Michael Nicholson has confirmed to a Celtic Fan Forum that there will be no away fans at the December 30 Glasgow Derby.
Last season the O** F*** business partners provided away allocations for the first two matches of the season then made the final two SPFL Premiership fixtures home fans only.
James Bisgrove went out of his way after the Ibrox fixture in May to announce that Celtic were being offered an allocation in the region of 700 tickets between the Govan and Broomloan Road Stands.
Celtic never made any on the record comment about why they turned down their allocation but through their favoured media outlets the safety of away fans was given for turning down the tickets.
Various claims were made about the safety issue which was acknowledged but it was reported that there wasn’t enough time to install netting to prevent Celtic fans from being attacked by bottles.
Celtic’s decision not to take tickets was quickly followed by a claim from Ibrox that they would insist on tickets for the match on December 30 which seems at odds with the decision not to take tickets for the 3-2 defeat in April.
The issue of away tickets was raised at Sunday’s Fan Forum inside Celtic Park with Nicholson replying that there will be no away allocation for the December Derby.
The matter won’t become public until the start of December but the Celtic CEO appeared adamant in his stance that there would be no away fans at the final match of 2023 despite a wishy washy SPFL rule of providing the away side with a reasonable ticket allocation.
Last week SPFL Premiership clubs discussed away ticket allocations but there was no consensus, with an 11-1 majority required to pass any rule there wasn’t any need to have a vote on the matter. Scottish Cup rules, from the SFA mean that away clubs have to be offered 20% of match tickets regardless of the number of home Season Tickets.
Hearts, St Mirren and Kilmarnock have significantly reduced the allocation of away tickets in recent seasons which follows on from the decision of Dave King to cut Celtic’s Ibrox allocation from 7,000 down to 800 in the summer of 2018.
Since then there has been regular controversies about the issue, while the Ibrox club have sold Season Tickets for where Celtic fans used to be housed the hoops still sell those Season Tickets for 17 matches with no guarantees for the Glasgow Derby.
Celtic’s stance is likely to bring a highly reluctant Neil Doncaster into the issue, with the SPFL’s relaxed attitude to any rule breaking it unlikely that any sanction will be taken against Celtic for deciding that zero is a reasonable allocation.
Bisgrove is on the Board of the SPFL for this season after Nicholson stepped down after a 12 month stint on board with Doncaster as he negotiated a hideous new TV deal with Sky Sports alongside the Cinch sponsorship which has been cut short by two years.
