Virtual Season Tickets.

Should have put in that if maximum STH in house is just 1 then they would get maxomum priority. Make it a points based system with, say each household getting 10pts and if all the STH registered at that house enters their code then they get maximum points but if say there are 4 STH in house but if any match is missed by any STH points are taken off so they move down priority.

 

Scottish football followers who purchase a virtual season ticket WILL be able to watch every one of their team's Premiership home matches.

Speculation on Tuesday evening suggested fans who have stumped up for a brief to view the 20/21 campaign from home would be blocked from watching games that are also airing on Sky is wide of the mark.


Season ticket holders will be granted access to every game, both TV and non-TV fixtures, through a streaming service up until they are allowed to return safely to Scottish football stadia.

Hope remains fans will start to return to follow their team in person before Christmas with the National Clinical Director Jason Leitch telling diehards to 'pencil in' an October return.


Fans who don't have a virtual season ticket won't be able to access live games through the season ticket model but the SPFL are considering allowing non-televised fixtures to be made available through a PPV model.

It's understood Sky, who have backed the Scottish game to the tune of a £160m, five-year-deal, have no objections to clubs looking to generate further revenue as our game looks to find new solutions after the devastating financial impact of COVID-19


Scottish football's big return will be aired by Sky with Aberdeen hosting Rangers and Celtic welcoming Hamilton the first two live fixtures selected for August 1 and 2.

 

The club have confirmed this won't change Celtic TV as only lnternational accounts will get live games. I actually dont see them using Celtic TV as a platform for the virtual season tickets.

Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk

 

Sorry but giving them priority for away tickets for what reason. Right now it's hard enough to get away tickets but to offer someone that possibly doesn't even go to away games just makes no sense. The only way this is going to work is that whether a code /log in is used or not is immaterial as the customer has paid to see a game of football at Celtic Park live. Not on a TV or a computer but in the flesh as they say. I still think that every fan should only be paying say 7 quid a game and a refund or discount on next seasons ticket. If a house has 4 people in it then it's a better option paying 28 quid as opposed to 120 quid and I would reckon most would be happy with that

 

The above is all well and good except if crowd numbers remain restricted for most of the season or even half of it. If that happens then you are looking at a massive hole in the club revenue for next season.

If you look at the club accounts, if we want to keep our top players at the club and sign new players then we need revenue streams to fund this. There are three of these commercial (including prize money and sponsorship), merchandise and football operations. The first two are not greatly effected by the pandemic.

This season you are already looking at a shortfall in football operations revenue of between £10-23million and that’s even if season tickets can be sold out at 53,000 (i am a bit worried we have not heard a total sales figure so far given the deadline has now passed). Depending on the no. of restrictions and how the situation is if we qualify for a Euro group stage and performance in the cups will all impact this.

If we get to CL groups some of this gap could be covered by the increased prize money and TV revenue from being in CL rather than EL but that’s not guaranteed.

At present the gap between revenue and operating costs is tight with EL group participation, a fair loss without it and a profit with CL groups.

The only other revenue generator we have is player sales to bridge any gap. So if we want to provide refunds and discounts there will be a trade off with player sales having to exceed players brought in considerably to bridge the gap which will likely result in a downgrade on the quality of the team on the park.

 

On Monday, July 13, the initial allocation of Season Tickets will be released in chronological order to supporters on the Waiting List, who will then have a 24-hour window to secure their Season Ticket.

Supporters who joined the Waiting List first will receive a communication from the club this week inviting them to purchase a seat from Monday, July 13.

We will be in touch in the coming days with more specific information on your “Pass to Paradise” and the virtual element of you Season Ticket.

