Lawwell: Celtic would be better off without TV deal

Celtic Chief Executive Peter Lawwell believes his club could prosper by scrapping live televised Premiership games.

He maintains that playing every League fixture on a Saturday afternoon would generate more revenue than currently comes their way from selling broadcasting rights.

Lawwell says Celtic go along with the current TV deal only to help their fellow clubs.

While the English Premier League has just secured a new £5.1-billion three-year contract with Sky and BT Sport, Scottish football gets around £15-million a year in broadcasting rights.

Lawwell said: “For me, we would like to play our games every Saturday at 3pm and forget live TV.

“But we can’t because the other clubs in Scotland are so dependent on it.

“People talk about enhancing the match-day experience. At 3pm on a Saturday, we’d get more people coming to our games and that money would far outweigh what we get from the TV deal. But I appreciate it’s more vital for the other clubs.

“The SPFL take a lot of stick for the TV deal but it’s a bit unfair because you can only sell what you’ve got and take whatever someone is willing to give you for it.

“The English Premier League is a different ball game. That’s gone beyond the valuation of football rights.

“It’s two global communication giants with strategic objectives vying for a market share. They’re paying way above what’s it worth for their own purposes.

“But we’re not part of that. And the irony is that 10% of the people who help fund that are Scottish subscribers.”

The Parkhead supremo has some hope that clubs in Scotland could squeeze a little more from the television people.

That depends, however, he admits, on the success of Celtic’s greatest rivals.

He went on: “There might be more money available going forward and that could depend on Hearts and Rangers coming up.

“Do I hope Rangers come up? The positives you miss, the negatives you don’t.

“It costs us £10-million a year without Rangers if they came back up, we’d progressively get that back.

“It depends on their ownership. Everyone would agree the ownership there has been questionable in the last three years.”

Celtic signed a multi-million pound kit deal with US sportswear company New Balance last week.

That could open the possibility of a tour to the USA, but that may be thwarted by the Hoops having to play in early Champions League qualifiers.

Lawwell went on: “Making it into the Champions League group stage is the transformer for us.

“Not just financially. It’s where we need to be as a club.

“For a club with our budget, I think we deserve pass marks for our record.

“We took a bit of stick for not beating the team who are 10th in Serie A. But Inter Milan’s wage bill is 100 million euros.

“That’s the reality of it. They get 80 million euros from their TV deal, while we get 2 million.

“Burnley could outbid us for a player now. They’ll get £100 million if they’re relegated this season.

“Burnley now financially dwarf Celtic. It’s ludicrous but it’s a sign of the times.”