Empty seats hurting Scottish Premiership clubs and Scottish football looks all the poorer for it…
A televised Saturday night kick off, under the lights at an intimidating stadium such as Tynecastle. You had the league leaders going head-to-head with a relegation threatened Hearts side who always raise their game against the green and white Hoops.
It would have been a huge draw with audiences and a welcome boost for Scottish football, but the downside was the visible lack of supporters as empty maroon seats were visible for all to see in the Roseburn stand, indeed in all the stands at Tynecastle.
Apologies for sounding like a broken record
Apologies for sounding like a broken record, but this is a major blunder by Hearts just like it is from the other sides in Scotland who continue to cut the allocation of Celtic supporters. Only 650 briefs were handed out to the Celtic supporters for the trip along the M8 and it remains a mystery why clubs such as Hearts continue to adopt such a self destructive approach.
More Celtic supporters would have benefited the Hearts support too
Not only would those seats been filled by Celtic supporters if given the opportunity, it would have made for a better atmosphere while giving our game a more attractive look on television. The Gorgie club would have also made an extra few quid in the process.
Hopefully clubs such as Hearts come to their senses soon enough, as it will be in everyone’s best interests. St Johnstone is the first to wake up and smell the coffee now the rest of these clubs need to act decisively.
Celtic incidentally has a 100% win record away from home in the Scottish Premiership this season so opting for empty seats has helped not a single club in getting anything on the pitch against Brendan Rodgers’ excellent squad.
Just an Ordinary Bhoy
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This trend across the league, ironically started by the new club in Govan, is so damaging to the game it’s ludicrous!
So where’s the irony?
The club that started all of this, Sevco, (before changing their name to “the Rangers”, are a new club, who followed the old Rangers who became extinct because of poor “management practices”! So this new club, due to their inability to handle consistent thrashings at their own ground by the annual Champions, decided one way to gain a big advantage would be to stop allowing our fans in to celebrate! Genius, right? WRONG!
We got less tickets, but continued to thrash them in front of only a handful of our fans!
So their NEXT genius move? No tickets at all! THAT OUGHT TO DO IT! Right? WRONG!
So we continue to thrash them in front of only their own fans!
Meanwhile, their terrible business practices has spread like a disease throughout the country, and other clubs for some obscure reason start to get the notion, “maybe if we don’t give Celtic fans tickets, more of our fans will come and support us against them and we can win!” Genius, right? WRONG! Firstly, these clubs, HAVE NO OTHER FANS! No-one is interested in watching them get pumped! Except the guys they didn’t SELL tickets to!
So what happens? They end up with hundreds, no, THOUSANDS of empty seats, and several thousand pounds short in their bank acounts!
So fast forward to Tynecastle on Saturday past! Celtic fans were sold 550 tickets. Every single one bought and used.
Then you look around the rest of the stadium! (If you want to refer to Tynecastle as a stadium), at the start of the game, a game against Celtic, the most exciting team in Scotland, the home support was no better than 50% occupancy! When Kuhn scored Celtic’s second goal on 60 minutes, at least half of those home “fans” poured into the aisles and out of the exits! With 30 minutes to go!
They already had almost zero backing! Now here they were, at home, almost outnumbered by the away fans who only received 550 tickets!
All because of terrible business practices and decisions! These clubs will go to the wall!
Ask Dumbarton! Ask Inverness! I would say ask Rangers, but it’s too late, they don’t exist anymore!
But their tribute act are the ones who instigated this away fan disaster! It’s a disease!
Let me enlighten you on this matter. HMFC home games generally sell out and many supporters of the club rely on a ticket exchange scheme whereby season ticket holders (15,500) who for whatever reason are unable to attend a game return their tickets to the club for resale. This scheme only operates when there is a sell out. Saturday evening game was a couple of hundred short of selling out and therefore the scheme didn’t operate. A couple of reasons was the 7:45 pm kickoff time on a Saturday evening and the opposition. Many family supporters purposely avoid the Celtic game because of the vitriolic atmosphere generated by the away supporters and a bunch of home supporters too. So the vast majority of the home seats were sold and the main reason for them being unoccupied was a combination of the wintry weather, uncertainty over the availability of public transport, that the game was live on TV and the aforementioned reluctance to have young family members subjected to the terrorist loving song book of the extreme element of the away support. Never mind don’t let the truth get in the way of your conceived agenda.
You don’t mind showing murderous paramilitary members on your big screen and your weans holding sectarian messages
You delusional hypocrite
The league a needs to step In and come up with a solid per centage of away ticket allocations that must be made available.
Sevco need to be told how the league works, not make their own rules and destroy the atmosphere of these games.
The derby the whole world loved has lost what made it so great just because some cheating orcs and their dummy spits.