PETITION - Away Ticket Pricing

[Divvy]

If interested, please sign the petition below:

http://new.fsf.org.uk/petitions/20plenty/

[Jay o/]

Signed.

[Wipped]

Done. Thank you.

[Cobi]

signed.

[Wimb]

Signed!

[Dr.dee]

This will only be subsidised by home supporters prices.

[royal67]

This will only be subsidised by home supporters prices.

Yep, a sure fire way of increasing the price of tickets for home supporters......

[urz13]

Signed

[Once were Biscuitmen]

Pointless, extracting more money from those that the product is more important to is rule one of business.

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

Pointless, extracting more money from those that the product is more important to is rule one of business.

I'd have thought the objective of a good businessman, as seen pretty much throughout every great business is the desire to increase sales by selling to as many people as possible.

"Milking" the customer, on the other hand, is the refuge of the businessman who doesn't know how to make his product more popular.


Saying that, I don't see why I should have to pay £30 to sit in the home stand, while the away fans can get in for £20.

[Pandoras Box]

Take Reading. How many away games did we not sell out to our away supporters this season. None? so why lower revenue when the take up is at its maximum whatever the price has been?

[Alexander Litvinenko]

Currently clubs do either "pricing for maximum attendance" or pricing for maximum revenue" and it's a big debate on what is the best. West Ham for instance, do the latter ....

Also, "flexible pricing" - where the price you say depends upon exactly when you buy your ticket according to the demand so far, budget airline stylee - is coming in. Derby & Cardiff have been experimenting with it this season and it's set to become more widespread.

But the key thing to remember, for the Premier League teams, is that the increase in revenue from the TV deal (just the increase!) would allow the PL clubs to give every single away ticket to every single match away free and they'd still have greater income than they did this year. So the talk of "subsidies by home fans" is a red herring.

The key reason that clubs charge the prices they do is that they can - supporters are stupid enough to pay those prices. And until that changes, all the petitions in the world ain't gonna change jack shit, I'm afraid!

[melonhead]

such a daft idea imo


just pressure to lower all prices.
the money windfall the clubs get next year means there is no real justification for continuing to rip off the fans across the board

[Silver Fox]

As when this was raised before massively out on this, the FSF should be campaigning for all tickets to be reduced, not just away fan tickets mainly because as mentioned above the regular home supporter will be the one who has to pay to make up the shortfall. A misguided campaign presumably introduced because someone realised, between sips of real ale, that plenty and 20 rhyme

[Simon's Church]

20's plenty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQF1hNDpArQ

[Elm Park Kid]

Echoing sentiments above - of course the vast majority of fans will want to pay less, but, as long as clubs are still selling tickets at the higher prices which is giving sufficient returns they have every right to keep on charging the prices. It's a business with finite supply and high demand. Inelastic.

I think the issue is to what extent football clubs are 'normal' businesses. If you say that Man Utd is no different to Disney and then it's objective should be to generate profit by providing entertainment to customers, then of course these sort of protests are pointless. It makes no more sense then protesting that the local cinema should charge less.

However, if football clubs are different to normal businesses, if you see them as community institutions like librarys, schools, hospitals etc then it doesn't make sense to just let them charge whatever they want. When increases in revenues simply fund through to higher player wages then what benefit do I receive as a fan?

Or to put it another way, if there was a law that limited football ticket prices to only £20 then what would be the downside to the average fan?

[Alexander Litvinenko]

That's the key argument.

The relationship between consumers and customers with a football club is quite different to this relationship outside football. It Tesco put their prices up most people would go to Asda or Sainsbury's or wherever, but football supporters won't transfer their support to another club. (All they'll really do is stop going or drop down to non-league, which more and more are doing) .

It's that emotional relationship that clubs are exploiting - they know that there's an emotional factor that compels supporters to go. In most walks of life in the same situation they'd walk away, but the draw of supporting their team just makes them say "How much? That's outrageous" - and still hand over the money.

[Alexander Litvinenko]

Quite! - and that's where the problem lies.

Is a football club (note the use of the word "club" here) a part of it's community, to be valued by its stakeholders and in which they should have participation - or is it purely and simply an "entertainment business", to be bought and sold and with no links to any of its history or community.

Different people have different views on it - but in Spain and Germany, at least, football "clubs" are that - clubs owned by their members, and that system works well.

[Alexander Litvinenko]

If I bought Bayern Munich I would ask my finance people what the best price was to achieve highest profit. I wouldn't give a shit what the fans said as long as I was making the maximum amount of money possible.

But you could never, ever do that - Bayern Munich is 51% owned by its members. And that's the point.

[Elm Park Kid]

It depends on which side of the fence you're sitting on - as a fan you see them as community institutions with relationships in local communities.

I'm not sure a Russian owner gives a shit about that stuff. To him its pounds and pence. A normal business. He see's the relationship between club and consumer as a huge bonus - unlike a supermarket, if your club gets expensive you wont move to a different one.

But at the same time a Russian owner also isn't running a football club in order to make money. He's doing it for prestige. So to him he doesn't care if the club is milking the fans or not, just that it is performing well in the league. Under the current system he's forced to exploit fans in order to raise income to buy the players he wants. However if all clubs were prevented from doing this then he would be in exactly the same situation as if they couldn't exploit fans.