Open Letter on Season Tickets and Pricing | Club announce price freeze on "general admission season tickets & PL match tickets" for next season (p163)

These words, written in initial messages when HRH Sheik Mansour purchased the Club should be written on the wall of the Club Boardroom - just as a reminder.

"We want to hear from the fans and the community. We want to bring this club back to the community and to the fans.

Khaldoon Al Mubarak


We are deeply touched and now have some great personal experience of what so many people have told us for a while now.......you are the greatest fans in the world.

we will absolutely spend time listening to you the fans about what you think about the future of the club. We are very aware that without you there would not be a club to buy, and your voice will be heard by the organisation at the highest level.

We are aware also that the club has a significant role in the community going back years. As newcomers, we don’t pretend to understand all of this yet, but we will make sincere efforts to back these initiatives and ensure that Manchester City loses none of its role in Manchester beyond football and we want the club to continue to contribute to the community it represents.

Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan
 
Saddleworth2 said:
These words, written in initial messages when HRH Sheik Mansour purchased the Club should be written on the wall of the Club Boardroom - just as a reminder.

"We want to hear from the fans and the community. We want to bring this club back to the community and to the fans.

Khaldoon Al Mubarak


We are deeply touched and now have some great personal experience of what so many people have told us for a while now.......you are the greatest fans in the world.

we will absolutely spend time listening to you the fans about what you think about the future of the club. We are very aware that without you there would not be a club to buy, and your voice will be heard by the organisation at the highest level.

We are aware also that the club has a significant role in the community going back years. As newcomers, we don’t pretend to understand all of this yet, but we will make sincere efforts to back these initiatives and ensure that Manchester City loses none of its role in Manchester beyond football and we want the club to continue to contribute to the community it represents.

Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan
Click to expand...
This should be a Foreword in every correspondence with the club by fan groups.
 
kippax_blueboy said:
Not just Football Clubs chasing overseas cash, it's University's too. City need to be careful. The overseas fans wont be there forever but we will be.
How did the University of South Wales (USW) lose its way?

While Cardiff University / Prifysgol Caerdydd’s financial struggles have dominated the headlines, the challenges facing USW are just as serious and and potentially more revealing of deeper issues in the higher education sector.

The Vice Chancellor at USW recently announced a £20 million deficit resulting in up to 350 jobs being lost or put at risk having adopted a high-risk strategy that prioritised international recruitment over its local mission.

Between 2021 and 2024, income from international students rose from £19m to £56m - a 195% increase.
Nigerian student numbers grew from 70 in 2018 to over 2,000 by 2023, accounting for 30% of USW’s international cohort.
When UK visa rules changed to restrict dependents, international student recruitment fell 50% especially from countries such as Nigeria where students brought their families with them.

Meanwhile, USW was also losing its core base of UK students:

⬇️ Between 2019-2024, income from UK and EU full-time students dropped from £104m to £84m - a 24% fall.
⬇️ In the last academic year, UK student numbers fell by 3,500, an 18% decline, compared to a 4% drop across other Welsh universities.
⬇️ In 2014, while 32% of students from South East Wales studied at USW, by 2024, that figure had fallen to 20%, a loss of 5,000 local learners.

Despite this, the university continued to channel investment into international recruitment:

International scholarships rose from £1.5m in 2018–19 to £9.8m in 2022–23 whilst support for home students was only £837,000.
Overseas agent fees rose by £6.2m in a single year, suggesting as much as £20m may have been spent on international recruitment services.

This was not just a financial misjudgement but a conscious strategic decision that moved USW away from its original purpose.

Can you imagine the difference that £9.8m would have made to those local students who, as the Vice Chancellor admitted to a Senedd Committee recently, must work part-time to be able to afford to attend USW? What could the millions of pounds spent on overseas agents have done to help those from some of the most deprived communities attend their local university?

So what now?

If is to rediscover its original mission, USW must change its strategy by

✅ Rebuilding trust with local communities and strengthen outreach to schools and colleges
✅ Working with regional employers to align courses with real job opportunities
✅ Rebalancing recruitment efforts to support and attracting more local students, particularly those from the Valleys.

If USW’s leadership had focused more on addressing the decade-long fall in UK student numbers rather than risking everything on their international strategy, then perhaps it wouldn’t be in the dire financial position it currently finds itself in.

But they didn’t and now, the consequences - for students, staff, and the communities USW was meant to serve - will be felt for years to come.
Click to expand...
The only thing is, by the time it’s too late (are we already at tipping point with how many core fans we’ve lost?) these boardroom members will just leave and it’ll be someone else’s problem.
 
Todays children are tomorrow’s fans and if the club continue on this path to self destruction once fans start to not bother going especially when they realise how much more they have in disposable money and decide to spend that on other entertainment. 90+mins of great football or painful depending on the result should not be out of reach of local fans at over 100 quid a game .
 
Saddleworth2 said:
These words, written in initial messages when HRH Sheik Mansour purchased the Club should be written on the wall of the Club Boardroom - just as a reminder.

"We want to hear from the fans and the community. We want to bring this club back to the community and to the fans.

Khaldoon Al Mubarak


We are deeply touched and now have some great personal experience of what so many people have told us for a while now.......you are the greatest fans in the world.

we will absolutely spend time listening to you the fans about what you think about the future of the club. We are very aware that without you there would not be a club to buy, and your voice will be heard by the organisation at the highest level.

We are aware also that the club has a significant role in the community going back years. As newcomers, we don’t pretend to understand all of this yet, but we will make sincere efforts to back these initiatives and ensure that Manchester City loses none of its role in Manchester beyond football and we want the club to continue to contribute to the community it represents.

Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan
Click to expand...
Fantastic post pal.
The people from City Matters should show this to the club directors at the ticketing meeting this week.
 
Has anyone got the exact quote where Khaldoon says on an end of season video something like ‘the club needs to work hard to provide prices to make City accessible to all fans’?
 
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