The Celtic Trust - Fan Ownership/Representation

If we win, we'll have around £120-£130m in the bank and £120m more than rangers with the £50m CL money. How we are not light years ahead of an awful var assisted rangers is beyond me. With a bit of investment, we could actually make money in the CL rather than just turning up. One victory is the same money as an entire league campaign, that's where our focus should be as a 'business'.

 

100% agree m8

 

I think every fan would agree with this it's just what is the best approach. How do we shame them enough in a realistic way? People won't boycott games or stop buying merchandise.

 

We need to try and unite as a fanbase and take our issues to the board as a collective.

 

Funnily enough, focusing on Europe is probably gonna be the plan that could be the Huns salvation. At least for the moment we're going to be getting cl money for qualifying only, because we're most likely * against pots1-3 teams. They'll be able to afford to go further in the el, especially with their style of play. That revenue stream will be MASSIVE for them, versus 2nd in a small league level money. It's why it's shocking the SPFL clubs have never pushed to exclude them. Couple in that we won't spend the money we earn, but instead just hemorrhage it out, and they're probably looking at this as their only viable way back at us

 

We have ZERO leverage over a club that's as successful as we've been of late... I mean, even this year we might do the "big" double, and rack up a sizable profit and benchmark regarding prizes. We'll be collecting around 80% of the available league points. The fans WON'T stop buying season tickets and memorabilia. There's probably more CL games in the pipeline.

That's not exactly something that'll inspire fan revolution, or chase away the financial investors currently owning our main shares. Attempting to force the board to do anything is bound to fail. We need to approach them in a spirit of cooperation and look for real fan representation at higher levels, in return for better PR. That's something they'll understand.

 

And think, 2 or 3 would be winning the league 2-3 times and most likely see us at least in some competition after Europe, where prize money again is increased.


It's what's absolutely baffling about this club. No ambition to even generate more money. They are just happy to tick over and make sure books balance out and receive their bonuses and over inflated salaries on the back of the fans.



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Good luck.

 

Aye definitely, I'm not talking about revolution or trying to hinder merchandise sales etc..

Maybe you misunderstand me, we need to get organised as a fanbase, Celtic Trust, CSCs & Ultra groups.. meet together work out an agenda and then meet with the board regularly and push what is important to fans in a cohesive and professional manner..

If we got organised we could force them to at least listen, even if it's quarterly or whatever..

Its up to us to create that mechanism, as AGMs etc are a whitewash..

The board won't suggest it, we need to try and force the issue.

 

Think this is the most recent thread..

I see they have given an interview to the Celtic Way, about change and fans trying to track down old family shares.. try and unite the fanbase..



A modern 'Celts For Change'? New push for Celtic Trust reform after UCL collapse
The Celtic board (Image: SNS)
A modern 'Celts For Change'? New push for Celtic Trust reform after UCL collapse
Stephen McGowan
3 hours ago
A former chairman of Partick Thistle, Duncan Smillie, feels no need to park his footballing loyalties these days.

Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, there were never any posters of Alan Rough and Tony Higgins adorning his bedroom wall. The idols of choice were Danny McGrain, Charlie Nicholas and Paul McStay, and even now, at the age of 54, he can think of just two ever presents in his life. One is his parents, the other is Celtic.

“I’ve had people come and go,’ he tells Herald Sport. “Jobs come and go, friends come and go, I’ve had a wife come and go.

“The only constant is Celtic, and as a middle-aged man, it doesn’t feel great to wake up in the morning and find myself in a bad mood within ten seconds because of a game of football in Kazakhstan the night before.”

After an inexcusable Champions League defeat to Kairat Almaty, his mood mirrored the slate grey skies as another Glasgow summer drew to a close.

He should be used to it by now. Over the last 14 years, the Parkhead club have mastered the art of * up Champions League qualifiers. They’ve tried on nine occasions to reach the group stages via the qualifying rounds and lost seven times to clubs who can only dream of placing a replica of the European Cup in the club trophy cabinet.

In 2014, they suffered defeats to Maribor of Slovenia and then Malmo of Sweden under Ronny Deila. In 2018, they lost to AEK Athens as Brendan Rodgers prepared to bring his first spell to a hasty end. Neil Lennon was back for an exit to Cluj of Romania in 2019 and Ferencvaros a year later, while Ange Postecoglou crashed out to a mediocre Midtjylland team at the first attempt. Almaty was just the latest in a series of excruciating outcomes delivered by a club dominant in Scotland and dismal at qualifying for the biggest stage.

