Sky installed was so that he could watch the Rangers v Celtic matches. Even if it was, wouldn't he cancel his subscription through the summer months and only pay his subscription when Rangers were due to meet Celtic. If so what is the real value of that person ?
My thinking is that it would be an enormous gamble but if those fighting to get the Old Firm expelled are successful, I would venture they clubs would actually each be better off.
For a start I believe Sky TV would pay £6 million to televise SPL matches that don't feature the Old Firm. After all it pays to televise English Division Two matches on a Friday night.
Gate receipts would probably actually rise, week on week, offsetting any loss with the departing Old Firm. More competition, with every club in Scotland having a higher chance of winning a trophy would make the matches more attractive to the pay at the gate fan. Policing costs would be down, in fact without the visiting Old Firm the chances are you could almost scale down policing at matches to a minimum and use stewarding companies to ensure crowd order.
Sponsorship may suffer initially but think about this, without Rangers gulping up £33 million from NTL for shirt sponsorship wouldn't that organisation have more money to throw at the games governing body for sponsorship of the league. Perhaps, and its a big perhaps, more sponsors may actually come out of the woodwork with sectarianism and bigotry unlikely to affect sales because they had sponsored the wrong team.
Maybe none of this will ever come to anything. Maybe Scottish Football couldn't survive at its current level without the Old Firm but we shall never know unless it is tried and if nothing else those directors and chairmen who have moved to try and expel the Old Firm will have sent a clear message to the power brokers at both those clubs - THAT THEY NEED SCOTTISH FOOTBALL MORE THAN SCOTTISH FOOTBALL NEEDS THEM !
After all what would happen to Celtic's already plunging share price if they had no where to play and no league to play in.
________________________________________
Copyright © 2002 The Penalty Box
Karl |
|
Rangers/Celtic vs the SPL - One fan's view
