Celtic Park’s capacity set to be reduced next season

Celtic Park’s 60,000 capacity seems set to be greatly reduced next season as a direct consequence of the coronavirus.

The global outbreak of the coronavirus has brought an halt to society. And with the number cases growing at an alarming rate everyday, it will take a long time before things are back to normal. Social distancing is expected to be followed for the next 6-12 months in order to prevent the virus from spreading again. As a result, do not expect Celtic Park to remain unaffected.

People will be expected to maintain a distance of 2 meters between them for quite some time even when we are no longer under brought down. Thus, it will have a great effect on the attendance of sporting events or any event where large crowds gather for that matter.

When fans are allowed back into stadiums, the crowds will be much smaller than we are expected to seeing at Celtic Park. Each seat in the ground is 500 millimeter wide, meaning that only one in five seats can be occupied in order to maintain the advised distance. Also, that will have to be applied to rows as well, leaving only a small portion of the fans being allowed to attend the games.

Regarding the issue, The Scottish Sun report:

"One SPFL insider said: “It’s a major quandary – how you get people back into grounds when the restrictions are lifted. As things stand, the days of crowds of 50,000 at Ibrox and 60,000 at Celtic Park aren’t going to happen.“From what the government are saying, we could have social distancing for another 6-12 months, which would mean people sitting three or four seats apart next season to adhere to the two-metre rule.“There are a host of things to consider for when we are up and running again. What about turnstile queues? What about stewards doing body searches? With all due respect to them, it’ll be okay at Elgin and Albion Rovers.“Even a club like Hamilton Accies, with 1500 fans in a 6000- capacity stadium, will be less affected by this than many.”"

Of course, there are more important issues to discuss right now than the capacity of football stadiums. But hopefully things can return to normal as soon as possible so that we can again enjoy the feeling that can only come from being in attendance along with 60,000 other Celtic fans at Parkhead.