City Fans Leaving Early/Empty seats

Overpriced food, overpriced parking, wondering whether the ticket you have paid for is going to work, a tannoy system where you cannot hear yourself think, a club shop that is by and large unaffordable, competing against the traffic, not allowed
a lid on your 3 quid bottle of pop, so many factors make attending at times a chore
 
There's no escaping it. The club have made it affordable but the motivation just isn't there for those who can't be somehow arsed not to watch when it is not top tier opponents each week.

Totally get the people who don't like the Champions League and the decision making which comes with it.

Regardless, I am finding it increasingly bizarre around the 82 minute mark, without fail, a collective clanking of seats and rushing for the exits.

Made worse last night when the team were trailing and pushing for an equaliser.

Perhaps because we don't have a true superstar of the game, this is still a club which can't rely on tourists every week.

There are loads of justifiable reasons and midweek traffic is a main one, but it all has to be looked at.

Personally, make tickets a fiver for the group stages and then just let people moan they can't get a ticket (I would also look at if the ticket isn't used/people move down the queue for the knock out stages)
 
Just on prices, the lad i sit next to at work is a season ticket holder in Liverpool's main stand..... £53 for his ticket vs PSG this week.
 
Psychedelic Casual said:
The constant rising of prices of our SCs doesn't help.

It either pisses people off so they say "right, well this year, i'm not joining the CL cup scheme, fuck 'em!" or prices people out of everything and once you price someone out it's very very easy for them to get used to not going (you'd be surprised, even lads you'd never expect in a million years to stop going have fully stopped!)

The club have got so much right on the football side of things but my word they have not understood our fanbase at all!

They've misjudged the size of the wealthy side of it, they've misjudged the vastness of the working class element of it, they've misjudged how they think they'd just attract a load of day trippers to our support, they misjudged that we've never had glory hunter element to our support, they misjudged that near 50% increases in SCs in six years will have a huge impact on our fanbase...
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Spot on. I didn't go on any cup scheme this season as a protest against the completely unnecessary price rise. I only half watched last night's game while doing something else.

You're right about the club's complete misreading of the fan base. They've assumed we have a similar level of support to the rags or Liverpool when we're miles away from that. I'm convinced that the price increases the last 2 seasons we're solely to bring prices in line with those at the swamp. Of course we have some cheap tickets but we also have more expensive ones, like 93:20. If you look at the prices in the middle they're almost identical to theirs.

There's probably a dozen games at Arsenal you can watch each season, in categories B & C, that are cheaper than you'd pay at the Etihad. That's not right and we need to be more realistic.
 
The early round League Cup and FA Cup attendances (50k v Wolves and 54k v Burnley last season) compared to our CL Group Stage attendances (none over 45000 last season) shows you where the CL Group Stage lies in our fans' list of priorities.

No early round tickets for any cups should be over £15. The CL Group Stage should just be £15, no reason why it shouldn't be, it's the bloody Group Stage FFS.
 
Psychedelic Casual said:
The early round League Cup and FA Cup attendances (50k v Wolves and 54k v Burnley last season) compared to our CL Group Stage attendances (none over 45000 last season) shows you where the CL Group Stage lies in our fans list of priorities.

No early round tickets for any cups should be over £15. The CL Group Stage should just be £15, no reason why it shouldn't be, it's the bloody Group Stage FFS.
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Both those clubs brought thousands though?

Think 8,000?

Not sure the slack would have been picked up, especially the Wolves tie.

Burnley was a Saturday.
 
Hutchymcfc said:
My 3 games is 70 and 25 quid so probably with food , parking etc it’s probably 150
It’s a lot of money to be paying out , on top of the 95 a month for season ticket
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Football prices are crazy in general .if your a regular match going fan anyway if you compare the £22 the alex charge and dippers £50 arsenal £70? Then I think our prices stack up favourably this time
 
balotellishaircut said:
Well last season we turned out in numbers for all the group games, including the QF where the bent cnuts drew the only 2 English teams together, that's not coincidence that's 2 hot balls designed to fck over one off the English sides, and they got a referee to make sure we got knocked out.

