WE are all the same. I am you. You are me. We are all just sentient sacks of meat, strapped to a lump of rock by gravity, hurtling through the infinity of the cosmos, writes IAIN MACINTOSH on The Set Pieces. Ignore Nigel Farage. Ignore Katie Hopkins. Forget about their politics of division. We are inconsequential lumps of matter in the eternity of nothing. So let’s stick together, eh? Let’s at least try to bring ticket prices down.
Nothing in football is as depressing as the way rival supporters turn on each other, dividing and conquering themselves for the benefit of the rich. Next week, Liverpool supporters will boycott their trip to Hull rather than pay £50 a ticket. Now, you might consider £50 a price worth paying for Premier League football. Those footballers are, after all, really good at football. But Hull don’t charge all away fans £50 a ticket. They charged Everton £35 a ticket. They charged Stoke £16 a ticket.
Will rival supporters back the Liverpool fans in their battle? Will they bollocks. First they will point out that £50 is not dissimilar to what you’d pay at Anfield, as if the Liverpool fans are delighted about the prices there as well. Then they’ll do what they did to the Manchester City fans who had to pay £64 a ticket at Arsenal. They’ll mock and sneer on social media. They may, if we’re really lucky, make jokes about Scousers and dole money.
https://twitter.com/spiritofshankly/status/590811967801204736
I recall with a shudder the tweeter who told me that City fans couldn’t moan about ticket prices because their transfer policy demonstrated that they clearly weren’t short of a few quid. As if Sheikh Mansour’s wealth had been magically redistributed amongst the supporter base. Or the Arsenal fan who said that if charging £64 a ticket was what it took to match City’s financial muscle, then so be it.
Up and down the country, the same people who proudly declare football to be the sport of the working class, gleefully allied themselves with wealth and then threw their fellow supporter under a bus.
You don’t have to make everything a partisan issue. It’s okay to hate a football club, but to still find common ground with their supporters. Take Chelsea for example. No-one likes Chelsea. We have the stats to prove it. If they somehow screw up the title, you are more than entitled to laugh at them. In fact, I demand it of you. But don’t laugh at their supporters when they’re told to pay £55 for an away day at Loftus Road. Because if QPR do it to them and no-one makes a fuss, they’ll do it to you too.
You can hate Liverpool if you like. Pick a reason: Suarez? Brenton Rodgers? Ian Ayre arbitrarily deciding that Liverpool should have more TV revenue on the basis of intangible ‘big club’ qualities? Knock yourself out. But don’t hate their fans for actually having the balls to try and do something. Because they do it, and the next club does it and your club does it, then maybe things will change. We’re certainly not getting anywhere with retweets and likes, are we?
James Clark wrote powerfully about the battle between football and its supporters and he concluded that it was lost long ago. I don’t believe that. I believe that there is now so much money sloshing around in football that there is no longer an incentive to keep ticket prices so high, not when it’s set against the benefit of full, noisy stadiums.
I believe that the Premier League realises this. Once I believed that the people who worked there sat upon thrones made of kitten skulls and sent fire-eyed ravens to do their bidding. In transpires that this is only true in isolated cases. Most of them are okay. And they’re definitely not stupid.
If they see solidarity from supporters, they will take note. If they see a movement that threatens the earnings of their members, they will be forced to take action. They may have to listen to the Football Supporters Federation’s idea about a £20 maximum price for away tickets. But all of that progress is compromised every time you take the piss on Twitter. What is wrong with you? Do you like paying more money?
Look at you. You’re like me. You’re like him in the Liverpool shirt and you’re like her in the Chelsea hat. Save for being a sentient sack of space meat, you have nothing in common with Jose Mourinho. You have nothing in common with Wayne Rooney. You have nothing in common with Daniel Levy. You have nothing in common with Richard Scudamore. Stop siding with them. Stop fighting their battles for them. Stand together with your own people or roll down your trousers and assume the position. But don’t come bleating to me the next time you get hit for a £60 ticket.
First published on The Set Pieces
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Pics: David Rawcliffe-Propaganda-Photo
Fans don’t matter to the clubs. Time to wake up. We are all replaceable. Even before we had the obscene money in the PL, BSB were talking about paying people to turn up and create atmosphere should the regular fans stay at home watching on the box.
If you want to make an impact, stop going to all games. Hull having a few empty seats is the status quo. Do it at Anfield for several months instead.
I think that’s almost impossible or they would. You have a choice at the start of the season, renew your ST or don’t. If you don’t it goes to someone else. The majority of the ground for each game is paid up already and the limited number of match day tickets will get snapped up by people who see it as an opportunity to go to a match. That’s how some people are.
As a side note, the bloke I started going to LFC matches with was got a ST in the early 80’s. His letter to renew got lost in the post. They gave his ST to someone else and no amount of pleading could get it back. He watches Chester now. Refuses to go.
