While we’ve been away, the debate about the future of Scottish football continues.
Celtic Chief exec Peter Lawwell has been in the news again making noises about his side leaving the Scottish setup to pursue riches and mid-table finishes in England. Stories of the Old Firm leaving have been doing the rounds for years, but this one is different in that the suggestion to move to England has come from an English club.
Bolton chairman Phil Gartside has been pushing his ideas of an EPL2 around the media, namely one where the current EPL would split into two leagues of 18 each, and he’d very much like Celtic and Rangers to be a part of that. Understandably, the grand old ladies of Scottish football regularly pull in, like, thousands of rabid fans, plus their inclusion in any venture would attract the attention of sponsors and TV companies eager to see the pride of Scotland playing Colchester on a Tuesday evening.
That the English sides will benefit from having the Old Firm there is beyond doubt, but where does it leave the Scottish league?
Well, Inside Left is starting to come around to the idea that for the sake of the Scottish game, the Old Firm must leave. It’s a subject we’ll develop further in a series of articles over the coming weeks, but we genuinely believe that without the OF in the SPL we’d at least have some kind of competition. Think on this: based on past league standings, Hearts would have won the league 5 times, while Hibs, Motherwell, Aberdeen, Livingston and even St Johnstone would all have been champions since the inception of the SPL.
It’s a crap argument, we know. With stats you can do anything, but the point is valid: the end of total domination by one or two teams and the introduction of genuine competition for the first time in years.
The downside of course is the loss of revenue, both in terms of sponsorship and television deals, and gate receipts lost when you no longer have the OF visit your green patch of the world four times per season.
We think the move to the English Leagues is inevitable. There’s no amount of UEFA breast-beating or FIFA posturing that will stop this move, simply because of the sums involved. Money talks, as the saying goes, and both Celtic and Rangers, not to mention their adoptive league (both the teams and the governing bodies that run it) stand to make a mint from all this.
To confirm that money drives everything these days, one only has to listen to Scottish Premier League Chief Executive Neil Doncaster, who said earlier this week that his job is to promote the 12 SPL-clubs “brand”.
Talk of clubs as some kind of marketing entity is very scary. What Doncaster is saying is that a club is not something that’s in the blood, an affiliation handed down from father to son, but rather something that can be branded and sold in the same way that David Beckham is no longer a footballer, but a marketing concept that can be used to sell anything under the planet. That he also happens to be a footballer is nice, but not relevant.
To continue that analogy, Celtic and Rangers are a brand that can be used to sell jerseys, duvet covers, even toasters. In the big-money world of football, that they’re from Scotland is purely incidental. It simply opens up other marketing opportunities.
But what musn’t be forgotten is that when the Old Firm do leave the relationship with the Scottish League, left behind are the ex-partners and their children; in this case the Scottish FA, the Scottish Premier League and its members. And in most divorces, no matter how amicable, compensation (or alimony, in legalese) is paid out to support the losing side.
It’s possible that a form of parachute payments would need to be worked out with the two Leagues to ensure that the Scottish teams would be able to function while new sponsorship and television deals are worked out.
We think this move will happen eventually. It has to for every one’s sake. The ‘when‘ depends on the UEFA breast-beating that will no doubt follow, while the ‘how‘ will keep many pundits, bloggers and the locals down the pub talking for years.
But there is at least one thing that we can predict with some degree of certainty: there’s a bunch of sports lawyers, league administrators and chairmen that will be getting a lot richer over the coming months.
Money talks, after all.
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The only downside for Scottish football would be the intitial loss of tv money & sponsorship. The league would get stronger and gates would increase. My club, St Mirren, only get 6,500 for Old Firm matches, but in the last 4 years we have had 10,000 for Dunfermline in a league game, 10,000 for Motherwell when we opened NSMP and about 6,500 against Morton in a cup game. The loss from these games i believe would be counterbalanced by an increase in fans from teams going for the title. Imagine the increase in support from clubs like Aberdeen, HEarts, Hibs etc if they were top of the league or not far off it?
With possibly 6 clubs able to win the SPL any season home fans would also increase. It is a fact that crowds increase with the chance of winning trophies and not necessarily on the quality of the play. Watch the crowds increase for any 1st Div team who are sitting top as they get into April.
The real loss will be to the Old Firm fans. Huge travelling costs both in terms of time and cost. Imagine a Sunday lunchtime ko away at Portsmouth. You would be lucky to be back in Glasgow by midnight and at great cost. And years of winning hee-haw and no Europe. How will their satiated fans cope with nothing to celebrate year on year bar the odd big 3 points? I reckon a growing number would soon want back, but we shouldnt let them.
It is time they left and left completely, no entry into the Scottish Cup or anything else. It will take a while for Scottish football to adjust, but the end result will be a much better, more competitive league and families can go to every game of the season without having to see and deal with sectarian nuggets. Lets hope the process speeds up as the whining from both sides is a right pain.
S
thanks for your comment Stuart. The intitial loss of tv money & sponsorship would be the stumbling block for the SPL and its members; the OF couldn’t care less. Parachute payments would be needed, but who pays and how do we determine the amounts?
In a way I hope it happens, i think it’s the only way to keep the game in Scotland alive.
Stuart.
Not true, the big downside from the loss of the Old Firm to England could very well be the loss of the Scotland National Team. The affair over the Olympic Football team has shown that there are people high up in FIFA (Warner, Hayatou, Blatter) who would like nothing more than to amalgamate the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish teams into a GB international team. By thinking of the money, both Lawell and Bain are puting the very existance of Scottish Football at risk.
Oh and by the way, you missed out the Dundee game, when we won the Scottish League, in your list of above 10,000 at the gate to watch the mighty bud’s.
Allan,
I don’t actually agree that the national team would be at threat as there is a precedent for this kind of thing both with the Welsh teams and elsewhere in Europe.
I also think that, leaving aside the Atlantic League for a second, if the Old Firm went down south you would see clubs from Portugal trying to get into Spain and Belgian and Dutch clubs looking elsewhere. FIFA are unlikely to be able dissolve all those national teams. Any attempts or noises FIFA and UEFA make are just them trying to close the stable door after the horse has done one.
The big clubs are the power brokers in football now. If the big English clubs want the Old Firm, or the big Spanish clubs want Sporting, Porto or Benfica then it will happen.
That won’t of course stop the continued devaluing of international football but that’s another story.