Around 3000 empty seats means money down the drain for St Johnstone  | OneFootball

Around 3000 empty seats means money down the drain for St Johnstone…

Pic taken about 15-20 mins before kick-off but it didn’t get much busier over there

On Saturday morning we looked back at a Celtic visit to McDiarmid Park in May 1991 when Celtic were looking for a win and favours elsewhere to qualify for European football after a dreadful season. The attendance that day was 9486. Celtic won 3-2 and a Davie Moyes goal for Dunfermline against Dundee Utd meant that we got the European slot. It was not enough to save Billy McNeill’s job as he was sacked shortly afterwards.

That attendance of 9486 was 2450 higher than the crowd that were allowed in to watch a very different sort of Celtic side – one that is dominating Scottish football – win 6-0 in Perth.

Photo Jane Barlow

Livingston were the Scottish Premiership’s most pragmatic club when it came to understanding the realities of Scottish football and maximising their own income with a club with a tiny fan base. With Livingston now relegated the club with the smallest support is either Ross County or St Johnstone but the club with the most empty seats is clearly the American owned Perth club.

There’s an argument for limiting the size of the support for Celtic or indeed theRangers, in terms of the theory that the bigger the away support the more likely it is that the visitors will win. Yet on Saturday St Johnstone opted to ignore the huge demand from Celtic supporters for tickets and instead opt for 7,036.

Check out the empty seats. Photo Jane Barlow

The three Celtic sections were packed, behind both goals and about a third of the main stand. Opposite that the stand had more empty seats than St Johnstone supporters. Surely the new owners would much rather have had 3000 additional supporters at the game paying up to £33 for a ticket? That’s around £85-90,000 in additional revenue for the club…and the scoreline would still have been the same.

Outside the ground on match days you always see either supporters holding money up looking for a ticket, or occasionally holding a ticket up looking for a buyer. On Saturday there were countless Celtic supporters holding up their money but not getting a chance to watch a game of football.

Incidentally Livingston has in recent years been a much tougher away fixture for Celtic than playing at McDiarmid Park.  The lesson for St Johnstone is to be more like Livingston and fill your 10,000 capacity stadium when you can then use the additional revenue to improve your squad.

Photo Jane Barlow

There has been talk in Perth about St Johnstone moving away from McDiarmid Park and building a new, smaller stadium on the outskirts of Perth with a capacity of around 5000. McDiarmid Park is apparently too big for their needs. The club know how many season ticket holders they have in that embarrassingly empty stand and could easily split it in half to offer tickets to away supporters when the two Glasgow clubs are in the Fair City.

At a Scottish Cup home tie against theRangers a few years ago, the Saints board gave three stands over to the away support, yet faced a backlash from the home fans after the match. On Saturday for every seat filled there looks like three empty, but the Saints stay-away supporters will have been pleased.

First and foremost, accommodate all your own supporters who want to go to the game. But once they have their tickets sell the remaining unsold tickets to the away support who want to watch their team, whether that’s Celtic, theRangers or anyone else.

PS – One other point worth noting,  unlike theRangers support, there’s absolutely no bad feeling between the Celtic and St Johnstone supporters. Saints fans have been calling for a ban on theRangers support after their female SLO was assaulted, knocked to the ground and robbed at Hampden by those thugs. That’s nothing to do with Celtic and at the game on Saturday there were no signs of any bad feeling between the two sets of supporters.

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