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Mass Protest / Boycott
- Thread starter elltrev
- Start date
Howard Webb
Clive Wilson
And yet footballs glory days were in more amateur times. Gascoignes attitude to football and life is amateur and yet he was the most wonderful player. As the game becomes professional, we lose the things we love about football.
StubHub is horrible, I certainly wouldn't buy or sell from it.
Football in this country needs to move towards the German model.
It is precisely because (elite) football is a sport and not a business that the financial state of the game is the way it is.
Look at the majority of the top clubs. Ie. Chelsea, Emirates Marketing Project, Real Madrid etc. These "companies" operate in search primarily for the "glory" and not "super-profits". Highlighted by the fact that a lot of these top clubs make a long-term operational loss financially or they becoming heavily in debt to certain individuals or even states/governments.
It's that "emotional attachment" and search for "glory" that makes season ticket prices and player wages what they are. You need the best players to attain success and ticket prices in one of the avenues in which to build finances. The fact is if we want our season ticket prices to come down, as fans we need to stop striving for on field success. This means that when ticket prices go up, we boycott the game. As you can see, the scenario in which we stop striving for success is unrealistic in modern football, and therefore, ticket prices will be the way they are.
Even when you look at a relatively "well run" club in Arsenal, if you look at the value of the "corporation" (was valued at >£1b), they make tiny amounts of profit. Compared to other industries/companies of similar size, they are basically breaking even). I think this shows its not the clubs themselves that are really "ripping fans off". It's the fan's emotional attachment to the game and demand for better players that is raising ticket prices to current levels. The players' are just there to service this demand.
As fans we constantly talk about "ridiculous" ST prices. But when Real Madrid offers £60m for Bale, we then say how "ridiculous" that offer is. When we sign Paulinho for $17m, we then pat ourselves on the back for finding "great value" etc. It's amazing how fans don't see how contradictory these statements are. But this again highlights the fact that football is a sport (and not a business), and that we are searching for glory (and not financial gains).
On a side note, imo, too many people do not understand how wages are distributed.
Wages are determined by "supply" and "demand".
The "societal value/benefit" is a small part of an equation that makes up "demand".
Therefore, wages =/= the "societal value/benefit" that one offers.
Rorschach
Sonny Walters
Good post.
Once the new stadium is built the laws of supply and demand will have way more impact on the prices than now. At the moment the demand far outstrips the supply. Just look at the spammers for what happens in reverse.
I'd lose a little of the beauty from Gascoigne's game if it made his attitude to life a little more professional and kept him alive a few more decades.
As for the German model - aren't prices low because they can have standing areas and therefore larger capacities?
I'm pretty sure that if demand outstripped supply anywhere in the world the way it does in North London then ticket prices would be just as high (or as high a proportion of expendable income).
Spur of the moment
Frederic Kanoute
Sooner or later the bubble will burst. Though since the global marketplace for Premiership football continues to expand exponentially, it'll probably be later.
Meanwhile we all have a choice, we can take it or leave it.
Meanwhile we all have a choice, we can take it or leave it.
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
I'd suggest most people here, me included, understand that point very well. There is no need to point it out. However, just because something is doesn't mean it is the way something should be. And ergo, I stick to my assertion that footballers are paid far too much relative to the benefits they provide to society, and that hopefully one day society as a whole will realise this. We pay them what we do because we find the entertainment they provide more valuable than paying a soldier, a medical worker or a pilot more than they currently earn. One day, that will change. Hopefully.
Good post, anyway. Although the idea that season ticket prices coming down from the ludicrous levels they are currently at to a more reasonable price would destroy the competitiveness of the league as a whole is absurd, considering that, again, the German leagues provide a fine current example of financial stability, low prices, fan ownership and a continued drive for success in the football world. It is a league-wide problem that needs to be faced up to, not an exclusively Tottenham-related one.
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
Bayern are by far the most dominant team in Munich, and their history of success and large stadium based close to an established urban zone draws in most of the city's football fans. Yet Bayern's standing season tickets are 104 pounds, their 'great' seats are 550 pounds, and their most expensive seats right above the center circle are 800-odd pounds, all cheaper than an Arsenal or Spurs season ticket.
Sure, you might say, Bayern can get away with it because of their huge commercial tie-ups. Well, ignoring the fact that English clubs could quite feasibly attract commercial partners as well to lower the costs, what about, say, Hamburg? They're also the most popular team in a city with two clubs (the other being St.Pauli), and don't have the huge history of recent success to attract glittering commercial sponsors to the scale of Bayern's operation. Yet their most expensive season ticket is 660 quid, and their average season ticket costs around 300 quid, with the standing areas going for much less.
It can be done, if we want to. Across the league, keeping ticket prices low and letting poorer fans back into the now firmly upper-middle class game can be done, if (And only if) accompanied by an ownership model that sees the fans own the majority of the club, as is the case in Germany. This prevents wage and transfer fee inflation by sugar-daddy owners, and allows the fans a say over how much their players are paid. Will this lead to an exodus of the most highly-paid players? Sure. But then again, German clubs seems to have no problem bringing through youngsters from the club academy to replace the foreign players that leave. We could do the same. Sure, the quality of the league would take an initial hit, but the blooding of youngsters across the division would see English players return to being the majority in the league, and over time will give them the experience, confidence and technical ability to rival their German counterparts. Plus they'd probably be a wee bit more attached to the club than the current crop of foreign players. Eventually, we could strike a balance where we pay a core of foreign players well, but maintain a large portion of academy products in the squad to replace those that leave, while keeping prices low across the game.
It can be done, if we put aside our tribal rivalries, push for it across the country and remain fully aware and accepting of the fact that the initial quality of the league would suffer. Will it happen? It is my belief that one day, it will.
Good post which raises interesting questions.
Fair point regarding the business comparison; I was only making the comparison in terms of clubs' tendencies to maximise revenues, as opposed to their tendency to overspend (or indeed as opposed to any other trait of businesses). But the lack of profit does raise the question of what different owners' aims and motivations are; I don't accept that they are only giving in to fans' desire for higher prices and therefore higher revenue and therefore more success, or indeed that such a desire exists explicitly in the first place.
Of course I do accept that the problem with a team unilaterally reducing prices is that the team would become less competititve, which fans don't want, which is why I am talking about a campaign for league-wide change. And even then I accept that some fans might not like the idea of a less competitive Premier League, but I think players come, and would continue to come, to the PL for perceived excitement of the league rather than the wages (as long as they didn't drop by huge amounts.
And I think the vast majority of people understand how wages are distributed; they just think that in an ideal world societal value / benefit would be taken into account. And, as I alluded to earlier, as a sport I think football should be able to transcend free market rules and principles for the good of the game and its fans.
This isn't the whole picture though - it's not (just) that we, as individuals, value footballers more than soldiers or medical workers. It's that their 'work', thanks to modern technology, can be enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people all over the globe, without any increase in output from them.
Lovely post. I can see you're an idealist like me. Sadly, probably moreso - I can't imagine something like this ever happening
