Fanzines, bloggers, podcasters – The history of Celtic support’s media choices

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The Celtic Star

·5 December 2025

Fanzines, bloggers, podcasters – The history of Celtic support’s media choices

2025 marked a small anniversary in Celtic history – the 60th birthday of club newspaper, The Celtic View. This is the story of where Celtic supporters have got their Celtic news over the decades…

For years, the ‘View’ was a must-read for all Celtic fans. But it has not been the only way that Celtic fans have kept up-to-date with specific news and comments concerning their club. This article tells the story of the Celtic View, and all the other different ways that Celtic supporters have been able to find out about the Celts.

Former Celtic chairman Jack McGinn during the Scottish Premiership match between Celtic and theRangers at Celtic Park, . Photo Jeff Holmes

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The driving force behind the original publication of the Celtic View came from Jack McGinn (grandfather of Scottish footballers John, Paul and Stephen McGinn). In later years, he became Celtic chairman but in the 1960s he was working in the newspaper industry.

The Celtic View – A Celtic response to the hostile mainstream media

McGinn believed that Celtic could successfully publish their own newspaper. The rationale behind this was two-fold. There was a commercial opportunity to make money, but there was also a belief that fans would want to find out more about Celtic and bypass the often negative coverage which normal newspapers included.

Celtic 3 Benfica 0, European Cup, 12 November 1969. Celtic View feature on the game.

In many ways, the club could not have chosen a better time to start producing their own in-house newspaper. 1965 also coincided with the arrival of Jock Stein, and started a period of stratospheric success for the Hoops.

The name for this new newspaper was to be The Celtic View. It was first published on 11 August 1965, costing 4 pence. Its first front cover was a mixture of pictures, stories and also adverts. One of the stories explained the purpose of the ‘paper whilst the main story described Celtic boss Jock Stein’s decision to also work as Scotland manager.

Dan Drake – The Celtic supporter who attended Celtic’s first ever match talking to The Celtic View in early 1970s.

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The Celtic View was an immediate success

From the start, the View proved to be popular with fans, selling tens of thousands of copies in its first week, and building on this in the following years. Since that first copy, the look has changed numerous times, going from a black-and-white (and green!) newspaper-style to a full-colour magazine-style in more recent years.

The publication’s success stemmed from its inclusion of features which fans wanted to see. As well as interviews with players and the manager, there were also sections which covered club history, statistics and fixtures and other sections. Quizzes and fan photos help boost sales too.

Wee Green Book

However, as well-liked as the Celtic View became, it was far from the first club publication that was popular with supporters. As well as the Wee Green Book, the most obvious other one was the matchday programme. The CelticProgrammes.co.uk website gives a fascinating insight into the history of these.

There are examples of matchday programmes which can be found as far back as the 1920s, including a Celtic game versus Hearts in 1929. However, these were not official club publications and instead printed by a private company.

In 1946 Celtic finally published a match-day programme

In the aftermath of World War Two, Celtic did finally publish their own programme. This happened for the 1946 New Year’s Day game when Rangers came to Glasgow’s east end. The four-page publication was the only one of its kind made that season. Almost at the very end of 1946, Celtic printed another programme, this time for a visit by Clyde to Celtic Park. Thereafter, the publication of these documents became much more common.

In 1947-48, Celtic made a programme for every home game of the season. Although given that this was also the same year that the Bhoys came close to relegation – needing a last-day win to guarantee their safety – it could be seen as something of a jinx!

By the time the 1950s began, programmes were becoming a common sight at Celtic Park as well as grounds across Scotland and further afield. This was the era when they became an item for collectors, with many people keeping them as prized possessions.

Celtic stars Bonnar, Stein and Walsh with the Coronation Cup in 1953. Photo The Celtic Wiki

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There are numerous examples of matches from this era continuing to be sought after by modern day programme collectors. Obvious examples include the 1953 Coronation Cup final – when Celtic famously beat Hibs – and the Bhoys’ 7-1 demolition of Rangers in the 1957 League Cup.

Programmes served various purposes. They would generally include basic team information, as well as a range of adverts. There were usually also articles, perhaps telling club history or describing the Celts’ opponents.

On other occasions, the programme – and also the Celtic View – have been used a tool for the club to lecture supporters on their behaviour. There are numerous examples of this occurring from the 1960s through the 1990s, including manager comments on this.

As the years have gone on, programmes have become bigger and consequently more expensive. In the 1950s and 60s, programmes tended to cost around 3 pence, compared to now £4 for a standard home game and even £10 or more final for domestic cup finals. This is also true for the Celtic View which now costs £5.99 but was only 4 pence when first available.

Print sale declines affected The Celtic View

Partly related to this rise in costs, in recent years, the View and matchday programme have both suffered in the same way as the rest of the print media. Simply put, sales have fallen as fans increasingly get their Celtic news from generally free online sources.