Sterlings penalty at anfield, Sane goal at the Etihad, all these things get people pissed off with the competition, that's the only way they could stop us, because we would have beaten RM in that final, now if that would of happened you would have seen maybe a different slant on the champions league this year.
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Yeh I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said mate.

The refereeing last night, and the refereeing we’ve been the victim of in general in the CL, has been appalling. And don’t get me started on the corrupt fuckers at UEFA.

Maybe these are the reasons there’s widespread apathy towards the CL. I’m not sure, but interested to hear from other blues who go to all the league games but give the CL a miss.
 
mrtwiceaseason said:
Football prices are crazy in general .if your a regular match going fan anyway if you compare the £22 the alex charge and dippers £50 arsenal £70? Then I think our prices stack up favourably this time
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But everyone not in that position to have that spare money
 
Hutchymcfc said:
But everyone not in that position to have that spare money
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Tell me about it bud I have to buy 3 tickets every time reckon I bought about 110 tickets last season.
Just saying no other club would charge those prices my scouse buddy didnt think £52 was bad for a game he was shocked when I told him it was for 3 !
 
While i have no doubt we're growing overseas, it's a damn sight harder to grow locally. We've essentially got a similar size supporter base to what we had when we were shit. That was great for then but merely okay for the size we are now. Then you add in the apathy our fans seem to have for anything other than the league games (including them if its midweek)... well it means thousands of empty seats. We don't have that surplus to step in when regulars don't go.

It is what it is. I'm not particularly arsed but I'm still surprised by how many can't see it for what it is. There's no shame in not having a ridiculously big fanbase. I feel like the club needs to be more proactive on this front though. Understand that and just get the ground full regardless.

Edit - FWIW i don't think the CL apathy is unique. Happens at a lot of other clubs too, though it does feel particularly notable for us.
 
Franny 1234 said:
Before people judge one another.
Its a matter of choice.
I didn't join the champions league cup scheme this season.
Last night was my first missed home game at the ETIHAD.
I don't like UEFA and instead of booing them.
I chose not to spend my hard earned money lining there pockets.
Season ticket holder since 1985.
I answer to nobody when it comes to my love/support for man city.
C.T.I.D
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And that is entirely your choice as it is for others who choose not to go. The obvious caveat to that is you can’t then come on here, in February or March, complaining that you’ve been a season ticket holder for 34 years but you can’t get a ticket for Barcelona/Madrid/Munich and it’s a disgrace.
I’m not suggesting you will, just making a general point to S/T holders who avoid the CL.
 
I haven't been to a Champions League game since the Real Madrid Semi Final - not interested
 
Marvin said:
At face value that would appear to be true but I don't think it is. I think a lot of seasoncard holders didn't go and tens of thousands of 'new' supporters were there.

City have a strange, unique problem where we have developed an antipathy towards the Champions League and regulars are not going. If 3/4 of seasoncard holders would have gone last night, game would have been sold out easily. We also have historic low numbers for midweek Cup games which goes back a long long time.

The Champions league is the minimum of what top clubs aim for each season but a lot of City are ambivalent towards it. Somehow we need to address this and make sure we have full houses for Shakhtar and Hoffenheim.
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I'm one of those ambivalent ones and admit to only going to one, maybe two games in the CL each season. Yet will never miss a PL game.

I can't explain why I feel this way but sense it is something about the struggles we had down the years and the fights to stay in the top flight. Perhaps being a long term supporter has left me with a sense of final achievement of just consolidating our position and I don't feel the need for a competition like this. Very odd, really.

I think the club need to start including CL games within the season card matches, like the rags do, to force people like me to go.
 
Tim of the Oak said:
I’m not sure Bob. I posted a WUM a few years back that the Sheikh had allocated a couple of blocks for Abu Dhabi students (when we played Barca) and there was almost a meltdown on here. There seems to be enough fans when the game is big enough.

Everyone’s circumstances are different so last night’s support was disappointing rather than embarrassing, IMHO.
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Try looking at Bob's post history.
 
everything to do with the champions league is crap for city the attendance, atmosphere and worst of all our performances. we are a different team.
 
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