During the fallout from the Liverpool ticket U-turn, Imogen Goulding of lastwordonsports wrote an excellent article about the dangers of increasing football ticket prices and reflected upon her experiences of following her local side, Southampton, when she was of schooling age. Her points were extremely well made regarding the virtues of appropriate pricing at football matches and how fans should have a basic and affordable right to support their sides.
Football tickets are too expensive. Football is a business nowadays and the economics of football dictates that if the stadiums are full at £50 a ticket, then the club’s incentive to lower this price to £35 is minimal; especially if the club, like Manchester United, have a share price to worry about.
Football is the people’s game, therefore it should be the ‘people’ who attend; the Fenway Sports Group did not help themselves by bowing down almost instantly to the pressure applied by some 10,000 or so fans inside Anfield who, on the stroke of the 77th minute, walked out of the ground just as their team were in the process of throwing away a 2-0 lead at home to strugglers Sunderland.
In the resulting their letter to fans they used phrases such as: ‘tumultuous week’ and ‘Message received.’ Further in the statement they admitted: ‘part of the ticketing plan we got wrong’ and ‘opposition to this element of the plan has made it clear that we were mistaken’.
This was, without doubt, a victory for football fans. In spite of the Premier League clubs rejecting a £30 cap on away tickets, the fact that many clubs (Manchester United, Arsenal and Newcastle United to name a few) have already announced a freeze on 2016-17 ticket prices is a positive step.
The issue with the FSG statement is not only that it was quite obviously crisis management, but also that it gave the very clear indication that the opinion of fans held an inordinate amount of sway over club policy. If the board genuinely felt that this new pricing structure was the best thing to do for the future of the football club, having evaluated all the relevant financial documentation and research—and having already consulted with fan groups, then that is what they should have done. The opinions of fans are important, but they do not always have access to the full information, and by the very nature of the name, are fanatics.
Fans are very emotional beings. If you were to ask 100 Chelsea fans if the club should have sacked José Mourinho, you are likely to get a response of one with and nine against. Would this high approval rating mean that Chelsea were wrong to have sacked him? Or does it just show that he was an immensely popular figure and fans were blinded by his mystique and almost divine aura?
Fan representation on club boards has been mooted and gained further exposure and traction when it was raised in Parliament by Labour MP, Clive Efford. Mr Efford has in the past proposed the Football Governance Bill.
Fans must have a voice and fan groups such as Chelsea Pitch Owners are a brilliant way forward. CPO effectively owns the freehold on the site of Stamford Bridge and leases the site to Chelsea Football Club, without financial gain. Fans can buy a share in the CPO, thus entitling them to a say over the future of the stadium. This is a way in which fan power is a very positive force for good; an elected body with expertise in their fields, running a PLC for the ongoing benefit of the future of the club from a fan perspective.
The way in which this differs from the power that the Liverpool fans exercised is that theirs was a base level public protest movement that shaped and influenced the decision of the club board. This precedent is dangerous precisely because it sets the standard for fan protest and club action.
What would happen in the future if the club went to sell a popular player? Would the board listen to the fans and risk upsetting them by forcing through the sale, or would they back down and keep the player, just to placate the fans? What would happen if they wanted to appoint a manager whom the fans disliked? Where is the cut off between the fans’ voice being an important consideration and the club bowing down to them, or the board made up of experienced executives making a practical decision to benefit the long-term future of the club having looked at all the appropriate evidence?
In this instance, the reversal of imposing 200 or so £77 tickets and keeping them at £59 is a small amount of cash for the club to forego in return for some good publicity. However, in the future, the club will have to make unpopular decisions and will have to do so in the face of fan opinion. In that instance the fans’ views will be portrayed to be unimportant, and the owners may be accused as being greedy, hard-nosed and cold hearted, despite objectively doing what is best for the club.
It’s at this point that Liverpool and FSG may realise that they have created a rod for their own back. For fans it may well be a short term gain, but the future equilibrium in relations between the fans and owners needs to be rebalanced and it may result in some long term pain.
