A lot of Celtic fans were angry with the announcement that only season tickets holders will get the chance to watch the next season’s games.
With the global pandemic having changed the way society functions for the foreseeable future, it is unlikely that fans will be entering football stadiums anytime soon. That though will mean huge loss of revenue for many clubs, which for clubs like Celtic is a huge amount.
Thus, the SPFL managed to come up with the idea of a virtual season ticket in order to help the clubs recoup some of the match day revenue that they are set to lose out on. This will allow season ticket holders to watch the games on a streaming service.
Now, this service was not available for fans in the United Kingdom and Ireland earlier but the board have managed to work out a deal with Sky Sports in order to make next season’s games available to at least a portion of the fans.
This has left a number of fans angry at either the extraordinary amount of money that they are expected to watch the game on a streaming service or the fact that they cannot watch the games even if they wanted to pay for it as they are not season ticket holders.
The disgruntled fans did not hide their emotions on Twitter:
Mental if non season ticket holders can't access these home games through the club. I'd like to support the club through these times as I'm sure thousands of non season book holding UK based supporters would.
— NEILJUNG67 (@NEILJUNGERS67) June 3, 2020
How is charging full price for Season Tickets looking after the fans? How is getting a refund from last season made very difficult for the fans? How is a virtual ST thesame price as a real one?
— Tigertim Esq (@asmallteaser) June 3, 2020
Hamilton arent selling ST this year but I bet they will will have a virtual ST.
These are extraordinary times and fans who are looking to get these tickets should not be doing so hoping for it to be worth the money but as a way to help the club with cash flow extremely limited right now.
It will be interesting to see though whether the SPFL can reach a deal with Sky Sports regarding the fans who do not have season tickets and whether they are allowed to get access to individual games.