Interesting article on the BBC website by Nick McPheat – “Why a non-Old Firm title win is now a near impossible task” https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66359978).
It is very difficult to disagree with the conclusion particularly as the manager of the last non-OF club to be Scottish Champions was Sir Alex Ferguson. There are though, one or two things McPheat has not considered, but more than anything I have problems with his tendency to be accepting passively of the factors that lie behind this annual procession. Then again, it is the BBC!
Why? Well football is an unusual service product. There is no practical reason (other than I would hope the Competition Commission would have stepped in long before this point was reached) why we could not all just only shop in, for instance, Tesco, such that no one went to any other supermarket or shop. Football’s not like that. For a match two teams aren’t desirable, but essential, and Rangers, for instance, can only play Rangers B so often before the fans get bored and wander off. Indeed multi-club ownership by the uber wealthy and national investment funds is an issue in case pressure is applied where the same ownership is significant in both clubs.
And if football’s product (the game) is to be interesting for spectators at the time, but just as important beforehand (intending spectators), the two teams should be competitive with each other. This is an important reason why a game between Manchester City and PSG generates more revenue than Barcelona and Albion Rovers.
Indeed to run a league competition, something like 10 to 20 teams are needed, and to avoid the competition becoming stale and all too predictable, it is desirable that all these teams can compete with each other. For every club to be equally competitive with all the others might be an ideal, but it’s the benchmark we should be aiming for to keep the league interesting. Given that the OF have hoovered up every SPL title since Fergie pitched up at Old Trafford, it seems pretty clear Scottish football fails this test.
But back to McPheat, whose first factor is the financial gulf between the OF and their ‘competitors’. Quoting Kieran Maguire, McPheat tells us that
1. “Celtic and Rangers make up 70% of the Premiership’s total revenue.
2. Their wages account for 69% of the league’s total, while they amount to 96% for combined squad costs.
3. In 2021-22, they made up 95% of transfer fees in the division.
Eye-watering numbers for sure – but what’s even more staggering is the changing fortunes over the past 38 years.
4. In 1984-85, the last season a non-Old Firm team finished on top, Aberdeen generated £110 for every £100 Celtic managed. Now, the Pittodrie club bring in just £16 for every £100 made by Celtic.”
How or why has this happened? According to McGuire again, “That’s partly due to the expansion of stadiums and the sell-out crowds Celtic and Rangers attract. But the real mover is qualification for European competition. In the SPFL, there’s a ceiling for broadcast revenue. That’s not the case in Europe.”
The difficulty with the last reason is that in football – not just in Scotland – success begats success – or the success of qualifying for Europe makes you more money than the other clubs who don’t. This is money that the successful club can use to generate additional resources in the future. The obvious route for this would be to buy in ‘a better class of player’ and thus have a ‘better class of team’. This strategy of course is looked down on by many ‘real’ football fans, with criticism focusing on “it’s all about money”, “bunch of mercenaries”. This is usually heard from the fans of the teams that have been less successful, but the practical reality of football (and again, not only in Scotland) is that money doesn’t talk, it roars.
However a more long term view is to use the additional resources not to employ your very own of whoever passes for Galacticos, but to invest in coaching infrastructure. For instance better facilities. Aberdeen in Fergie’s day used to train on Aberdeen beach. Rangers now have Auchenhowie, while Celtic are at Lennoxtown. Or if not physical infrastructure then coaching infrastructure, by employing better qualified/ more able coaches, or training those coaches already employed to be more skilled. Through better facilities and /or better coaching the aim’s the same – to put a better and more competitive team on the park. The irony of course for the “it’s all about money” critics is that even this upskilling approach is “all about money”.
So perhaps the takeaway from this is that competition on the park is, at times, subsidiary to the competition for resources, to increasing revenue, to successfully having access to he pockets of the long suffering support.
