David Kells

Celtic Board – Past | Celtic Board | About Celtic

Lancashire born David Kells was appointed a Celtic Commercial Director and an executive director of the Football Board in March 1999 following a three month trial period. His background was as a director with United Biscuits. His remit covered hospitality, catering, retail, ticketing and all revenue producing areas. He was responsible with the new company secretary Heather Anne Barton for getting the NTL shirt sponsorship deal organised and sorted.

With his leadership the club sought two large screens for use within the stadium to show events and advertising during the game and to be used for beambacks of away games to the stadium, thus generating another line of income for the club. He wanted to buy screens that could be removed easily and hired out for outdoor events (mainly gigs – T In The Park, for example). The screens were sourced and bought at some quite considerable expense (some reports say £1.00 million, others £2.00million). The problems started when they were fixed to the roofs of the Jock Stein and Lisbon Lions stands in July 1999. The roofs were not structurally designed to support the weight of the screens, which instituted somewhat of a rammy at Celtic Towers. Then it turned out that the screens that had been purchased were meant to be used for indoor events and were constantly breaking down in an outside environment. This meant that for a very long period that only one screen worked, the rumour being that the other screen was being cannibalised for parts to keep one screen fully functioning. It didn’t help that the company that sourced and maintained the screens went into liquidation. The screens also had to be turned off whilst the structural alterations were made to the roofs.

With this debacle hanging over him, David Kells left Celtic in February 2000. He would go on to be appointed Chief Executive of the National Stadium at Hampden Park in July 2000. Speaking about his experience with Celtic, he said that working with Celtic is something most only dream of and that the highlight of his time there was the NTL sponsorship deal (certainly not the Big Screens anyway). He said that the sponsorship deal was a record for Scottish football and showed there are benefits when Celtic and Rangers work together commercially.

In 2007 the screens were cited as major energy wasters in a Green survey of Glasgow. The screens had to be kept on all the time wasting a vast amount of energy. A spokesman for the club said that there were technical problems shutting down the screens for any length of time.

He was subsequently involved in a good deal of controversy over the Hampden pitch state for football internationals following the use of the pitch area for other activities such as American football and rock concerts. The condition of the turf at Hampden is a perennial problem with the surface needing to be regularly replaced due to a lack of light.