The Celtic Fan Media is not without its faults but the numbers don’t lie and across numerous website, podcasts and You Tube channels the demand for the supporter created output continues to rise. Put simply the Celtic Fan Media is thriving.
It looks like being a Good Friday for Celtic with perhaps as many as three players likely to be signing before pre-season training gets going at Lennoxtown on Monday morning for some of the players at least.
Celtic will continue to offer full access to the mainstream media, including for example titles like Daily Record, Sunday Mail and Sunday Post.
The club started to work with the fan media at the start of last season and can’t be dissatisfied with how thing panned out and fan media were also much better at covering the Celtic FC Women side and the Celtic B team last season than the mainstream media.
The access given to the mainstream media, including the three newspapers mentioned, remains consistent even when their circulations are in dramatic decline. Look at it this way, since Celtic opened the doors to fan media last summer these three newspapers have lost between 15% to 21% of their entire audience!
The latest circulation figures from ABC are now displayed on trade website Press Gazette.
Daily Record’s circulation (number of copies sold or given away) is down year-on year 15% to 71,908.
Sunday Mail’s circulation is down 17% to just 69,923, year-on-year.
And Sunday Post’s circulation is down an incredible 21% year-on-year to just 51,298.
The Scotsman – who report on a bi-annual basis, rather than monthly, in the period July to December 2021 had a circulation of just 9,852.
And if you think we are picking on these mainstream media titles then it has to be noted that they at least report their circulation via the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) while so many of their competitors, including Scottish Sun, The Herald and Glasgow Times these days do not.
The Glasgow Times (formerly Evening Times) and The Herald last reported their circulation figures to ABC in the period July-December 2018 while The Sun last reported on March 2020.
Some of these newspapers used to sell well over a millions copies every Sunday but those days are long gone.
Of course some of these publications have vibrant websites which in most cases will be driven by football content. The one thing they all have in common is that they need Celtic more than Celtic needs them, although it’s hard to see much evidence that Celtic have figured this out.
Having worked in the circulation department of The Daily Record and Sunday Mail in the 1970’s, I can assure you that neither the Mail or The Post sold nowhere near one million copies plus. The Mail sold 550,000 copies and The Post 650,000 this is in the mid seventies.
I also wonder, apart from the sport following, is their adherence to the Union, anti indipendence stance also relevant
Cant believe they sell that many ,hilarious to think 70.000 people out of 5.5 mill buy that rag ! or any rag Scottish media wouldn’t report the truth if it knocked them down ….
Celtic fan media is certainly not without its faults. I have been living abroad for the last 3 years and thought Celtic News Now would be good for information and analysis on all things Celtic. Alas, much of the content is about another team entirely and there are so many articles by contributors who go on that team’s sites to look for things to be offended about. Then copy and paste whatever has upset them onto “Celtic” sites.
I don’t really care about the B-team. IMO only the first team should wear the hoops. Any player below that should aspire to the shirt and wear it only on merit. Pink hoops for the Celtic Women’s team would look quite nice.
Made the same point at the start of the article, however you can sub-divide what’s on Celtic News Now and News Now into more than two categories ie Celtic Fan Media and Mainstream Media. There are various click-bait sites, with nothing much to do with Celtic at all, just tapping into the online Celtic audience for clicks. It’s unfair to tag them as Celtic fan media because they are not, however they aren’t mainstream media either.
There is a higher threshold for sites to feature on News Now and they have strict policies in place for all publishers. On Celtic News Now it’s about all content that’s related to Celtic so there are more outlets on there, it’s a matter of knowing the ones you like and can rely on.
Many supporters prefer The Celtic Star but others will opt for other sites. The older, last generation of Celtic sites seem to be decreasing in popularity and their publishing model is different to the new sites that provide comprehensive content every day, for free.
The Celtic Star for instance has three suppliers of Celtic images, Getty, Imago in Berlin and Big Lens ie Geo who is a Celtic man. Others just grab screenshots or lift photos anywhere they can find them regardless of copyright etc.
On the B team and the Women’s side – both deserve to be covered and we understand that not everyone will want to follow these articles. But few will read all the content that is published so just stick to what’s interesting to you and if it’s Celtic related then it’s going to be on the sites you prefer.
While the boys and girls of celtic media like to congratulate themselves on the job they are all doing, when was the last scoop/exclusive that any of them produced. As for all the bashing of the msm is grabbing a headline, all they then go out and do is regurgitate that very same story from the msm that they have just slaughtered. In my eyes although they try hard to big themselves up, they will get no credit until they make itk contacts and produce their own material.
That is happening already and often stories from the Celtic fan media sites are used by the MSM. It works both ways, I can assure you of that.