The only surprising aspect of Tuesday’s defeat in the former Soviet outpost was the absence of Nir Bitton from central defence. Over the years, fans have watched the club fail to strengthen key areas of the team before their most lucrative games of the season, time and again and the feeling of impotence is growing.

Chants of ‘sack the board’ appear to have little impact on Dermot Desmond, the Dublin-based controlling shareholder who holds 34 per cent of the shares, 100 per cent of the control and only engages with fans once a year from the 18th green of the Dunhill Cup at St Andrews.

Beyond that, Celtic’s communication with fans is limited to comments from a manager frustrated by the transfer parameters he is forced to work with. Despite bank reserves of £65million in the last accounts – the figure could be higher now – Celtic’s spending on players was in the region of £3.5million before Almaty. Raking in five times that amount by selling Nicholas Kuhn to Como, the failure to replace the German winger and Japanese striker Kyogo Furuhashi before the games against Kairat only added to supporter angst.

While some now speak of boycotting Europa League ticket packages, Smillie plans to spearhead another mode of protest by standing for election as a trustee of the Celtic Trust with business partners David Low and Peter McGowan on September 2. The former co-owners of the Glasgow Rocks basketball team want to offer fans a 21st-century version of Celts for Change or Save Our Celts, the groups mobilised to help Fergus McCann seize control of the club from the old family dynasties in 1994.

“This is about creating a soapbox. I think the Celtic Trust can be that virtual soapbox. If we can get everybody, be it the young ultras, the middle-aged fans like me or the people overseas who don’t see every game under one banner, then the day might come where we are ready to be an agent of change and force influence and change on the club when it comes.

“People could pay a small subscription, and we can help them trace those shares sitting with grannies and grandads and aunties and uncles and people who have passed away. We can try to reunite them with those shares, either to get them back or for the trust to buy them.

“We think there is as much as 20 per cent of the club out there in those shares. By anybody’s measurement, it’s at least 10 per cent, and as soon as you get to that point, you can start calling EGMs.

“We are not trying to make trouble for the club; it’s not about that. We just want to get to a position where people stand behind us and help us to become an influential player. In the 1990s, with Save Our Celts or Celts For Change, it was quite hard to mobilise people. I think it’s a lot easier now with the way people communicate.

“I think it’s important for disaffected fans to get under one banner.”

''(Image: SNS) Amongst fans, there’s resignation. A feeling that Celtic’s fiscal policy is unlikely to change until the club is in the hands of new owners. At the AGM in November 2023, Desmond’s son Ross declared that ownership of the club would never change in his lifetime, and while supporters of other clubs would kill for the kind of problems Celtic have, Smillie regards the current unrest as a natural reaction to the feeling that no one is listening.

In Dermot Desmond, you have a man who has created a situation where he is a minority shareholder with majority control,’ he points out.“That is just wrong. That simply should not be the case.

“It would be nice if the club would listen to supporters. And our aim is to create a vehicle where they have to listen to supporters because the Celtic Trust has x per cent of shares and they are legally obliged to do so.

“The situation is different now from the 1990s, when you could smoke out the old board. You could starve them of cash, and boycotts worked. If crowds dropped below 10,000, the bank could call in the overdraft. It needs to be different this time. Not buying merchandise and not buying pies will make no difference whatsoever.

“I think a boycott is damaging, and I also don’t think it will happen. Half the people who say they will boycott Europa League tickets will blink when it gets to the deadline, and if there are some available, the people on the waiting list will snap them up. It doesn’t have a material impact on the club financially. That’s not the way to get yourself heard.

“It is a broken relationship yet, ironically, all sides want the same thing. The board, the fans, and shareholders all want the best for the club. How to get there is the issue."

In the aftermath of a toothless, penalty shoot-out loss in Almaty, some redirected the finger of blame away from the boardroom towards manager Rodgers. Lose to Rangers at Ibrox on Sunday and the manager shares some of the heat felt by his under-fire opposite number, Russell Martin. This time last year, Celtic would have crossed the city in a buoyant, confident mood.

“For me, Brendan and the players have blood on their hands after that tie,” Smillie acknowledges. "To play 210 minutes and not score a goal and then miss three penalties against that team is on the manager and on the players.

“But the manager should have been given more ammo. He should have been sitting there with a better striker, with better options on the wing to bring off the bench.”

As co-owner of the old Glasgow Rocks, Smillie made a presentation to Peter Lawwell, Chris McKay and former commercial director Adrian Filby.

