Half The Audience Stillitano Thinks Is There Actually Isn’t
There is a huge misconception about these the two “Glasgow clubs” that exists in England and elsewhere but that those of us who live here or have looked into this knows is a bust.
It’s that there’s this enormous global audience for these games, that they retain huge interest outside of our borders, that other people find it as fascinating as the Scottish press.
None of that is even remotely true.
For one thing, only one of these clubs actually has a global fan base and it isn’t the one that crawled out of the grave marked Rangers.
Charles Chuckles Green talked about ten percent of the world’s population having some allegiance to Sevco but he also heard voices in his head telling him the Dallas Cowboys wanted a link up.
Actually, what Green did was exaggerated (massively) the “global brand” and their reach so he could sell some gullible institutional investors on the idea of buying shares.
No-one who knew the first thing about the issue took any of it seriously.
The myth of the “global Rangers family” has been examined and demolished time and time and time again, first by Hugh Adams, the Rangers director, who as part of his remit put together the Global Rangers Fan Survey and found, to his and the club’s dismay, that there wasn’t, as had been surmised, an enormous wellspring of goodwill for them out there.
What he found was that the global Scottish diaspora wasn’t particularly disposed towards his club; indeed, many absolutely despise them and one would imagine that wouldn’t have changed for the better over the course of the last few years with the surge in support for Scottish independence and the way Sevco and Rangers built themselves up as the “unionist club.”
Outside of Scotland, few people are terribly interested in this.
The idea that such a game would “fill Wembley” is one I’d love to see tested to destruction because I think the ground would be half full at best unless (and this is the crucial bit) Larkhall and half of Ayrshire vacated their neighbourhoods for the day and went south, as they did with Manchester.
Outside of that, this club’s support base is pitifully small.
Celtic fans, by and large, wouldn’t bother to attend.
A cup semi-final is one thing … a preseason friendly with nothing and stake? Please.
Hold the match in the US, and Stillitano would have to hope Celtic fans who’d never seen an “Old Firm” game in the flesh would be attracted to it as a one-off, and buy a whole lot of tickets. Outside of that? I suspect it would sell very few.
One of the key issues I’ve always had with this “rivalrly” is that as global brand it sucks. The “unique” aspect of these games doesn’t translate outside of our borders, and nor should it. American audiences would much rather see us take on Manchester City or PSG and I don’t kid myself which club would be the main attraction.
Celtic v a five year old NewCo comprised of journeyman and free transfers?
Yeah. Sexy football it ain’t.