 

with your qualifiers you are spoiling us mr ambassador

 

You are talking about revenue lost but so far nothing lost. The fact that all books will be sold, waiting list of 17k ensures that. The season tickets are being paid in full as usual. No deductions whatever. So nothing lost there. Yes we will lose income on the CL Qualifiers but at least one of the 3 is on the season ticket so only a potential 2 games lost. Its all, buts and maybes just now but remember there thousands of people either not working or now unemployed. I am unemployed and but not for my partner helping me I wouldnt have got my season book. As for the European ties last years I St even finished yet so its going to hard for games to be played until maybe October so the shortfall would be a lot less than the figure you have put. Sorry but where did u even get the figure out of interest? Remember the only extra money the club get outside of the season tickets is unsold tickets for league matches and any cup ties. As Europe is up in the air its not going to get anywhere near your figures. We will still get Tv money for games in Europe and league matches on TV.

 

The figures come from our latest published accounts for the 18/19 season where we had Europa League Groups and through to last 32 and comparing it to the CL groups of 17/18 season.

If you look at the accounts you will see we have three revenue streams excluding player trading, Merchandise sales which was worth £18m, what they call multimedia and commercial which contains all the bonus money from winning comps, qualifying for Europe, sponsorship, TV revenue and the likes we get from Celtic TV etc. There was a ~£18m difference from memory between being in CL and EL groups (17/18- 18/19).

Lastly is football operations which is all ticket sales and match day revenue which was £43m in 18/19. Even with season tickets selling out (53,000 as these are restricted to last year sales numbers) this will bring in approx £26.5- £31.8m (taking an average price per ticket of £500-600 as an estimate). So with all the uncertainties around how many people will be allowed in when if in the worst case scenario we can’t get any other sales for Europe or cup we are looking at between a £11.2- £16.5m shortfall.

So when you compare our total revenue for the 18/19 season of £83.4m and took of our total expenses of £88.8m we would have made a small loss without an £8m profit on player sales and the £8.8m received from Leicester for Rodgers and his staff, instead we made a ~£11.4m pre tax profit.

So granted things like wages will have come down a bit which reduces expenses. And we could qualify for CL groups which would more than solve any gap however if we qualify for EL group rather than CL groups you are looking at a gap in the finances of between £11.2-16.5m (apologies my estimate of £23m above was based on not selling out season tickets which we now know a sell out is highly likely). There is also the refunds from last year which depending on their numbers may have resulted in a loss to take in to account.

All of this is before any transfer business which will likely be funded by one or two high profile sales that will give Lenny a transfer budget to work with and see the club make a profit on player sales. In addition if Dembele leaves Lyon we will have his sell on too.

If anyone thinks Peter Lawwell will not be looking to balance the books and protect shareholder value I think we will sadly be disappointed.

I applaud everyone who has renewed their season ticket in the tough times we are in at the moment with a lot of people losing their job, I am sorry to hear you are in that situation.

The club are in as strong a position as could be expected financially thanks to the support of the fans buying their season tickets and the fact we have built up reserves over the last decade of around £30m.

 

I'd love to know the restrictions Sky have placed on this. Cause if they haven't.

I think they could've handled this differently.

A better model that would generate way more income imo would have been to offer a 2 tier season pass.

Silver pass - upto 2 devices full coverage of Home matches Live £20 per month

Gold Pass - 3 devices Full Season Ticket + Silver pass included. Cost of usual season ticket.

When fans are allowed back the club could make them register for match attendance and freeze Silver pass for that game.

As a fan this would have huge appeal for people still unsure about going to matches but still wanting to retain season ticket. Allowing club to resell that seat

Plus it makes an attractive option to UK based fans who can't access Live via Celtic TV.

 

The above is a good suggestion, I do wonder what the restrictions are too as it was speculated we were limited to number of season tickets from last year but then there has now been talk of PPV being allowed which would have allowed the model you mention above.

 

You quoted a potential loss of 23 million or so but thats just a guess nothing else as nothing is guaranteed at present. You also said without CL football. Well we have 3 games still to play so let's wait and see. I like the fact that you did research into this, for that I applaud you but to say we will potentially lose 23 million is too much based on guess work.

