Infrastructure of Dissent, Factionalism and the Battle for Accountability | OneFootball

A Peek Behind the Curtain: The Infrastructure of Dissent, Factionalism, and the Battle for Accountability. It’s the latest controversial column on Celtic Shorts by Colin Dempster…

Colin Dempster

Running my engineering eye over the modern football club, it is clear that the machinery of power is heavily insulated by a sophisticated corporate communications apparatus.

Boardrooms operate behind clinical financial narratives, often supported by traditional media channels that prioritise institutional access over rigorous scrutiny.

However, beneath the official PR gloss lies a parallel, highly structured network of independent supporter organisations and alternative channels. As a fan media journalist for Celtic Shorts, Yahoo Sports, OneFootball, and LiveScore, I have watched and read countless hours of this ecosystem. To truly understand how modern football governance is challenged, one must look behind the curtain at the mechanics, divisions, and financial leverage of these grassroots movements.

The independent fan ecosystem is not a monolith; it is an interconnected network driven by distinct factions operating across the local and global landscape. Understanding who these groups are, how they coordinate, and the strategic choices they face reveals the true architecture of modern supporter activism.

The layers of the supporter ecosystem

The active resistance movement is built upon three distinct, operational pillars, each serving a unique function in challenging executive leadership:

Celtic fans banner marking poor European performances displayed by the Green Brigade. Celtic v Falkirk, Scottish Premiership, Celtic Park – 29 August 2026 Photo Stuart Wallace Shutterstock/IMAGO

The Match-day Vanguard: These are the collective groups located within the stadium standing sections. Operating without a centralised corporate hierarchy . Their focus is primarily cultural and visual—utilising large-scale tifo displays, coordinated vocal support, and match-day actions to preserve a traditional, working-class identity against hyper-commercialisation. Because their political expressions frequently clash with corporate compliance frameworks and regulatory bodies, they represent a persistent operational challenge for stadium executives.

Celtic v theRangers – Scottish Premiership – Celtic Supporters hold up a Let Celtic Flourish banner during the match at Celtic Park on Sunday September 1, 2024. Photo Steve Welsh

The Strategic Umbrella: This arm serves as the intellectual, boardroom-facing engine of the movement. Led by figures within the independent media landscape, this collective acts as a unified front to bypass traditional media blockages. Rather than relying solely on emotional matchday protests, this faction focuses heavily on corporate audits, data analysis, and structured campaigns designed to force institutional reform.

Celtic supporters at Celtic Park for the 2026 title showdown with Hearts. Celtic 3 Hearts 1. Photo Vagelis Georgariou

The Global Diaspora and Traditional Networks: Beyond the local stadium footprint lies a massive international network, including organised supporter hubs across Europe, North America, Canada, Ireland, Australia, the wider Australasian region, and the Middle East, alongside long-standing domestic travel associations.

Historically focused on matchday logistics and localised community hubs, these groups have increasingly aligned with the modern protest movement. For overseas supporters who rely entirely on digital streaming and independent channels to connect with the club, corporate stagnation and a perceived lack of sporting ambition are viewed as a direct failure of governance.

8th March 2026 Ibrox , Scottish Cup, Rangers versus Celtic. The Celtic Board in the main stand. Photo Vagelis Georgariou

Weaponising the Balance Sheet: The mechanics of financial leverage

The defining turning point of modern fan activism occurs when emotional frustration is translated into direct economic action. Recognising that executive boards frequently insulate themselves from verbal criticism, supporter collectives have developed sophisticated models of targeted financial disruption.

The premier example of this is the strategic implementation of targeted consumer boycotts. The design of these campaigns addresses a critical tactical question: How do supporters pressure a board without actively damaging the sporting integrity of the team on the pitch?

The solution relies on a strict operational division:

Guaranteed Stability: Supporters maintain their core commitments by continuing to purchase matchday tickets and renewing season registrations. This ensures the playing squad is fully insulated, matchday attendance remains at maximum capacity, and the club’s essential revenue baseline is protected.

Targeted choking: Supporters systematically withhold all discretionary spending. This includes a synchronised refusal to purchase official retail merchandise, training wear, club-run stadium tours and food or beverages within the concourses on match days.

Celtic supporters at

Hibs v Celtic, Easter Road, Scottish Premiership, 3 May 2026. Photo Photograph by Vagelis Georgariou

The real-world effect of this strategy is immediate and measurable. While essential ticketing revenue remains stable, high-margin retail pipelines and stadium operations suffer immediate drops. In highly synchronised campaigns, this selective starvation of optional revenue streams has successfully stripped away the commercial padding that executives use to justify static business models, forcing clubs to report distinct financial losses and bringing corporate complacency directly to light.