While a proposal to take the basketball team under the Celtic umbrella came to nothing, he knows and respects members of the Parkhead board but views the club spending £4.5million on winger Michel Ange Baliwisha and signing left back Marcelo Saracchi as a classic case of ‘closing the door after the horse has bolted.”

“If the board’s strategy is to sit and say, ‘we have a rainy day fund because we are in for two or three years of rain, ’ and that’s why they have been amassing this cash, then that’s bad business. It simply isn’t good business.

“But we don’t know because they don’t tell us. No one is holding their feet to the fire on this. We have a board that has been there too long, overseen by the largest shareholder who, in my opinion, dictates what happens on that board.

“He is like an emperor trying to create a dynasty, and I think the club paid £9million of tax on the cash they have in the bank last year. I think that’s negligent and, as a club, they really should be explaining what they intend to do with that £70million or £80million. Instead, the CEO is a ghost, we don’t see him, we don’t hear from him.

“The only person in the club who communicates is the manager, and that’s just not good business practice.”

A year has passed since Celtic launched their biggest-ever fan survey, with the help of the University of Strathclyde’s Business School. Billed as a chance for supporters to have a say in shaping the future of the club, the results have yet to be communicated to those who took the time and trouble to respond.

“They must have a plan,’ says Smillie of the Parkhead board and their cash haul. “If so, why would they not share that plan with their fans, their customers, their investors and those who have Celtic’s best interests at heart? By failing to do so, what’s happening now is not just arrogant - it’s wrong.”
“But we don’t know because they don’t tell us. No one is holding their feet to the fire on this. We have a board that has been there too long, overseen by the largest shareholder who, in my opinion, dictates what happens on that board.

“He is like an emperor trying to create a dynasty, and I think the club paid £9million of tax on the cash they have in the bank last year. I think that’s negligent and, as a club, they really should be explaining what they intend to do with that £70million or £80million. Instead, the CEO is a ghost, we don’t see him, we don’t hear from him.

“The only person in the club who communicates is the manager, and that’s just not good business practice.”

A year has passed since Celtic launched their biggest-ever fan survey, with the help of the University of Strathclyde’s Business School. Billed as a chance for supporters to have a say in shaping the future of the club, the results have yet to be communicated to those who took the time and trouble to respond.

“They must have a plan,’ says Smillie of the Parkhead board and their cash haul. “If so, why would they not share that plan with their fans, their customers, their investors and those who have Celtic’s best interests at heart? By failing to do so, what’s happening now is not just arrogant - it’s wrong.”

 

This needs to gain some traction..

The issue is we don't have a figurehead to be at forefront of any campaign.

Apparently Chris Trainer may be open to change. He has 11% and isn't involved on the board.

 

It's become more than a difference in ideas or approach, it's actually now about competence - much more serious.
Time for transparency, fan representation and change.

 

Everyone in this thread that has contacts with any supporters groups needs to start sounding people out on how to organise a mass protest.

I just cannot believe what I'm watching here. I'm pretty much always expecting the worst, but the hope being given and taken away and then further sabotaging the playing squad is malicious.

There is a festering rot at the heart of this club right now and it needs removed. This insanity cannot be allowed to continue.

 

Should be protests outside the stadium, making it as difficult as possible for people to come and go until the people responsible for this window are sacked.

This cant be allowed to continue as the huns will eventually catch up if we keep * up like this.

 

We must unite behind the trust and make things happen fast. Having an individual share or a handful between a family is nice and all but the time has come to actually make it count. We get the trust as many shares as possible as soon as possible and take it from there. It's very trustworthy guys behind the plan and im all in.

 

This is it, there's enough small family shares out there to force an extraordinary AGM.. at least try and hold them to account..

On top of a proper protest.. I dont agree with a boycott as that benefits nobody but we need to try and unite as a fanbase..

We just need a couple of leaders to try and spark it to life.

 

If the board only care about finances the only way they will take notice is though the fans stop buying the * they are being served. Paying 40 quid a pop to boo the board means nothing to them.

I know it is almost impossible to organise, but not buying tickets or merch is the only thing that gives even a small chance of the board taking note

 

They wouldn't take any notice..

A boycott only hurts the team imo.. its an understandable option, but it would be half-hearted with a low % take up.

Getting organised as fanbase would be far more potent, its easier said than done tho.

 

100%
The trusts aims have been highlighted again in the last week via ACSOM and their AGM is tomorrow i think. Something that's been levelled at them is the need for more publicity and a viable strategy to engage and make it as easy as possible for supporters to contribute. Hopefully get some developments in the not too distant future.