Ticket prices are a long-time issue with fans feeling exploited and at last they are liaising with other clubs and getting their protests organised.
At a time when the Premier League has secured a 17% increase in TV rights over the next three-year cycle, their stupid actions have triggered protests, especially at a time of financial largesse of unbelievable proportions for players who do not strike many observers as obviously worth the money, or being in any way exceptional. Quite the reverse.
The feeling is that clubs, especially but not exclusively in the Premier League, are being run by people who simply do not care and see only spreadsheets. And yet, if that were true, they don’t seem to find financial fault with clubs endlessly lashing out money on players who, by any measure, are a waste of wages. Or overpaying good players who are lavished as though they are world beaters. Financial irresponsibility is legion and at almost every level. So much so that they have to try and balance the books by putting up prices.
If the clubs were actually run on financially sane principles, maybe they would have an argument, but asking fans for an average of 6.7% more so that they can pay that klutz of a right-back another 10 grand is taking the pish. As one West Ham fan said bitterly on hearing of price rises for concessionary tickets: “The amount of money they will save would cover Danny Ings’s wages for a month.”
Crystal Palace are the only non-promoted club not to lift their prices. As I said, the rise includes concessionary tickets. As if to be young, old or disabled is to be exploited by these vampires, just so you can pay a player five grand more a month.
I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to grow old if you follow a Premier League club. Why those smart-suited, sharp-hair-cutted ghouls would think, even in their cruel exploitative world, that pricing the loyalty of these fans out of the market is a good idea, shows the shallow depth of their intellect.
Clearly, financial regulations are having an impact with many clubs trying to generate more cash rather than do the obvious thing and have some control on spending and stop playing the wage inflation game. But equally clear is the establishment of a new strategy which sees what the pointy-shoed, hair-waxed, bearded, coke-snorting establishment dullards would call ‘legacy fans’ as less important than tourist visitors who spend more cash on everything.
They know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. It’s always the same with this economic model. It’s a losers’ mentality and those who propound it will eventually themselves suffer, despite them thinking they’re masters of the universe. If life doesn’t teach you that being selfish and cruel and exploitative is a recipe for unhappiness, then you’re not paying attention.
Football is love. And nothing good comes from abusing love. As one banner put it: ‘Local lad Sir Jim charges £66 for OAPs and juniors. Stop exploiting loyalty.’ They would probably think this is communism, they are so out of touch with life as lived by the people whose support they exploit. I suspect Covid taught them how unimportant fans are to revenue streams at most clubs.
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While big clubs like Manchester United or Spurs might make more than £100m from ticket sales across a season as part of a £600m-plus turnover, by the time you subtract policing costs, operational costs and other expenditure, it will be much less. Buy one fewer malfunctioning midfielder and you are not much worse off playing in front of nobody. If you recall, the players didn’t seem to mind and celebrated like the ground was full.
Smaller clubs like West Ham only took £52m gate money from £236m revenue. One or two players’ transfer fees and wages would cover that and no one can tell me every single one of the 23-man squad and eight loan players is crucial to finishing 12th.
They don’t need us, so if they piss a few thousand off with price rises, do the maths; it doesn’t really matter.
Years of passion, emotion and daily involvement just exploited like it’s nothing. That’s their very modern attitude, as though a football club is a regular business, albeit one that gets £150m of free money just for taking part, in a decidedly non-capitalist move. Subsidy is a dirty word to these thrusting executives, except when the Premier League dishes out the money.
They seem confused. They love to think they’re at the cutting edge of free-market liberalism and late-stage capitalism, draining the life-blood out of supporters for an extra few quid profit, but are propped up by the annual Premier League donation of free money, like they’re a communist collective.
It should be said that not everyone at every club are completely stupid b**tards, Brentford announced a policy to subsidise away tickets for under-18s so they will pay no more than £10. Away fans will also benefit from reduced prices for kids at the Gtech Community Stadium. So it can be done. A football club is a simple, usually quite small business. You’d have to be smoking some bad stuff to get it wrong. People turn up in thousands even if your product is rancid. In very few businesses can you churn out dross and retain customers. If I wrote dysfunctional, boring novels, I’d soon know about it and unlike these mohair-suited fools, I don’t get propped up with free money just for existing.
Brighton and Wolves backed down on increases under fan pressure. There’s only so much pish-taking clubs can do and relying on tourist trade over regular fans is a terrible long-term decision. I’m astounded they can’t see that. Undoubtedly, they are trying to follow an American model without realising it’s very different here, but these people are evidently so culturally blind, they can’t see it.
Broadcast rights are everything. We are nothing. If playing to empty stadiums doesn’t impact broadcast revenues, they’ll happily play to nobody. Though if the presence of fans means something financially, cross-club fan organisations have some power to shake these brain dead execs out of their capitalist self-delusion and pay respect to the people that effectively keep them in work. Push people too far and some will rise up and start putting hooks on lamp posts. Judgement day is coming for you shiny-suited cretins, don’t doubt it.
