Dom McKay Is Thinking Big in Glasgow After His Strange Celtic Stay

Dominic McKay popped up this week talking about his plans for the Scottish Event Campus and it was difficult to watch without thinking about Celtic.

Not because he said anything about the club. He didn’t. McKay has been chief executive of the SEC since May 2025 and was discussing where he wants to take the Glasgow campus in the years ahead.

It was more the way he spoke about it.

The SEC is already hugely successful. Around 2.5 million people visit the campus each year and its events contribute hundreds of millions to the Scottish economy. McKay isn’t looking at those numbers and deciding the job is done.

There are plans being considered for new indoor and outdoor venues, hotels, homes and hospitality across the 64-acre site. He has spoken about parts of the campus “creaking at the seams”, while his team have been encouraged to work with a “clean slate” and consider what the place needs to become.

Then there were the cities he mentioned when discussing Glasgow’s competition.

Melbourne, Paris, London, New York, Lisbon and Bilbao.

McKay is looking beyond Scotland and asking where Glasgow should sit internationally.

Celtic supporters might remember hearing similar noises in 2021.

McKay was supposed to represent a new era at Celtic. Peter Lawwell had been chief executive for 17 years and his successor was coming from outside the club’s existing executive structure.

Celtic couldn’t have spoken more highly of him when the appointment was made. Then chairman Ian Bankier called McKay an executive of the “highest calibre” and praised his “formidable talents”.

McKay himself started talking about modernising Celtic. He spoke about the club needing to evolve and develop, and he made an effort to communicate differently, including engaging with fan media.

Then he was gone.

McKay officially took over as chief executive on 1 July 2021. On 10 September, Celtic announced his departure.

Seventy-one days.

Celtic said he had left for personal reasons and McKay has stuck to that explanation. Asked about it again earlier this year, he also dismissed the idea that there had been some dramatic boardroom bust-up.

“No, I didn’t fall out with anybody,” he told BBC ScotsCast.

There is no point pretending we know something that has never been made public.

We do remember what followed, though.

Reports appeared questioning whether McKay had been suited to the Celtic job, with suggestions around the time that he had been out of his depth. Ange Postecoglou appeared to know little about what was coming, admitting he was “as surprised as anyone”.

The out-of-his-depth stuff is interesting to read back now.

McKay went on to become chairman and then executive chairman of European Professional Club Rugby. He has now been running the SEC since May last year and is fronting plans for the future of one of Glasgow’s biggest venues.

Whatever happened during those 71 days, it clearly didn’t do much damage to his standing elsewhere.

Perhaps the most Celtic part of the story came after he left.

McKay had spent his brief time at the club talking about modernisation.

Michael Nicholson replaced him, initially on an acting basis before getting the job permanently. Nicholson had already been at Celtic since 2013.

Celtic welcomed his appointment by praising the “important continuity” it provided.

Five years later, modernisation is still a word you hear regularly from supporters, although usually now as something they believe Celtic need rather than something being delivered.

It goes far beyond buying players.

There are supporters who want to see a football operation befitting a club of Celtic’s size, with proper long-term recruitment planning and an infrastructure that doesn’t seem to require another reset every time a manager changes.

Look around Celtic Park and the same questions exist.

The stadium remains one of Britain’s great football grounds, but parts of it are showing their age. Supporters have talked for years about improving the matchday experience, developing the surrounding land and creating proper fan zones rather than treating Celtic Park as somewhere 60,000 people arrive at shortly before kick-off and leave immediately afterwards.

There has been progress in areas around the club, but there is also a feeling among a sizeable section of the support that Celtic could be so much more ambitious with the advantages they already have.

That’s where watching McKay this week becomes uncomfortable.

Here is the former Celtic chief executive looking at a successful Glasgow institution and asking what it should look like ten or twenty years from now.

He’s talking about international competitors. He’s openly acknowledging that existing facilities need work. He’s looking at unused land and considering what can be built there.

Then you look at Celtic’s current custodians.

Many of the same faces have occupied positions of influence around Celtic Park for years. Peter Lawwell left the chief executive’s office and subsequently returned as chairman. Michael Nicholson had already spent eight years at the club before succeeding McKay and remains chief executive today.

That longevity will be defended as experience and stability. Plenty of Celtic supporters will look at it and baulk.

Not because everything Celtic have done has failed. That would be ridiculous given the trophies won and the financial position built during this period.

The frustration comes from wondering what Celtic could be rather than what Celtic already are.

That is why McKay’s words land differently.

Celtic once appointed him to succeed a chief executive who had been there for 17 years. He arrived talking about modernisation and lasted 71 days.

Five years later, Celtic supporters are still talking about modernisation, while McKay is across the city getting on with his version of it.

You don’t need to invent a story about why Dominic McKay left Celtic to appreciate the irony in that.