This has led to an entirely new method of spreading Celtic news, history and commentary. In the early-2000s, blogs and forums became a popular way of Celtic fans having their say. This includes the still popular Huddleboard and others like Kerrydale Street or Celtic Noise.

This method of fan engagement has now become much more mainstream. Celtic fans wanting to read club news, history and commentary can visit websites such as The Celtic Star and the Celtic Blog. The potential fan media offers is also recognised by more established media outlets; for example, the Herald and Glasgow Times publish The Celtic Way website too alongside (the)Rangers Review. You can make your own judgements on whether that’s Celtic Fan Media or the mainstream media dressing itself up as Celtic Fan Media.

And of course, it is not just about the written word: podcasts and live broadcasts are now many people’s main method of learning about Celtic. It is often joked that every middle-aged Celtic fan has their own podcast! Sometimes these are even available as games are taking place.

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The Rise of the Celtic Podcasters

Now, the biggest of these is likely ACSOM (A Celtic state of mind) which not only offers regular podcasts but also has branched out into other events such as speakers and functions. As well as this there are numerous accounts including The Celtic Exchange, Trinity Ts*, 20 Minute Ts*, The Huddle Breakdown, the Grand Auld Podcast and 4 Ts* and a podcast.

However, the rise of online fan media was not the first time Celtic supporters were able to have their own say on club events. Across the decades there has been different ways that this has happened.

*Certain words cause us problems, like the H work and remarkably the T word too and also a six letter F word.

The (original) Shamrock Fanzine

Perhaps the most obvious of these are Celtic fanzines, of which there have been numerous examples. The earliest of these goes back to the 1960s. The Shamrock fanzine was produced by a supporters’ club based in Edinburgh. In recent years, a Celtic history fanzine using the same name has also been printed.

Not The View

However, although a Celtic fanzine was available in the 1960s, it was the 1980s when fanzines became hugely popular across all clubs in Britain. For Celtic, the most well-known of these publications is surely Not the View with its title referencing the official club newspaper.

Not the View – and other fanzines – became known for their irreverent approach. They could be hugely critical of the club when needed, and many people credit them for being an important part of the supporter campaigns to bring down Celtic’s old Board in the 1990s.

Since then, there have been numerous other fanzines, which have either started and disappeared or in some cases still exist. Examples of this include The Celt, the Alternative View, Once a Tim, More Than 90 Minutes, Bhoyzone, Tiocfaidh ar la, and Jungle Drums.

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Celtic books

As well as fanzines, there were other ways for fans to write about Celtic, in particular the club’s history. Celtic are one of the clubs in the world which surely have most books published concerning their story. Arguably the first official club book was The story of the Celtic, written by legendary manager Willie Maley and published in 1939.

Willie Maley’s book The Story of Celtic. Photo The Celtic Wiki

After this, there were other books, particularly player stories such as Charlie Tully, Jimmy Johnstone and Billy McNeill. The publication of renowned Celtic history book The glory and the dream in the 1980s started a real taste for Celtic history, and since then many club researchers have become well-known, including Pat Woods, Tom Campbell and David Potter.

Tom Campbell and Pat Woods, co-authors of The Glory and The Dream. Photo The Celtic Star

In more recent years – and especially with the rise of self-publication – there has been an explosion in the number of books which are available, often printed by Celtic-specific publishers such as The Celtic Star or Celtic Quick News (all incidentally published by The Celtic Star Editor David Faulds) . The late Celtic historian David Potter once remarked that there could never be enough Celtic history books, and this will remain the case as long as there are new stories to tell.

David Potter, Celtic Historian and Author.

Despite predictions of the end of the so-called ‘mainstream media’, one of the main ways that Celtic supporters – and fans of all clubs – can find out about their team is TV, radio and newspapers. However, there are so many other options too if Celtic fans want club specific stories.

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Celtic Fan Survey

The recently released Celtic Fan Survey, with over 38,768 supporters responding to this question, provided some clarity into where supporters were getting their Celtic FC news from just over 18 months ago. Since then newspaper circulations have fallen further and that is a terminal decline.

In the 1970s and 80s The Sunday Mail would sell over 1m copies per week, with Sunday Post being a close rival and the biggest daily newspaper was Daily Record with a circulation of around 800k, selling six days a week.

The most record circulation figures published on trade outlet Press Gazette, shows that for October 2025 these three newspapers now sell just over 100k copies per edition COMBINED. The Daily Record is selling 38,228 copies per edition, The Sunday Mail shifts 35,328 copies every Sunday and The Sunday Post is down to just 27,109 copies. The year on year decrease is 17% for Daily Record and Sunday Post and 20% for Sunday Mail.

This has commonly been the case since the 1950s and 1960s, especially with the first publication of the Celtic View. The rise of the internet age has again altered how this happens. No-one knows for sure what the next change will be, but it surely won’t be long before someone suggests implants which send messages straight to your brain!

Matthew Marr

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