Factional operations and tangible results

To understand how this infrastructure functions under pressure, one must look at the explicit operations carried out by different arms of the support and the exact changes they have forced upon the hierarchy:

The Radical Boycott Strategy: Matchday groups deployed immediate, targeted pressure by organising walkouts, enforcing complete stadium-kiosk blackouts, and refusing to purchase seasonal merchandise. Rather than merely venting on digital fan media comms, they transformed consumer spending into a literal blockade.

7th December 2025; Celtic Park,Celtic Fan Protest; photo Geo.

The Corporate Accountability Campaign: The strategic umbrella groups executed a highly organised commercial boycott designed to starve the executive suite of its optional corporate margin. They weaponised the financial data, successfully showing the broader support that compliance-driven business models were masking sporting stagnation.

The Shareholder and Legal Audits: Democratic cooperatives utilised small-scale shareholding power to directly confront the executive leadership within seasonal meetings. They stripped away performative focus groups, demanding independent fan representation, transparent ticketing operations, and an immediate end to executive nepotism.

The published year-end financial figures prove that this targeted economic disruption achieved immediate, undeniable results across the club’s bottom line:

A multi-million retail plunge: While core ticketing revenue held completely steady at £49.1 million, the synchronised refusal to buy merchandise sent optional commercial and sponsorship income into a freefall, registering a £4.4 million drop, which is a 12% plunge.

Choking Stadium Profitability: By completely avoiding concourse food, beverages, programs, and luxury club tours, supporters delivered an immediate 25% hit to matchday stadium operations, shaving £2.7 million off corporate cash flows.

7th December 2025; Celtic Park, Celtic Fan Protest; photo Geo

Exposing the Corporate Alibi: This combined £7.1 million hit to optional spending tore down the boardroom’s narrative of flawless business management. It forced the club to publish a £4.8 million post-tax financial loss, permanently stripping away the executive excuse that financial prudence justifies sporting stagnation.

The failure of fragmentation versus the democratic mandate

For a long time, boardrooms have relied on a classic divide and conquer strategy to maintain their tight grip on power. Corporate PR teams and traditional media gatekeepers actively exploit the natural cracks in a fractured supporter base.

They deliberately paint match day ultras as an isolated fringe element, dismiss independent online forums as uncoordinated keyboard chatter, and treat long-distance diaspora networks merely as a passive revenue stream to be harvested for merchandise sales.

7th December 2025; Celtic Park, Celtic Fan Protest; Photo Geo

When the supporter movement remains fragmented, it plays directly into the hands of the executive suite. The everyday match-goer is left feeling deeply confused and alienated by different factions pulling in completely opposite directions.

One group calls for a stadium walkout, another asks for a peaceful protest, and a third defends the board’s long-term financial caution. This tactical chaos creates an atmosphere of paralysis, allowing executives to completely ignore fan frustration because there is no single, authoritative voice holding them to account.

This is precisely why a complete amalgamation under a structured, democratic umbrella is the only true way to force institutional change.

By uniting different supporter clubs, travel associations, and stadium factions under a single banner, the movement moves past emotional, short-lived outcries and builds a formal Supporter Union. When every everyday fan who joins is given an equal, democratic vote, the movement establishes an undeniable, mass democratic mandate. It creates a bulletproof legitimacy that the boardroom can no longer patronise or sweep under the rug.

A unified, democratic block completely upends the power dynamic in three distinct ways:

Leaders should be voted in: True democratic legitimacy cannot be engineered from the top down or appointed behind closed doors. To maintain absolute accountability to the rank-and-file membership, the leaders of this unified front must be elected through direct, transparent voting processes open to every single member. Voting leaders in ensures that the executive command of the movement remains directly answerable to the people, preventing internal co-optation and keeping the strategic goals tightly aligned with the raw will of the supporter base.

7th December 2025; Celtic Park, : Celtic Fan Protest; photo Geo

A single, unavoidable financial weapon: Instead of disjointed, localised protests that only dent minor income pipelines, a massive, amalgamated front can coordinate economic campaigns globally. When supporters clubs, local stadium match-goers, and the entire international diaspora networks act as one single, disciplined block, they control millions of pounds in discretionary revenue. They can turn a regional dispute into a highly synchronised, devastating multi-million-pound hit to retail and stadium cash flows that forces the corporate executives to capitulate.

The power of legal and collective bargaining: A formalised, democratic collective carries the structural weight of a professional union. Because anyone across the globe can join, the movement completely smashes geographic boundaries, transforming a local stadium protest into a massive international block.

When representatives walk into operational meetings backed by a registered, voting membership that draws directly from a global fanbase of millions, they are no longer just individual internet commentators. They represent the literal lifeblood and the primary financial engine of the institution, forcing the hierarchy to negotiate on matters of ticketing, governance, and structural transparency with the same legal seriousness they would afford a major corporate partner.