 

Tbh honest it's people with more than one season ticket in the same house that we need to look at. It's very unfair that a family may have maybe 4 books and pay over 2000 grand just to, excuse the pun, huddle round a TV. And then you have one person that might have all his mates in the house, none being season tickets holders, getting to watch matches for hee haw. This, imo, is what celtic need to look at and sort out first and foremost. We probably all have views on this and maybe someone has the best idea but after fans, and plenty not working, have stuck by the club then they also need to show the fans what it means to them

 

To pick one number out is a bit unfair, I did say we could be looking at a loss of between £10-23m which granted is a big range. At this stage I agree there is a big degree of uncertainty, one of those being at the time of my first estimate just how many season tickets we had sold which has become clearer since that first post hence I narrowed in the range.

In the first post I also said in past seasons with CL we have made a profit, and that’s where I hope we will be, firstly for footballing reasons as the clubs we have missed out too in recent years we really should be beating and secondly as any loss will be wiped out.

At this point I am sure those in the club who have the detail and control the purse strings but are dealing with the same uncertainties about Euro qualification, when fans will be back inside the stadium and how many of them will be viewing a range of potential scenarios.

I am just being realistic based on looking at how we have operated over the last 10 years. I expect the club will be looking to make money where they can and any talk of throwing caution to the win for the 10 in terms of transfer dealings whilst keeping all our current players that have been linked with big money moves is highly unlikely to happen (rightly or wrongly).

I originally done the little bit of research to educate myself on this after that Sportsound where we were hearing all the talk that Celtic would be really struggling, so wanted to understand what the true picture was as don’t trust the Scottish Media. That led to creating a basic model with assumptions not designed to get an exact answer but an understanding based on what is known currently, hence the wide range.

On your other point I completely agree first priority has to be demonstrating to those who have paid their money for a season book what the extra value will be.

 

So you want season tickets to get different log ins for different devices. That's a non starter imo. What's to stop someone giving the log in to someone that's not spent a penny using that log in. There's far too much speculation to be sure what's happening. The club need to come out now, first game less than 3 weeks away and let people know. Firstly what the channel or website. Secondly can they then get it up and running so that we know come game day it will work. All they need to do is run old games on a loop giving people the opportunity to see who to go about it. Because if they don't do it shortly it will end in chaos if Celtic TV at times has been. I thought this would have been a channel on the sky platform, as we used to get celtic TV on that in the 2000s

 

I calculated as well a few weeks ago and I think we are probably looking at about this if there is zero fans at a game all season...

Income
£3million in Domestic Prize Money
£10million from Adidas/Sponsors/Advertising
£15million from Merchandise
£17million in Ticket Sales

So we should still bring in £45million absolute minimum.

More realistic it could be about £52-54million, as we'll probably win the League and reach a Cup semi or final or two so our Domestic income should be closer to £4million. I went the same as usual on the commercial income but its probably gone up £1-2million - we'll get more advertising money if nobody is at games from pitch side advertising, Adidas are giving us more and JD will be paying us as well now. I also took £3million off the normal Merchandise income when with the new Adidas stuff it might be higher than the normal £18million. Then Ticket Sales again I went low, I think it's more realistically going to be £20million. So you could really be thinking more like £54million or £52million lower end.

The only money more we will get is European money.

EL Group Stage via EL qualifying - £8million+
EL Group Stage via losing CL Play-off - £12million+
CL Group Stage - £25million+

So our income with no fans all season will probably be around £54m, £62m, £66m or £79m

Our outgoings is harder to say since they fluctuate a lot, recently for example with us having lots of extra money we have spent a lot on imrpoving around the stadium about £3million per year that we never used to spend then the training ground and all that. This year we most likely won't do anything like that with money being tighter so we'll probably spend about £3million less than normal right away.

I'd guess we probably budget for having around £65million though, since in a Europeless season that would usually be our income and we are pretty much run to break even. This season though if it had no fans will probably cost us about £400k per home game in lost money from the extra ticket sales, hun games, Cup games, European games. Putting our income down around ~£53million than £65million which would be our normal worst case scenario and what we budget for.

