Dave King’s legacy is the cancer of Scottish football, and it’s symptoms were there for all to see when Celtic took on Hibs at Easter Road
Eric Knott 
(Photo by Craig Williamson/SNS Group via Getty Images)
The Scottish League is, so we’re told, one of the best supported leagues in Europe and while that stat might be one to be proud of, we all know that this is driven mainly by Celtic and the Ibrox side.
It’s a stat the SFA proudly boasts about, despite being fully in the knowledge of what the driving force behind it is.
Now, I’ve often decried the game down south, and pointed out how it is soulless now.
Destroyed by money, and filled with mercenaries who have little or no idea of what it’s like to win silverware, but couldn’t care less because it makes multi-millionaires out of them.
During the 90’s, and what was probably the toughest of times to be a Celtic fan, I was an avid follower of the Carling F.A. Premiership, as it was known back then.
I regularly listened to BBC 5 medium-wave during the week to catch games from the Premiership.
In Ireland, we only ever got coverage of matches from RTE on Saturday afternoons on a programme called Sports Stadium.
The games were never live, and were always shown around 4pm, so I’d have to avoid catching any match updates on Teletext.
I could then watch the game as if it was live without knowing how it was progressing.
Sports Stadium regularly televised derby games between Celtic and Rangers 1872, especially in the early 90’s.
This was mainly down to the big Irish connection at the Celtic back then.
Liam Brady was managing, with Irish internationals such as Pat Bonner, Chris Morris, Tommy Coyne, and Tony Cascarino lining out for the hoops.
If I wanted to see a live game, especially in the mid-nineties, I had to go to the pub.
Back then most pubs had Sky Sports.
I was in a pub for the classic 4-3 Liverpool win over Newcastle United in 1996, I’ll never forget the atmosphere at that game.
It’s rare I experience atmospheres like that at pubs any more.
The passion just isn’t there for the English game now.
In fact, when I’m at our Celtic supporters club for games, Man. United and Liverpool fans tend to congregate at the other end of the bar where our club is.
They watch their matches there, sometimes at the same as time we do.
They cannot get over the noise we create at games.
In fact, they comment on it pretty often, as some United fans watching their side play Crystal Palace did last Sunday.
A lot of them don’t even know what it was like when the English game had the same kind of passion in it.
That was before their time.
They’ve only ever known a product that has been awash with hundreds of millions in TV money for the best part of this century.
Which brings me back to Scottish game.
While our League is the epitome of the poor neighbour staring over the fence at the rich hotshot next door, what we’re lacking in finance, we’re certainly not lacking in passion.
Yes, our product is rich in passion, but impoverished financially.
We feed off the scraps Sky decide to feed to us.
And put up with the likes of the Village Idiot as part of their match coverage.
Who is nothing but a laughing stock when he partakes in any Sky Sports programmes down south.
Matt O’Riley commented on his debut for Celtic at Tyncastle back in 2022 that he had never experienced an atmosphere like he did that night in all of his time in English football.
He described it as mental and crazy.
A pretty sad indictment of the English game, don’t you think?
So, why then, are we not cashing in on this?
And by that I mean, why are we witnessing clubs locking fans out of stadiums, resulting in thousands of empty seats, and hundreds of thousands in lost revenue?
These were the scenes we saw at Easter Road last Sunday afternoon.
A few hundred Celtic fans crammed into the corner of the South Stand, while thousands of seats were left unoccupied and empty.
The South Stand at Easter Road has 4,000 seats.
At a guess, there was about 800 Celtic fans in attendance.
And a scattering of Hibs fans in one section.
The attendance for Sunday was given at around 18,000, and Easter Road holds just under 21,000.
So, let’s say in or around 3,000 stood empty.
An away ticket at Easter Road is £26, multiply that by 3,000 and you’re talking about a £78,000 matchday revenue loss.
That doesn’t take into account what 3,000 fans might have purchased in food and drinks at the stadium either.
But let’s just say they spent an average of a tenner, because food and drink at stadiums isn’t cheap, as we know.
That’s another possible £30k in revenue lost.
Over £100k in matchday revenue snubbed, and for what?