Cutting through the noise: Most importantly, an amalgamated structure completely removes the confusion that paralyses the wider fanbase. It strips away the internal drama, the conflicting statements, and the factional infighting. It provides the ordinary, non-aligned supporter with a clear, transparent, and democratic portal to have their voice counted.

Dermot Desmond prior to the Celtic vs St Mirren Scottish Premiership match at Celtic Park on May 20, 2023. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

The boardroom does not fear a fragmented fan media ecosystem trading arguments online. What terrifies the executive suite is an organised, intellectually unified support that refuses to be split by corporate spin. By trading fragmentation for democratic amalgamation, the fans build an institutional power that can directly challenge the boardroom, hold the leadership to account, and permanently shape the future direction of the club.

Confronting the spreadsheet cynicism

Despite measurable successes, a common counter-argument frequently surfaces within independent media spaces, typically driven by commentators who argue that consumer boycotts are ineffective. The core of this cynicism rests on a surface-level observation: The boardroom executives remain in office, the primary billionaire shareholders still hold ultimate equity control, and a localised drop in sales is dismissed as mere figures on a spreadsheet.

From this perspective, ordinary supporters are left wondering why they should make individual sacrifices—such as refusing to buy their children official replica jerseys or refraining from purchasing food at the stadium—when the structural leadership appears entirely unmoved.

This argument, however, highlights the exact psychological trap that keeps a corporate hierarchy in power. A professional boardroom relies heavily on the assumption that fans will prioritise immediate consumer convenience and tradition over long-term structural organisation.

7th December 2025; Celtic Park, Celtic Fan Protest; Photo Geo

When supporters act solely as uncoordinated individuals, buying merchandise and stadium food based on immediate personal desires, the board views this compliance as validation. A packed stadium store sends a direct message to executives that no matter how stagnant the product is on the pitch, the consumer base will keep funding the status quo.

Furthermore, dismissing financial deficits as just figures on a spreadsheet fundamentally misunderstands corporate anatomy. To a billionaire shareholder or a corporate executive, the spreadsheet is the only language that carries legal and operational meaning. They do not manage the club based on the emotional temperature of fan forums or phone-ins; they manage it based on balance sheets.

When a campaign forces a multi-million-pound commercial drop and triggers a significant post-tax loss, it strips away their executive cover, presenting an unvarnished audit to institutional banks, backers, and brand partners that corporate complacency is actively destroying the brand’s equity.

The blueprint for a smarter football department

To completely dismantle the board’s defensive narrative, the unified movement must clearly define its true sporting objective. The boardroom’s corporate PR machine consistently tries to misrepresent the protest, falsely claiming that dissenting fans are demanding reckless, unaligned hyper-inflation or asking the club to spend money it does not possess. This is a deliberate distortion.

Michael Nicholson, Chief Executive of Celtic and interim Chairman Brian Wilson arrives at the stadium before the Premier Sports Cup Quarter Final match between Rangers and Celtic at Ibrox Stadium on September 13, 2026. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

The core vision of the collective mandate has never been about forcing the club to overspend above its organic means. It is not a call for fiscal irresponsibility, nor is it an emotional demand to run the business into catastrophic debt. Instead, the objective is centred entirely on a structural revolution: demanding that the club operate with far greater intelligence, sophistication, and modernisation across the entire football department.

A high-level engineering critique of the club’s current model reveals an acute operational bottleneck. The problem isn’t a lack of raw capital; it is a profound infrastructure deficit. While the boardroom hoards cash reserves and prioritises short-term balance sheet stability, the actual sporting engine—the recruitment structures, data analytics, global scouting tracking, and performance departments—has been left to rot.

The collective vision points directly to the club’s European counterparts as a definitive proof of concept.

Across continental Europe, multiple clubs operating with identical revenue streams, matching turnover limitations, and similar domestic constraints consistently outperform our current setup on the European stage. They do not achieve this through reckless deficit spending; they achieve it by being fundamentally smarter.

They invest heavily in world-class sporting directors, build highly advanced algorithmic scouting networks, and create seamless, multi-club or data-driven player pathways that maximise the value of every single pound generated. By aligning the entire support around this exact blueprint, the movement proves that its goal is not economic vandalism, but elite structural evolution.

The sleeping giant: Tracing the lost fan equity of the Da’s

To translate this structural vision into a legal reality, the amalgamated movement must weaponise the single group of people capable of completely shattering the boardroom’s defence: the traditional generation of supporters who built the club’s financial bedrock.

These are the long-standing fans—frequently referred to as the traditional Celtic Da’s—who stepped forward in early 1995 during the original stock exchange flotation to rescue the institution. Over 10,000 ordinary fans collectively answered the call, contributing millions and taking up an incredible 40% of the issued share capital at the time.

