NafisaCeltic could be facing a possible reduction in their away allocation next season.
St Johnstone recently confirmed that the Hoops would receive three stands at McDiarmid Park.
The Perth outfit secured an immediate return to the Premiership, and the club quickly outlined plans to hand Celtic and Rangers the majority of the stadium when they come to town.
It is clearly a financial decision at the end of the day, but chief executive Fran Smith has admitted the club could revisit the arrangement under one condition.
The announcement arrived as part of their season ticket launch for the 2026/2027 campaign. With positivity surrounding the club after promotion, the timing made sense.
However, Smith has revealed both Glasgow clubs may not continue receiving three stands IF St Johnstone manage to sell more season tickets than their main stand can hold.
The Celtic support will travel in huge numbers regardless, but the bigger the backing and atmosphere, the better.
Smith said (SunSport):
“We are never going to get everything right, but make decisions in what we think are in the best interests of the club as a business.
“There’s anger out there with fans and supporters, but I want to let people understand the decision-making process.
“We wanted to be open and honest from the beginning to say we would consider three stands for Category A, Rangers and Celtic games.
“The reason being is, we tried it the other way two seasons ago and had empty stands.
“We then tried it the other way for the Celtic game and we won, and we took £200,000 from that.
“There is a way you can make the club pivot on this, make us not do that – and that’s by having more season tickets than seats available in the Main Stand.
“If that happens, we’d have to rethink our strategy around that.
“We are sorry that all of this was dumped at one point; a lot of people don’t like change and a lot of change.
“We understand the changes have angered supporters and put added costs on to supporters.”
Too many Premiership sides in recent years have reduced allocations in an attempt to satisfy their own supporters, only to leave large sections of empty seats that Celtic fans would have filled without issue.
Of course, clubs are fully entitled to make those calls. But ultimately, boardrooms will usually look at things from a business perspective first.
St Johnstone’s chief executive explained why the original choice was made, and why there is still room for it to change.
In many ways, it is a sales strategy. Increase season ticket numbers, and there will be less need to open up more areas of the stadium to away supporters.
For now, the final outcome remains unclear. Until then, Celtic will simply wait and see. There are far bigger priorities before next season’s visit to Perth comes around.
Nafisa
