It finally had to happen but it seems that Celtic have finally realised that Neil Doncaster isn’t good for Scottish football.
From the trusted source that is Stephen McGowan on Tuesday night, news emerged that Celtic had opted out of the Premier Sports TV deal that was announced at the start of June.
As usual it was tremendous news for everyone when a deal was agreed with Premier Sports that would take the number of Premiership matches being televised upto 80 per season.
That deal came soon after it was confirmed that William Hill were sponsoring all four divisions of the SPFL, another advert for a bookie being pushed on supporters at a time when most countries in Europe have banned shirt sponsorship deals from that industry.
Strangely, or maybe not, like the Cinch sponsorship deal the William Hill logo hasn’t appeared on the cherished Castore kit worn by the Ibrox Tribute Act.
What sort of organisation arranges collective deals where 50% of the attraction can opt out?
Answer, one that has had Doncaster as CEO for 15 years, the football organisation where the CEO is very rarely seen at the product, presumably Doncaster has better things to do at the weekend with the member clubs all happy with that arrangement.
The Premier Sports deal was widely reported to be worth £4m a year with the home club picking up £75,000 per match, roughly the cost of 2,500 fans paying full price at the turnstile.
Announcing the optional contract at the start of June Doncaster told the SPFL website:
This is tremendous news for SPFL clubs and supporters alike and means that up to 80 Premiership matches will be broadcast live next season across Sky Sports and Premier Sports. This will be the highest number of live matches ever broadcast from the Scottish Premiership.
With Premier Sports already having the rights to the Premier Sports Cup and Scottish Cup, they have cemented their place as a key broadcaster of live Scottish football.
We are extremely grateful to Premier Sports for their increased investment into the game, which will bring an additional eight-figure sum into Scottish football over the next five years, meaning further record-breaking payments to clubs.
The tremendous news from Doncaster clearly doesn’t appeal or add up for Celtic.
Premier Sports apparently has the pick of two home matches per club but from the news leaked to the Daily Mail Celtic have opted out of the deal with next Saturday’s visit from Aberdeen the obvious choice for Premier Sports to select.
Either a Saturday evening or Sunday kick-off would have been imposed to the inconvenience of 50,000 Season Ticket holders and a few thousand others.
Premier Sports has already given the League Cup semi-final between the two clubs a Saturday tea-time kick off, they could have teed things up for the Hampden match perfectly with the Premiership clash between the two clubs with 100% records after seven matches.
Last night in Sligo Brendan Rodgers spoke up in support of the decision with active Irish fans the main beneficiary as they get to enjoy just their second 3pm Saturday home match of the season.
While rejecting the Premier Sports deal it seems that Celtic are reluctant to explain their stance, leaving it to others to put two and two together.
Strangely it is one of the few decisions taken by Michael Nicholson that has almost universal approval from Celtic fans but it seems that the club CEO won’t be breaking away from his vow of silence on every matter.
After 15 years of complete mediocrity in the job it seems that Celtic have finally disagreed with Doncaster- hopefully it is just the start as they push for an overhaul of governance which should hopefully open the door to a competent Commercial Executive capable of delivering value for the most watched per head of population football competition in Europe.
More than 1% of the Scottish population will be inside Celtic Park for the match against Aberdeen- the sort of figure that anyone in Marketing would love to be delivering to broadcasting and commercial partners.
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