Fergus McCann Celtic director MD with model of new east Stand for Celtic Park

Over the last thirty years, through subsequent consolidations, share issues, and dilution, that ordinary individual fan ownership has settled at an explicit 17.5% of the club’s entire registry, representing roughly 16.5 million shares split among approximately 27,700 individual small shareholders.

However, a staggering volume of those physical, paper share certificates are currently lying completely dormant—lost in old cupboards, tucked away in drawers, forgotten by families, or passed down to children who are entirely unaware of their legal value. Financial analysts estimate that up to 20% of the club’s entire share registry is currently dormant or untraced.

Because a Public Limited Company is strictly governed by share percentages rather than individual head counts, unearthing this dormant capital is where the ultimate battle for accountability is won.

A crucial conversation must happen around family dinner tables globally to locate these forgotten papers. Supporter networks have a direct, professional pipeline to mobilise this hidden power through specialised corporate initiatives like Celtic Supporters Limited, fronted by financial expert David Low alongside business leaders Duncan Smillie and Peter McGowan.

This group specialises in tracing these lost holdings and coordinating proxy votes under a single, unified banner. The barrier has historically been a lack of corporate navigation; a member of the older generation knows he holds a certificate from 1995 but has zero desire to navigate stockbroker portals or track complex filings.

This is where the family conversation changes the game. The younger, digitally native generation must execute the heavy lifting: retrieve the physical certificate, identify the shareholder reference number, and contact the tracing vehicle.

Individual fans do not need to attend the AGM in person or face hostile floor mechanics to establish a significant say at boardroom level. By collecting these documents and legally appointing an amalgamated proxy, the fanbase stops acting merely as an external consumer protest.

It enters the annual general meeting as an undeniable corporate force. Legally assigning proxy votes directly to a unified vehicle instantly binds thousands of small holdings into a singular block of equity. Gaining control of even a fraction of that untraced 17.5% individual block completely changes the boardroom mathematics, turning dead capital inside a cupboard into an active corporate weapon capable of blocking director reappointments, halting unaligned restructuring, and forcing a direct seat at the table.

The true measure of impact

To measure the true impact of supporter activism, we must look past the superficial metrics of internet noise, short-lived stadium walkouts, or localised protests. Real, lasting impact is achieved only when separate, fragmented factions completely abandon their isolated identities and commit to total democratic amalgamation.

In the highly sophisticated arena of corporate football business, fragmentation is an absolute guarantee of defeat; complete structural consolidation is the only major winner capable of altering the balance of power. When a fanbase remains fractured into distinct subcultures, it operates as a collection of uncoordinated voices. The boardroom can safely isolate these individual factions, ignoring one while placating another with performative, hand-picked consultation boxes.

Complete amalgamation dismantles this defensive shield entirely. By building a formal, unified Supporter Union where every single participant holds an equal vote and leaders are transparently elected, the movement transforms from a loose protest network into a rigid, non-co-optable entity.

It establishes an undeniable democratic mandate representing the absolute lifeblood of the institution—a commercial and cultural force that corporate executives can neither patronise nor sweep under the rug.

This unified consolidation fundamentally alters how the fans fight the club, changing the battle from a series of emotional complaints into an unyielding economic siege. While fragmented groups trap the fanbase in internal drama and mass confusion, an amalgamated front provides absolute clarity to the ordinary supporter, allowing millions across the globe to act with synchronised discipline.

This collective leverage allows the support to step past the rigged voting system of Public Limited Companies and strike the boardroom directly in the commercial ledger. By concentrating their economic power into a singular, devastating multi-million-pound black hole, a unified fanbase strips away the corporate padding that shields executive complacency.

The ultimate achievement of this total mobilisation is not the destruction of the institution, but its forced modernisation. Underneath the temporary noise of boardroom friction and matchday frustration lies a profound, undeniable note of hope—a sentiment the fanbase needs right now more than ever.

By stepping past the rigged mechanics of corporate governance, unearthing the forgotten generational equity of the past, and constructing a transparent, global democratic union, the support has proved that the ultimate power still resides with ordinary people.

The fanbase is no longer just waiting for permission to be heard, nor is it trapped in an endless loop of cynical, passive complaint. From the local streets surrounding the stadium to the far-reaching supporter clubs of Europe, North America, Canada, Ireland, the Middle East, and Australasia, a global community is actively building the blueprint for a modern, accountable, and transparent football club.

When the fans choose to look past the temporary exhaustion and speak through one single, unyielding democratic voice, the doom and gloom evaporates. It exposes a permanent reality that the boardroom cannot buy, spin, nor break: the future of this cultural institution belongs entirely to the people who love it.

AS SUPPORTERS, PLEASE URGE THESE DISSIDENT GROUPS TO UNITE AS ONE INTO A UNION OF CELTIC SUPPORTERS.

Colin Dempster

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