I think no EL, we lose about £11million, EL we lose about £3-7million depending on if we reach the CL Play off or not and CL we profit about £8million since I imagine qualifying for the EL although it brings in £8-12million+ maybe it costs us an extra £4million in bonuses, hotels, flights. CL the same, maybe costs us an extra £8million.

Although even then how much are we "saving" per game by not having fans as well. No stewards, staff, cleaners, much less policing. Could be saving £50k+ per home game that we usually had to spend to run it. So our running costs might be down £1.5million a year alone just from not having fans.

Would be interesting to know the base wage-bill as well, recent years we have won every trophy and qualified not only for Group Stage European football but I think have even been in Europe after Christmas 3 year in a row as well. Wouldn't be surpring if it costs us about £1million+ per domestic trophy in bonuses since winning the Scottish Cup or League Cup is probably worth £1million more than being knocked out in the quarters and winning the League is probably worth £2million more than not winning it. Same with Europa League, we may pay out £3-4million more in bonuses for making the Group Stage than we do if we never made it, Champions League Group Stage may be £6-8million in bonuses.

Could be that finishing 2nd, going out the Cups early and not qualifying for European Group Stage football would cut the wage-bill by about £8-11million. We know our players contracts are heavily incentivised as I think it went down £4million from the last accounts to the one before and they said it was mainly because we never qualified for the CL.

 

If you can afford to buy a ticket this year it's a good place to be, the fans that can't will be gutted.

It's as simple as that

 

It is very difficult to say in terms of what impact no fans or less fans will have on expenses. When it is no fans I would expect we would save a bit but once some fans start coming back in I would imagine there will be a relatively small difference as to enforce the social distancing there will no doubt be plenty of stewards.

I picked up the same as you on wages that they are heavily performance bonus related and fluctuations have been based on EL vs CL group qualification.

I think as things stand the wage bill will be down a little as some high earners have left (Sinclair and Gordon etc, Lenny and staff will be on nowhere near what Brendan and co were either).

I am sure we budget for EL Group qualification so not getting this would be a disaster. Ten in a row is obviously this seasons priority but three years in a row not making CL groups would be pretty poor and it would be a good year to kick on and do it which would set us up for the rest of the season.

No Euro group football would be a real downer for the club both in terms of morale and finances and must be avoided at all costs as if we were in that scenario it is likely we will definitely end up selling players. I still feel there will be at least one large sale regardless to fund any transfers in.

 

AS the 2020/21 season draws ever closer, everyone at Celtic Football Club is working hard behind the scenes to prepare for the launch of the ‘Pass to Paradise’ - your Virtual Season Ticket - and we are delighted to welcome some exciting new faces onto our matchday team!

Our priority remains getting fans back in Celtic Park and filling the stands with our world famous support, but until it is safe to do so, we have invested in the ‘Pass to Paradise’ streaming platform to deliver the best possible match experience for our Season Ticket holders through their Virtual Season Ticket.

As well as a new open-air studio, we are delighted to announce that some of the biggest names in the industry will be joining us as the new season gets underway.

Our matchday line-up for the season ahead will include Chris Sutton, John Hartson, Gordon Strachan, Michael Stewart and BT Sport’s Rory Hamilton on commentary. These stars will join our existing Celtic TV presentation team and will feature across the season.

You will receive your ‘Pass to Paradise’ login details very soon as well as a schedule of test matches, allowing you to access the streaming platform before the season starts in earnest.

Get set-up for the new season today by making sure we have the most up to date contact details for you:

- Go to eticketing.co.uk/celtic and the check the contact information on your account is correct.

- Our ‘My Celtic Network Guide’ is available to download if you are new to online ticketing.

The Champions are about to embark on the most important season in the club’s history and while we cannot get you into Paradise, we will do our very best to bring Paradise to you.

It’s our cause. It’s our culture. It’s our calling.