Celtic season tickets: time for experience to triumph over hope

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

And you'd buy a season ticket because...?

The quote above is most often attributed to Albert Einstein, though there is little evidence that the scientist ever actually uttered the words.

However, it is repeated so often as it is not necessary to be a genius to recognise the truth contained therein.

Dr Johnson was talking about second marriages when he wrote of “the triumph of hope over experience”.

But clearly both quotations speak to the same thing: there are only so many times that it makes sense to repeat an action that has led to a disappointing result.

Celtic fans should be pondering this today.

Those of us old enough to remember Celts for Change in the early 1990s will recall a fateful Celtic Park match against Kilmarnock for which the fans' pressure group had organised a boycott. The people Celts for Change called in to estimate the attendance put the figure at 8225, while the official figure reported by the club was 10,055 – just above the assumed break-even for a match.

In doing so, Celts for Change demonstrated that organised fan action could call into question the club's viability, never mind its prosperity or the profiteering of its directors, and a major step was taken towards the Fergus McCann revolution that saved Celtic.

Those particular incompetents of the White-Kelly era had actively discouraged the sale of season tickets, in what now seems like a policy of buffoonery. Their alleged logic was that season book discounts robbed them of the potential earnings of repeated full houses fans paying for single, full-price tickets (though there were probably other reasons).

That mistake hasn't been made since, with the major focus in terms of revenue generation being a push for season ticket sales that has seen an annual love-in, promise of glory or plea for support from Peter Lawwell and the board. And tens of thousands of supporters have repeatedly responded, vainly hoping that the next season will be better than the experience of the last.

In doing so, they try to help the club and guarantee their seats for a whole season, watching diminishing quality and entertainment from a fixed vantage point. Over and over.

The other result is that the fans pay in advance to reduce their ability to influence the direction of the club – or even to demand satisfaction. They can vote with their feet but the money is in the PLC bank account anyway and they can be safely ignored until next renewal time.

To continue this cycle, with the club in its current state, would be an act of questionable sanity.

You may pay in advance for a product or service, the vendor reasonably claiming to need some money to buy materials. But if the quality regularly fails to meet your expectations, you will most likely decide whether to stop buying it at all or at least choose to pay per item, satisfying yourself that you are getting value for money.

How many other things do you pay hundreds of pounds for, up-front, feel frustrated and even deceived, then repeat the same act of faith again and again?

Being a football supporter is about more than being a customer but, unless that quality is fully reciprocated from the club, it leaves fans open to exploitation, while the PLC pursues its own agenda.

It's hard to admit that you can't trust the people running the club that you have loved for years but Celtic fans have experience of this. It's time to let that experience triumph over hope.

Instead of buying season tickets (and new shirts or other merchandise), it's time for supporters to make the club earn that ticket money by putting a team worthy of the name Celtic on the field, properly resourced both in terms of playing and coaching personnel.

If they do, then fans should keep buying the tickets, match-by-match and retain that one bargaining chip until confidence in the (preferably different) people running the club is regained.

It is hard to “hurt the club”, just as it was for those who boycotted that Kilmarnock match. But Celtic, as a team and an institution, is being destroyed before our eyes. In truth, there is little left that is recognisable, as we speak.

And you may miss out on the chance to watch Celtic struggle against minor European opposition or teams that are not even in the same division or even league, as has happened this season.

But it is difficult to see how buying season tickets will not simply keep enabling those running the club to continue what they have been doing, corrupting something that once represented the highest ideals in sport.

Do you want to do that?

Related link:

• Missing in action – the men who want your season ticket money (May 25, 2009)