How does this work Paul? What are the logistics of it? Are you talking paying c. 50 quid then not going? Or do you mean just not buying a ticket, in which case how do you stop the next person buying it?
What about season ticket holders? Do they sit at home having paid 800 quid up front? It’s not that simple.
In this instance it’s an opportunity to make a statement. A workable one, a feasible one. Fans should be welcoming this. Because if you just let it happen it will happen. Nothing was ever achieved by doing fuck all.
Great stuff.
There is a reckoning coming. The average age of an EPL season ticket holder has nearly double in a few decades. The top clubs charging the most for tickets still receive a smaller proportion of their income in gate money than the other clubs. So a few fans staying away doesn’t hit them in the pocket. But as with most things, there is a tipping point.
One of the reasons the EPL sells around the world is the fans. The atmospheres we create, the full stadiums…the fans are an integral part of what makes the EPL so marketable. Try holding out for a billion dollar TV rights deal if the home punter is sat watching games played to half-empty stadiums completely devoid of any atmosphere. Try attracting the elite players to that sort of competition.
Market forces have dictated that until now clubs can get away with what amounts to virtual blackmail on ticket prices, but market forces tend to produce their own corrections, too. Fans saying “we’ve had enough” who are not simply replaced by other fans who have higher tolerances (hence the need for solidarity) can provide that correction.
As individuals we can do nothing. As a collective we hold all the power.
Great article especially the last paragraph. The first thought that I’ve had, is that you have to remember that 99.99% of the wankers on twitter don’t actually go to any of the football matches – home or especially away.
That’s very condescending of you. Some of us can’t go because we’re stuck overseas. And aren’t rich enough to afford to the flight over. When I checked 3 months ago, I could fly to London for $1,000(US dollars). A plane ticket to St. Petersburg(Yes, Russia)? $500!! So it’s not only football ticket prices that are out of wack. If I was as rich as that craphead Farage, I’d be traveling across the pond 4 times a year for games.
We don’t have the global support to replace priced out fans. So when we play Roma/Moscow etc real fans can’t afford it and then we get Rio Ferdinand laughing on twitter.
He will get 20k retweets and people will think he’s some comedian but they don’t see he’s actually mocking the working class.
Yeah mate. I just found my tweet to him from October 1st.
@rioferdy5 Must be great being a millionaire and being able to laugh at people who can’t afford a £55 ticket to go and watch a match.
I think a lot of people missed that point. I was disappointed he didn’t retweet it.
I know – Theyre the kind of divvies who put defending their club before anything else. But expecting people to see the bigger picture is asking a bit much, as we’ll no doubt see in the coming general election…..
Ticket revenue is jam. Club’s make their main money flogging the club’s arse to T.V. which in turn helps sell the merch.
Ultimately the unholy alliance of T.V. and ‘The Premiership’™® effectively ended the whole the-club-belongs-to-you myth when the corporates and billionaires saw that it could be made into a full-on money-making, share optioning, stock market listing business. If supporters want to delude themselves that the club is in some way ‘theirs’ then good luck to them. Ask Newcastle fans how that’s going. Football clubs, with a few aberrant exceptions, have become rich mans playthings / tax write offs / fraudster magnets. Just hand over your money for the official club the shirt and join ‘The Footballing Family’ ©FIFA.
With regards to crowd attendance – how many games have been on TV in recent years where the stadiums have had empty seats? Loads. Excuses are plentiful and frequent and the matches get played regardless. Low attendances, spectators wandering back 10 – 15 minutes into the second half, leaving 10 – 15 minutes before the end – it all makes not a jot of difference to the Sky customer sitting on his sofa at home, they really couldn’t give a shit either way.
Football now is either supporting an AFC Liverpool or a Liverpool F.C.. You pays your money and you makes your choice.
Thing is mate, I’m not so stupid to think we can change football. We can’t. Football clubs will be owned by rich businessmen for the foreseeable. I’m shocked to hear you so accepting of the things you can change though. I can imagine it in Boston – Softlad will moan if we add 20% to the ticket price but he’ll be alright in a few weeks and accept that’s just how it is.
It’s not my ‘opinion’ that clubs will listen to the fans – it’s fact. SOS have had some successes already. The club won’t bend over backwards but there is a point they have to listen. In their business terms we’re customers and no business can survive without it’s customers. Do you think Hull will charge Liverpool fans 3 times the price of a Stoke ticket next year? I’d say it’s highly unlikely. Iain’s right, unity is the key.
Until recently, I was told that I was an armchair supporter. Now, apparently, I’m a political-activist.
#whodathunkit?
At least the streams are getting a bit better and so am I at closing down those pop-up ads in the correct order and smartly avoiding the fake X’s.