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Football: It's not just Liverpool - United, Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea and City are all fleecing their fans as well
Fleeced football fans have finally had enough - but will greedy Premier League clubs listen to them or simply sell tickets to the highest bidder to fill stadia? Graham Ruthven looks at the options...
Unwittingly Liverpool provided the perfect depiction of the disregard paid to fans by Premier League clubs. 13 months were spent in consultation with supporters’ groups and various sections of the Reds’ fanbase in an effort to devise a ticket pricing plan that would suit all. When it came time to finally hang the price tags, though, everything but the club’s own interests were ignored.
Main Stand regulars at Anfield will see their season ticket price rise from £869 to £1,029 if they wish to sit in the same seat next season, with a single match-day ticket in the newly developed stand set to cost a whopping £77. Meanwhile, Premier League clubs will collect a record £5.136 billion in television revenue from the 2016/17 campaign. English football has no shame.
Of course, that is hardly a revelation. The Premier League has long been the brazenly capitalist front of a traditionally socialist sport, but even by its own barefaced standards recent developments have taken exploitation of those in the stands to an entirely unprecedented level. Fans are no longer fans to their clubs, only customers.
Liverpool certainly aren’t the only club to be taking their fans for a ride, though. Arsenal announced last week that an extra charge would be placed on season tickets for next season, just a month after insisting that prices would be frozen. Manchester United, too, are facing backlash from their fans over inflated ticket prices for their Europa League match against FC Midtjylland.
But just like at Anfield, tolerance is drying up. Arsenal were forced to reverse their season ticket price increase for next season following pressure from fans, with United set to close the upper tier of Old Trafford’s biggest stand for the FC Midtjylland clash.
It seems to be the case that supporters are no longer willing to blindly pay whatever is asked of them. The threshold has finally been breached.
Until now the rhetoric around Premier League ticket prices has been a rather weightless one. At Arsenal, for instance, it’s been widely recognised for some time that £97 (English football’s most expensive match-day ticket) is a ludicrous price to ask from fans to watch their team.
But true to the game’s modern-day values, what incentive is there for clubs to drop their prices when 60,000 supporters are still willing to splutter up such cash?
The dynamic of the argument has changed, though. Fans’ willingness to pay such hefty prices is wearing thin, with protests now commonplace outside - and inside - Premier League grounds.
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Rival supporters are even joining forces in expressing their anger, as was the case when Arsenal and Liverpool fans staged a joint demonstration before a match at the Emirates in April of last year. Not even tribalism can stop what is becoming a genuine movement.
By walking out 77 minutes into their team’s fixture against West Ham Liverpool fans set the narrative. Their cause was discussed on Match of the Day and has been the subject of widespread press coverage since, with pressing questions now being asked of every Premier League club.
A concerted walkout from an entire round of top-flight fixtures - organised by supporters’ groups of all 20 clubs - is now to be discussed by the Football Supporters’ Federation. The Premier League ticket price bubble, inflated beyond any comprehension in recent years, might have finally burst.
And yet the prospect of rebellion resulting in genuine revolution still seems doubtful. Just last week eight Premier League clubs (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Norwich, Tottenham and West Ham) blocked proposals to cap the cost of away tickets to £30. As Liverpool owners Fenway Sports Group once proudly proclaimed, it’s all about “transforming fans into customers.”
With every price hike Premier League clubs further detach themselves from their own supporters. Fans are finally pushing back - as demonstrated at Anfield on Saturday - but will it really change anything? Clubs in their self-righteous greediness didn’t care before, so why will they care now? Liverpool fans might have found the reason why.
Empty seats could ultimately force the hand of the Premier League’s member clubs, with such unrest potentially damaging to the sport’s brand. Furthermore, empty seats would hurt clubs in their only weak spot - the pocket.
If English teams only care about money, then it won’t be until their pay-packet is hit that action is taken.
The Anfield walkout still wasn’t as impactful as it could have been, given that those 10,000 fans that left in the 77th minute still paid the inflated ticket price they were protesting about. As bad as it looked for Liverpool, they could still count on cash from a sell-out crowd. But for how much longer? At what point will the orchestrated boycotts become the natural consequence of sheer disgruntlement?
Football fans are expected to be working-class heroes, but the reality is very different. The Premier League is now so far removed from its roots it’s difficult to envisage it ever restoring a true connection. But nonetheless, something has snapped in the collective conscience of supporters. It might not be long before they walk away for good.