All of this, however, glosses over some structural factors. One of these is that (leaving Hampden to one side) there are only four clubs in Scotland whose stadium capacities exceed 20,000 – Aberdeen (20,866), Hibs (20,421), Rangers (50,817) and Celtic (60,411). So the OF not only have the largest revenues, but the largest capacities to generate revenue. For instance Celtic Park has a capacity which is more than 9 times the capacity of New Victoria Park, Ross County’s home ground. Given geography and the distribution of population in Scotland this is probably no surprise, but Celtic Park is more than three times larger than Tynecastle and four times larger than Rugby Park.
Thus ceteris paribus, Celtic have the opportunity to generate a multiple of at least three times what other clubs have the capacity to achieve. Another structural reason for the gulf.
But of course ceteris are not always paribus. In 22/3 Celtic played to an average of 97% of their ground capacity, while Rangers played to 96.8% of their slightly smaller capacity. Aberdeen played to 74% capacity, while Hibs played to 85% and Hearts to 93% . So, at least 2 of the clubs we would expect to be competitive have attendances, not quite at the OF level, but certainly comparable. Aberdeen lag somewhat behind, but not so far as Kilmarnock’s 46%. Even the much more rural Ross County achieve 67%.
But the main point is that we cannot proceed straight from ground capacity, but how much of a surprise is it that the OF are more successful than anyone else at turning ground capacity into bums on seats.
Then there are the financial implications. Celtic’s average attendance last season was 58,828, and Rangers 49,232. Hearts average was 18,513 or 31% of Celtic’s average and 37% of Rangers’. The implications for generating revenue are as clear as they could be – not just bigger stadia, but they can put bums on their greater number of seats in those stadia.
What could address this, to offer a game that might not be equal but have more equal foundations? It was in 1980 that Scottish football ended sharing the gate money between the home and away team (50% each). This might not ensure financial equality, but, returning to my earlier point about the need for the teams to be competitive with each other, as well as the significance of revenue, reverting to gate sharing would at least be a nod in that direction.
Last season Ross County would generate 4,420 ticket sales in their home games. If in future seasons they would pay over 50% of this to the teams coming to play them in Dingwall, but bring back 50% of the gate from the larger stadia of bigger clubs, not least playing the OF away, that has to be a financial boost, making them to that extent more competitive than now.
There is though one more structural inequality – European competition, for if the OF have cornered the title, every season they will secure the riches of Croesus that the Champions League offers.
For ticket sales, “coefficient payment” (their success in previous years) and TV, Celtic could expect to bring in almost £20 million, even if they never win a point. But if they do they will receive £2.37million for a win and £790,000 for a draw. So for a modest win and 2 draws, they would make another almost £4 million pounds. Rangers could expect much the same as long as they can negotiate the qualifying rounds. And that of course is only to Christmas, there being further rewards for participating, and even losing, in the last 16 and beyond – over £8 million for losing in the round of the last 16. For winning the Champions League the Prize is £17 million.
For comparison, in the SPL the prize money for finishing first is £3.5 million, second place gets £3.25 million, third gets £2.5 million and fourth gets £2.25 million. All of these are dwarfed by payments from the Champions League. The prize for winning the Premier League is less than the payment to Celtic for winning one game and drawing two others in the Champions League. Therefore, the reality is that the reward for being Scottish Champions is less the title and more the access it offers to the wealth of the Champions League.
Of course, there are second, and third prizes, called the Europa League and Europa Conference League. Total prize money for these is a total of just over £400 million and just over £200 million respectively. BUT the total prize money for the Champions League is almost one and three quarter BILLION pounds, or almost three times the total of the other two competitions!
However, given the reward level available to most Scottish clubs it must be fairly obvious that even the Conference offers financial advantage, even if is a fraction of what can be earned in the Champions League. The latter may be a highly significant distortion, but even the former offers some level of advantage.
However, while access to the Europa competitions has been shared around, the OF have monopolised access to the European competition where the real money is to be made.
