A section of the Celtic support have started a campaign to lower ticket prices for Scottish football fans and in the most Scottish football thing ever – they have received abuse from rival fans.
The group calling themselves Bhoys has been set up to challenge the rising prices and costs of going to follow your team on their away days. You will have no doubt seen their protests from the stands in the past few weeks. At Hamilton, they had a banner which read “overcharging the fans/underselling the game”, a “twenty’s plenty” protest for the Hibs game was also on show and received a similar backlash.
The accusation levied at the group so far is Celtic’s away ticket pricing being the highest in the league. This has led to the group coming out and making it clear that this is a Scottish football protest and not just a Celtic project. Celtic supporters who back the campaign are getting increasingly frustrated by the number of people missing the point and more willing to have a go than anything else. Celtic fans don’t set Celtic’s away day ticket pricing and people including the Hamilton Supporter Liasion Officer know this, yet choose to partake in a knee jerk reaction to what they’ve seen as an attack on their club.
Bhoys have made it clear they want to change Scottish football for the better and make it more affordable to follow your team regardless of what colours you wear. The group’s two protests to this point have been away days and for the reason, both have been televised and they had to start somewhere.
In an email to The Athletic – the group address their critics and reveal there are also Celtic Park protests in the pipeline.
“(Celtic’s) first away game at Motherwell was £30, and the first side to visit us at Celtic Park (St Johnstone) were to be charged £32 and £30 for restricted view tickets. In our opinion, pricing tickets for the product on show at £25 or £26 was already an unreasonable financial demand on supporters, never mind hiking costs every season.
“When considering the poor public transport system across the country and the price of public travel, your total matchday cost suddenly bypasses the £50 mark.
“We have various plans for the rest of the season, including displays at Celtic Park against our own club’s pricing for visiting supporters. There has been some blowback from fans of other clubs because the (displays) have taken place at away grounds and, unfortunately, have been taken out of context as individual criticism of these two clubs about their pricing for Celtic fans only. We had to start somewhere and concluded the best option was these two televised fixtures.”
