Celtic Was Running At A Fraction Of Its Potential … And Still Outperforming Rangers.
MARCH 1994
CELTIC PARK – GLASGOW
New Celtic managing director Fergus McCann at his desk.
Fergus McCann knew two things about Celtic in the 1990’s, and I didn’t learn the second of them myself until I watched Paul Larkin’s documentary The Asterisk Years.
First, Fergus knew that Celtic was not operating at its peak and that there were a hundred ways of turning us into a better company, which could make more money. And he knew that in spite of that, the club was capable of turning a profit.
Because in spite of £7 million in total debts we had been doing that for the better part of a decade whilst Rangers posted losses year on year.
I give Fergus credit for a lot of things, but putting his money into Celtic was a no-risk deal. He knew it could come off. He had done the sums. He knew the stadium could be funded and how. He knew the team could be strengthened because of the increase in revenue. He knew the feel-good factor could be leveraged into big money. He knew the White’s and the Kelly’s lacked the imagination to see what he could. He knew he was onto a winner.
Take Celtic Park; it was a dilapidated relic at a time when even St Johnstone had a 10,000 all-seater ground. He knew that technological advances meant that building stands, and even whole stadiums, was cheaper than most people were aware and that the emotional pull of our ancient home meant that it was better to develop that than start from scratch elsewhere. If he didn’t know that Ibrox’s unique design meant that filling in the corners would be prohibitively expensive he would have soon enough.
He knew a bigger ground meant more money.
That 10,000 seat differential has been vital to our amassing of wealth and power, just as he knew it would be.
In the modern era of £500 season tickets it translates into an advantage of roughly £5 million every year. And it’s been twenty odd. … perhaps as much as £100 million more than they’ve been able to spend, even adjusting for inflation.
Sevco certainly does not have the money to change that, and with a full season ticket base and sales near the top of their capability they are operating at almost full speed. And their turnover ranges from between £40 million to £60 million behind ours. Would you believe that even in the early days, when our plans were still being realised, there was never a differential that big? This is an historic finance gap, one we never, at any point, had to bridge.
By the time Peter Lawwell took on the CEO role at Parkhead we had established an operational capacity in excess of theirs. I have written about it many times. From around 2000 onwards, we overtook Rangers in turnover terms and the only years we ever fell below it were two in which we had no European football and they did.
The challenge Fergus took on was cake compared to this.