Not everyone is convinced that it’s all about money, however. McPheat quotes Stephen Pressley that other things are important, including “stability, consistency of high-level coaching, really good recruitment, promotion of top academy players and overcoming the phycological barrier” as “vital” additional factors. Not too much to ask, is it?”
The problem is that with the exception of the last two cited factors, the others are all about money. Lack of money means better players, as well as top Academy players will have to be sold or cannot be retained at the end of their contracts; high-level coaching is costly; good recruitment means having the resources to attract players from other teams.
Only the “psychological barrier”, and to some extent promotion of top Academy players are not entirely about money, but rather about managerial policy. How many managers would prefer to sign an experienced player rather than persevere with a younger player, even if the latter is (or clearly will be) a better player? “The class of ’92” at Manchester United is a cautionary tale for those who think you “never win anything with kids”. However, it takes commitment and determination to see something like this through, as young players by definition lack experience and thus make mistakes a more experienced player might not have made. That said, Fergie was bringing through such as David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt and the Neville brothers.
However, while managerial policy is critical – would the “class of 92” have been recognised if Alan Hansen had been manager – money remains important. It’s unlikely that another club would be able to come and take very few young players Ferguson wanted to keep, but at another less well resourced club would he have been able to hang on to these players.
Or how likely is it that his Cup Winners Cup winning side would have come to fruition before it was cannibalised by bigger clubs? The changes to contract would only have made this worse as players (rightly) are able to leave for another club when their current contrat comes to its end.
Jude Bellingham for instance first played for Birmingham City, aged 8. By 15 he was playing for their Under 23s, and in the first team aged 19 (2019/20). By the end of that season, it was obvious he would be leaving, and for a reported fee of £25 million, he left to join Borussia Dortmund, whom he left to join Real Madrid for a reported £88 million (with the possibility of that rising to £115 million with contingency payments), still aged 20. Thus in a period of four years Bellingham has gone from playing for a perennial English Championship side, via the Bundesliga to Real Madrid, perhaps the wealthiest team on the planet, involving transfer payments of £113 million!
If a reasonably well resourced team like Dortmund (almost always in Europe, and almost always in the later stages of the Champions League with the financial rewards that can be secured there, especially toward the later rounds) cannot hold on to a young player, what hope would a smaller club than Dortmund have?
So, to conclude, McPheat, considers “a non-Old Firm title win .. a near impossible task”. Given all the above – the contractual changes which makes it even more difficult for smaller, less well resourced clubs to hang on to their better players, the riches of participating in European competition (even the Conference) – it is perhaps surprising the gulf is not greater. In theory though (I know perfectly well, they wont) football could addess these matters – more equality of distribution of funding for European competition and not just for those partipating but for football at levels, as well as ensuring more appropriate competition which focuses more on what a player might achieve and not just compensation for training received to date. These things could be addressed – though they wont be, in fact the likelihood is that the uber elite will find ways to secure even more of football’s wealth, and pull up the ladder to minimise the likelihood that other clubs can compete with them.
What would be more difficult is physical infrastructure – that the biggest clubs have the biggest stadia and are best at filling them, with the revenue implications that has. Therefore, for different reason the inequalities that exist are unlikely to be addressed never mind resolved. Perhaps the way forward is to recognise that some clubs have broken away from the pack – Manchester City, Real Madrid, PSG etc. Other clubs have also done this, but less convincingly – for instance Ajax, and other leading clubs in the smaller, less well resourced leagues.
Given this balkanisation of elite and top-level football, the aim must be to structure policy so that every level of the game is able to maximise and achieve its own potential, rather than only (or overly) on the topmost level. Football, as we pointed out at the start is a collective product – a competition between two equally competitive teams, which are resourced to achieve this, but at all levels. The topmost level achieving this tells us nothing about the rest of the game, so a perspective of the necessary width isn’t desirable, but essential. b
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