The Season Ticket Holders Alliance has gained over 3,000 members.
That was the social media message set up by the group headed by Willie Haughey with the backing of Paul McStay.
In addition to those 3,000 members the Alliance has voting rights to 800,000 shares which equates to a market value of around £1.7m.
Haughey launched the Alliance with the pledge to purchase £2m worth of shares for every 10,000 Season Ticket holders that sign up.
How that is achieved hasn’t been explained in terms of a price of who would be selling shares to the newly formed group.
AN ALLIANCE IN NEEDS OF IDENTITY AND PURPOSE
So far the Alliance has had two bursts of publicity but there has been no sustained campaigning in the manner of Celtic Supporters Limited or the Celtic Fans Collective.
Haughey revealed his plan while on the Go Radio football phone-in in February.
In May Haughey and Paul McStay went on a burst of meetings with fans followed by podcasts.
With 50,000 potential members from Season Ticket holders 3,000 seems a poor uptake.
No financial commitment is required, fans simply fill in an online form to join.
Highlighting the lack of communications the X/Twitter account for the Alliance has less than 1,000 followers.
A major update from the Celtic Season Alliance Trust. 🍀
3,000+ season ticket holders have joined, and the Trust now holds voting rights on nearly 800,000 shares.
An important step towards building a meaningful collective voice for supporters.🔗 Join via the link in our bio. pic.twitter.com/drtEz0uv2B
— Season Ticket Alliance Trust (@StaTrust) August 8, 2026
Without some very visible actions it is difficult to see how the Alliance grows in strength.
Over the course of a week Haughey and McStay visited around a dozen venues to meet with supporters.
There were sign ups at those meetings but there remains an identity issue over the purpose of the Alliance.
That is partly down to the emergence earlier in the season of the Collective and CSL.
With Haughey involved there is intrigue and curiosity.
The title of the group however makes it clear that they are exclusively for Season Ticket holders.
That is a worthy aim. Haughey has described the 50,000 Season Ticket holders as the bedrock of the club. That is true but also excludes an awful lot of fairly active fans.
Celtic claim to have 15,000 fans on a Waiting List. In business terms that could be losing out on £9m a year. At a meeting in Grace’s Haughey described the stadium issue as unfinished.
Having been a Director from 1994 to 1997 he is under the impression that the three ‘new’ stands were only stage one of stadium Redevelopment.
CELTIC SHARE PRICE
Over the last fortnight the Celtic share price has been steady at just over £2 without any major purchases.
Haughey’s pledge of buying £2m of shares for every 10,000 Season Ticket holders that join the Alliance is difficult to figure out.
None of the major shareholders appear of a mind to sell up.
It is estimated that there could be 30,000 shareholders in Celtic with at least 20% of the shares currently dormant.
Those shares were bought up by fans and Supporters Clubs in 1995, it is reasonable to assume that as many as a third of those fans have died. Most of the others will have moved address since that share purchase.
Both the Celtic Trust and CSL are looking to locate the rightful owners of those shares. It is a slow process but could help the CSL reach the significant 5% level that opens up certain levels of influence.
Intriguingly both Chris Traynor and Mark Keane are already significant shareholders, combined they own around 17%.
THE CONSTANTLY FAILING CELTIC CEO AND BOARD
Anyone thinking that the dramas and failures of the last year will change the approach of the Celtic board are in for a disappointment.
Reports on how the Affiliation of Supporters Clubs were dealt with confirms that no lessons have been learned.
Apparently UEFA Financial Sustainability Regulations are preventing the club from signing players.
Fans are well aware of FSR. They know that Celtic have plenty of leeway to operate in.
Last season the club produced a significant transfer profit despite wasting £10m on Sebastian Tounekti and Michel Ange Balikwisha.
Celtic could have spent £35m more last season without coming under scrutiny from UEFA. But clearly you wouldn’t want Paul Tisdale to make that sort of decision.
In answer to Tisdale’s replacement Celtic have brought in ‘five or six analytics people’. That is the equivalent of selling a striker and replacing him with six youth team prospects. They aren’t equivalents.
At every level Celtic are dysfunctional.
It is so ingrained that folk like Nicholson and McKay trot out excuses that are easily taken apart.
How they can be removed is the big issue.
Hopefully some initiative emerges ahead of the AGM in November that finally calls time up on a regime long past usefulness.
Select Celtic365 as a “Preferred Source” on Google News for prompts to the independent news and opinions that you respect.
RELATED READING
CLICK HERE for five reasons supporters don’t trust Celtic Connect
CLICK HERE for Michael Nicholson fails Martin O’Neill
1 Comment
by Legend07
I joined up with the CSTA because I’m at the total end of my tether with this shambles that call themselves a board. aIm just for people with a voice/power to go toe to toe with these F*cking amateurs.
I’m absolutely sick to my back teeth with our under achieving/ lack of ambition and total lack of vision for our club. Who the Feck do they think they are? They are in privileged positions at OUR club so if they think what they are doing and what they think they are doing is close to being remotely good enough well Iam sorry to say they are a Feckin million miles away from achieving what a fully functional board would be wanting for a club the size of Celtic to be achieving and where we could could acutely reach. The time has came and the gravy train must be stopped now. Theses clowns/parasites are only in this
For themselves making a fortune out of us. Enough is more than enough they have NO AMBITION, NO VISION for our club so Dermot, Michael, Chris, Brian Just take your last coin out our club that you think you might be due and GTF!!!