A lot of things that fans ask for are silly or unreasonable.
A lot of them don’t make much sense. But there are some which make all the sense in the world, and those amongst the Celtic sites calling for us to implement a ticket exchange scheme … that’s smart.
It’s hard to believe, if we’re being honest, that Celtic hasn’t done this already. The club has taken such a proactive stand with fan engagement in recent years, and yet this is still lacking? It surprises me, it really does.
The principle behind this is simplicity; if you cannot use your season ticket, you can go onto an online forum – set up by the club – and trade it with someone or sell it on.
Or you could nominate a supporter’s bus or group and give it to them.
This works at other clubs.
It can work at Celtic.
But we pursue this perverse policy of not allowing tickets to be tradeable between people.
Hey, we know it happens. It’s always happened and it always will. But the club could put an official seal on it and create a system which lets folk who want to pass their ticket on do so in a controlled, monitored way.
Fans are facing increasing challenges, due to the cost of living crisis. A season ticket is a big investment, and if there are genuinely games where people can’t make it – work, family, other stuff – they should know that they won’t lose out if that arises. The club really could be doing more to help fans and for many this would.
I applaud and support giving this a push on behalf of the supporters.
The club has to be thinking about it. It has to be giving the matter active consideration. John Paul Taylor has taken this to the powers that be. It would be good to hear from them on it.
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Absolutely James,
I’ve been on the waiting list for ages.
Shouldn’t be an issue for a club of our magnitude to implement some sort of Scheme.
HH
I can’t understand why they wouldn’t do this? More fans at the game = more merch and concession sales, and more of a boost for the team to play in front of a full house pretty much every single week. How does that make anything other than perfect sense? If anything they should do it to see if there truly is enough demand to justify enlarging the stadium capacity…
This is something that needs to happen yesterday. Every single club in North America has a partnership with either TicketMaster or SeatGeek, and they make huge profits on these deals. This isn’t the 1980’s anymore, and the decision makers at Celtic need to learn that there are better ways of doing things than how they’ve been doing them for ages. Fresh blood is definitely needed, but that’s a story for another day.
As for how teams from such a partnership… there’s actually a few different sources of value:
(1) on any tickets exchanged, there is usually a flat fee service charge for administering the transaction. This is usually fairly modest (maybe $1-3 per ticket in North America where average ticket prices are much higher than SPL).
(2) there is also a fee that is charged as a percentage of the transaction, and while this can be quite high, both buyers and sellers of tickets still find it worthwhile. For buyers, they have assurance that the tickets aren’t counterfeit if it’s through the ‘official’ ticket partner of the club/venue; for sellers, it’s the convenience of having a single platform to sell tickets to a vast audience / customer base. Celtic would need to tread lightly here to avoid alienating fans, but this will undoubtedly provide significant economic benefit to the club as they essentially get to sell the same ticket 2x.
(3) and most importantly for a club like Celtic who sell out or nearly sell out every game, they get to sell remaining single game tickets at market rates ensuring a full stadium while simultaneously maximizing income. For some games – say a midweek game against Ross County – demand is going to be low, and a platform like this allows the club to dump tickets onto the secondary market and actually sell all of them at a lower price (lower than list price) rather than holding firm on pricing while thousands go unsold. For other games – European nights or derby games – it allows the club to effectively sell the limited number of single game tickets at prices far higher than official list price. But in all cases the games should be sell outs with a full stadium without the club losing any income.
Benjamin, you should pass that on to the duffers on the Celtic Board.
It’s clear, short enough that it won’t tax their attention span and has enough upticks to endear themselves to our support and with enough ‘Kerchings’ to have the bean counters salivating orgasmically.
Even then there’s little chance they’ll go for it. Despite their much lauded credentials as serious businessMEN they are ‘risk averse’ in all things. We have 20th Century leaders dealing with a 21st Century Market.
In the past 15 years iv seen this happen many times
I personally cannot afford a season ticket at this time. Expenses above the normal outlay has made it so. If I could access a Celtic website to purchase a ticket for a game when I could it would be great. As many have said they would like to do likewise. It seems that empty seats and official attendance is the ” CELTIC WAY”, a fantastic Idea that many would benefit from.
A great idea me and my son went down to London to see West Ham and got seats through a similar scheme 2 West Ham season ticket holders got some cash for there seats as they could not attend that certain match I think this would be a great idea if Celtic put this in place.
For my money the only people that should benefit from any form of ticket sale are the owners of the ticket. Not Celtic and not agents. Why not have a friends and family use of tickets at owners discretion. Fill the stadium. players playing to a more packed crowd and Celtic selling more pies.
It’s an absolute no brainer. I don’t see any downside to what is being said here. Does anyone know why Celtic don’t want to do this?
It seems to me that too many supporters buy season tickets only to attend certain games.The attendance at the Celtic Park pre season games was abysmal.The first chance to see the team at home at should be a huge attraction.
No Euro qualifiers this summer so the club decided to add the Blackburn & Norwich games to the season ticket. I understand the logic but it didn’t really work. These two games would have been an ideal opportunity for dads/grandads to get the kids along to CP for their very first visit. Experience the stadium on match day, everyone remembers their first time at CP, the current ground or the pre-Fergus one. Get the youngsters hooked, they are the next generation after all. I was at both games and it was disappointing, but understandable, why there were so many empty seats.
Only Michael Nicholson can answer the question about a ticket exchange scheme. Obviously the aim should be to put a backside on every seat. But, as we have known for years, Celtic PLC is a board like no other.
No we should get the money, (celtic), you seem to ridicule it James, but still got the biscuit tin mentality.
Agreed. All to often during europa league games and the domestic fixture on the next Sunday our fans from across the water unable to attend and un-necessary seats left empty.
Club would still have control of who is in the seat if any “issues” arise as a result and season ticket holder gets a chance of some financial recompense