WE had a few rather stressful days earlier in the week as The Celtic Star moved over to a new server that’s better suited to cope with the growth in audience that the site has experienced since launching back in February.
Yesterday we reported on the latest reporting period from the ABC on the national newspaper circulations and the particularly grim reading it makes for the three Scottish based newspapers included in the report – read HERE.
There was a also a story yesterday about internet giants Facebook and Amazon being interested in bidding for broadcasting rights for Scottish football.
The game in Scotland has suffered greatly because of the mismanagement of these rights that basically resulted in the game missing the boat as far as the huge revenues that football has been able to attract elsewhere. This allows clubs like Bournemouth to earn 100 times the TV money that Celtic will earn.
At the beginning of the satellite revolution the Celtic v Rangers action was a big subscriber driver for Sky. Think how many Celtic subscribers they would have had compared to the aforementioned Bournemouth.
Rangers were aiming for 10 in a row and Tommy Burns was trying his very best to stop them. Then Wim Jansen arrived brought in Henrik and we know the rest.
This was huge business for Sky – Scottish football was crucial to them.
Yet somehow it all went wrong. All that needed to happen was for the Scottish game to insist, when our game was at its strongest in terms of the broadcaster’s business model, that a 10% revenue share on a UK deal be imposed. If England got x then our game would get 10% of that figure.
Sky offered £50m, Rodger Mitchell said that was an insult and we ended up with Setanta – who went bust. And the game in Scotland has never recovered from that in terms of getting a decent price for its broadcast rights.
So if Amazon and Facebook see value in the Scottish game – and you can see why they would with another 10 in a Row drama about to unfold – then that can only be good news.
Stand back though and consider this. BT already have a stake in the Scottish game and their broadcasting of our game is regarded more favourably than Sky’s. BT used to be the folk who supplied our landlines and more recently our broadband.
Facebook and Amazon are obviously new to the football conversation but what about The Daily Record/Sunday Mail?
Not so long ago the latter was selling a million copies every Sunday and the former had a dominant position in the Scottish game. I had a paper round in the 1980s and remember the numbers – every morning (except Sundays) I’d deliver 84 copies of The Daily Record, 4 copies of The Express and 0 copies of the Sun.
The Sun now sells more than the Record in Scotland. The number of households that has anyone buying a paper has dropped dramatically and alarmingly for the newspaper industry.
Social media has risen to such an extent that Facebook are mentioned in this article as a potential bidder.
But where is the vision from The Daily Record/Sunday Mail?
If supporters of Celtic – or Rangers – want to read about their team online they are more likely to go to their own fans media – to sites that they trust. The fans media has various options for both clubs to suit all tastes.
There is no clear media space that these newspapers can dominate – because they don’t dominate it now, like they once did. Celtic’s PR still consider them to be important but the signs of decline are there for all to see.
What The Daily Record should have done is become involved in the digital revolution and in particular it should have been bidding for these tv rights for the Scottish game.
Instead they are surrendering that emerging opportunity to Amazon and Facebook. They are losing space to sites like this one and another dozen at least on the Celtic side of the city and the same again in Govania.
They have gone from the biggest media brand in the Scottish games to becoming little more than an bit player that is over the hill and in terminal decline. They haven’t even been able to beat the Sun in Scotland from that position of 84-0 back in the early 1980s.
PS
Yesterday there was a story about a newly wed couple who were splitting up as the bride had an affair. The husband was selling the wedding rings and the drama of it all unfolded in the story that was covered extensively. The ONLY place that brought football into it was the Daily Record who mentioned the fact that the groom was a Celtic fan. There was zero Celtic relevance to this story and the Celtic fan aspect wasn’t mentioned elsewhere.
Why the need to mention Celtic? On the same day Rangers signed a guy from Liverpool and the intiial story didn’t include the domestic violence issues that have been a major factor in him ending up out of the Premier League and signing for a Scottish club.
