Could Middle Eastern Billionaires Really Be About To Invest In Celtic?

Be afraid Sevconites, be very afraid …

According to Phil McGiollabhain – you can read the article here, and you should – the Green Brigade’s phenomenal Palestinian flag display may have done more than just raised awareness of the issue across the world.

It might have raised awareness of Celtic itself to hitherto undreamed of heights.

All the way to the top of one of the Middle East’s richest dynasties, the United Arab Emirates Royal Family. Now, this is speculative, but Phil seems confident that his source has it right on. If he’s got it, then this is the story to end all stories.

Now, before I start I gotta tell you that the UAE has a human rights record that is pretty ghastly and that’s an undisputed fact. If these guys made an investment in Celtic it would chill the blood of some of our fans and we would eat no small amount of odium for it.

For that reason alone it might be prudent to file this one away under “I hope not.”

But if you’re not particularly squeamish and prefer to leave your politics at the door there are clear … advantages to be had from this kind of attention. First, of course, is money. Oodles of it. From the seventh largest oil reserves in the world comes a virtually limitless supply of cash, the sort that turns sleepy football clubs into global behemoths.

Like Man City.

Guess who owns them?

The Abu Dhabi Group, who are, yes, indeed, one of the branches of the UAE Royal Family.

With that in mind, them taking some kind of ownership stake in the club can probably – thankfully – be ruled out. I am squeamish about the idea, I admit it. But as this is a country which is football daft and as the Royal Family probably has more branches than Epping Forest it may not be unreasonable to think that at some stage even that could be worked out. After all, if two brothers wanted to buy Liverpool and Everton would that constitute dual ownership?

Of course not. The Group already owns another two teams; New York City FC and Melbourne Heart FC.

Still, file it under “about as likely as Sevco signing Messi.” For now.

What is harder to dismiss though is some form of investment such as that suggested by Phil; stadium naming rights. Clearly we won’t get the £80 million per year which City gets at the moment – would that we could! – but these guys don’t play cheap.

There’s some stuff going on at the moment which is highly suggestive of Celtic being about to announce something big; there are stories about how the Celtic Park hotel project is being talked about (and some that say it’s been greenlit) and there’s something else; right across the road from Celtic Park is the Emirates Arena … who’s naming rights went for a £5 million sum over a ten year period. The source of that money, of course, was Emirates Airlines … owned by … yes, you know the answer.

This all makes … sense.

And yet it could be utter nonsense of course …

Except that Peter Lawwell has literally just got back from Dubai, with even the media wondering what he was doing over there.

It’s something to think about, right?

Enjoy your night folks!