St Mirren’s 989 empty seats and the downward spiral in Scottish football

Celtic received a reduced allocation of 1,389 tickets from St Mirren for yesterday’s Scottish Premiership match in Paisley.

An adult ticket cost £35, while Over 65s and students paid £25, 12-17 year olds paid £20 and under 12s paid £14.

Let’s say that all averages out at £30 per ticket so Celtic will be sending St Mirren £41,670 for the away allocation.

The official attendance which was announced by St Mirren over the tannoy system was 6948 and the capacity at St Mirren Park, also known as The SMISA Stadium for commercial reasons, is listed at 7937, meaning that there were 989 empty seats at the St Mirren v Celtic game yesterday.

That’s approximately 12.5% of the capacity of a stadium that given their stance regarding Celtic and indeed theRangers supporters, means that it seldom if ever sells out.

Those 989 empty seats would have been worth approximately £29,670 additional revenue for St Mirren had those tickets been allocated to Celtic supporters.

Stephen Robinson is a decent coach, Brendan Rodgers rates him highly and it is likely that he will secure another top six finish this season, although it is early days for making any such predictions. But let’s assume that St Mirren remain a top six side this season.

That will mean that they will probably have two home games against both Celtic and theRangers meaning that they will have, based on yesterday’s numbers, 3,956 seats that would definitely be sold to away fans, sitting empty with a loss of revenue to St Mirren of £118,680.

Money that could be spent on a decent addition to Stephen Robinson’s squad.

A St Mirren supporter commenting on The Celtic Star a few weeks ago when we mentioned the reduced allocation given to Celtic by his club, argued that a larger allocation would result in extra Police costs for the Paisley side. If that is the case then why not ask Celtic to fund that, or put a few quid on the extra tickets to cover those costs?

But if it’s down to a smaller club having a couple of grand on additional policing then the saving would be based on say £2500 per match, just £10,000, that could easily be passed back to Celtic, theRangers or their supporters desperate for away tickets. Even if St Mirren pays for the extra Police costs themselves, then they would still be £108,680 up on the re-think.

And this is not a one off, it’s an annual, recurring loss of revenue for St Mirren and it’s the same at other clubs in the Scottish Premiership, a league that outside of Celtic really, is starved of cash.

And anyone at the SPFL who has to negotiate with Sky Sports every time the broadcast deal comes up for renewal, is negotiating with a weaker hand due to our stadiums, outside of only Celtic Park at the moment, never being full.

Most of the time Sky choose to broadcast Celtic and theRangers away matches and these are the games that are seen by a wider audience through Sky Sports. Why not showcase the Scottish Premiership as vibrant, with capacity crowds and better atmospheres? And maybe, just maybe Sky would be prepared to pay just a little bit more for that kind of package, one that includes packed stadiums filled to capacity for most of the games that they show.

This is NOT a dig at St Mirren, far from it. And given the situation with the Glasgow Derby matches with no away fans scheduled to attend the games until the third round of fixtures next spring, there is no doubt too that this makes the chances of getting a better TV deal for the Scottish Premiership even harder.

The actual reasons for that happening maybe converge with the reasons why clubs like St Mirren opt for empty seats when playing Celtic and now also theRangers. They are fed up seeing their team get beaten by a much stronger team. That’s why theRangers cut the Celtic allocation at Ibrox in the first place.

Supporters of clubs like St Mirren would be correct in arguing that the Scottish Premiership without the Glasgow giants would be a much more competitive league. It used to be the case that the other clubs feared losing Celtic and Rangers because of the green and blue pounds that they’d be guaranteed at the turnstiles. That doesn’t seem to be the case these days. Perhaps Sky Sports themselves could take the initiative and suggest an alternative solution that would suit every club in Scotland’s top division?

Moving Celtic and theRangers to join the Premier League and in doing so allow the Scottish Premiership to flourish as a competitive league that just about any side can win. Outside of Celtic and the two Rangers clubs no club has won the top division in Scotland since Aberdeen in the mid 1980s.

Back in those days home sides like St Mirren, Kilmarnock, the Dundee and Edinburgh sides and Aberdeen would always make a game of it against Celtic and Rangers who they came calling. Now it’s backs to the wall, park the bus stuff that can’t be enjoyable for the home support to watch. Yesterday St Mirren failed to lay a glove on Celtic and provided very little entertainment for the St Mirren support who may inevitably leave their own seats empty the long this continues.

One way or the other something has to change.