This is the cancerous legacy of the glib and shameless liar, Dave King.
It all began back in 2018, when King could not stand Celtic fans celebrating in the Broomloan end after several epic victories during Brendan Rodgers’ first stint at the club.
He decided to reduce the away ticket allocation to 750 from 7,500.
And while King knew he wouldn’t have much issue filling the stand with Ibrox fans, for some inexplicable reason, other clubs started to follow suit.
Suddenly, away allocations were cut by Kilmarnock, Aberdeen, Hearts and Hibernian.
All clubs who never struggled to fill their grounds when Celtic and the Ibrox side were in town.
Celtic were tarred with the same brush as Ibrox, which is always the case.
As King’s cancerous actions spread through the land, Sky’s cameras beamed us games with thousands of empty seats in evidence.
It was all supposedly done to meet the whims of the home supports involved, the idea being that they were given preference over Celtic and Ibrox fans.
A noble idea.
Great in theory, but the reality was brutal.
The optics were awful.
As we could all see at Easter Road last Sunday.
It amounts to millions in lost revenue annually for these clubs, and to what end?
As I outlined earlier, our product is filled with passion and electric atmospheres.
What would fill it with even more passion is sold out stadiums when Celtic and the Ibrox side are in town.
Clubs should be capitalising on this.
St. Johnstone and Livingston are fully aware of the benefits that come with sold out stadiums.
In reality, we have a convicted criminal to thank for the unnecessary destruction of the away day experience in our game.
Dave King is gone from the Scottish game now.
Don’t you think it’s about time his legacy was gone from it too?
Everybody wins here.
Nobody loses.
And you have to wonder why the clubs that lose vast amounts in revenue because of this cannot see it?
I guess only they can answer that.
Key Takeaways
- Scottish League enjoys strong support, mainly driven by Celtic and Rangers, but lacks in financial backing compared to the English game.
- Despite financial struggles, the passion in Scottish football remains high, as highlighted by the atmosphere at Celtic matches.
- Away ticket allocations were drastically reduced by clubs after a decision made by Dave King, leading to empty stadiums and significant revenue losses.
- Clubs witness thousands of empty seats, resulting in lost matchday revenue, sometimes exceeding £100,000 per game, due to reduced away allocations.
- There is a call for Scottish clubs to reevaluate their approach to ticket sales, as selling out stadiums could greatly enhance the matchday experience and financial gain.
Concomitantly……
I can only support one team and one team only 🍀🍀🍀💚🇮🇪
These Scottish teams are actually a laughing stock.It makes Scottish business folks look absolutely stupid.
I am sure real business people are absolutely embarrassed.
I remember visiting Ireland regularly during the Troubles in the North and
being mad at seeing so many Man U,
Liverpool and other EPL jerseys being
worn in the streets and in the pubs. I often wondered why, especially when the real fans of these teams were committing atrocities in a part of their own land. Even relations I visited hardly knew what was going on in the North. In one pub I was told in no uncertain terms that “one
side was a bad as the other” by a barman.
The fact that Irish flags flew when the first non-Latin team won the European Cup before any of their favourites did, George Best and all, didn`t sway them even.
All this came back to me last night when I
heard Goodwin agreeing that it was indeed a penalty awarded against his team. Typical crawler lying just to make
life easy for himself.
The fact that you never saw a Carlisle,
Bury or Hartlepool jersey explained it all.
In just two words …… GLORY HUNTERS.
The tickets for the Hibs match were £38 which would have given them more profit. Teams say they save money on segregation which I can’t fathom out as having two rows of stewards and police on each side of the no mans land must cost more than a few stewards in the natural gap between the stands. There’s also the fact that these teams still owe the Scottish Government millions of pounds for interest free COVID loans yet refuse entry to the very citizens who’s taxes provided the loans in the first place. The SFA and SPFL are a joke, and so are the Government for not appointing an independent regulator to keep an eye on public funds
Who runs Scottish football? I genuinely don’t know. SFA, SPFL, Scottish League?
Was there not a ‘think tank’ many years ago that was meant to standardise all this?
I suppose that might have meant less snouts in the trough though.