Statement from fan groups ahead of new season

[ftg89]

I'd implore you not to cancel your season ticket. The club have performed plenty of U-turns recently following pushback from fans and it's quite possible they could do the same with the 10 game minimum in-person attendance.

If they don't back down, consider getting a cheap burner phone that supports NFC and downloading your season ticket on to it. Then when you can't attend and family/friends go in your place just hand them the phone to scan themselves in so no need to transfer the ticket to F&F. Of course, if you're moving out of the area then the logistics of getting the phone to them and back to you might be an issue.

I want to do this with my brother in law as he lives close to the Etihad and I live 3 hours away but when I spoke to someone at the club about the 2 downloads rule and if he could have it on his phone, I was told no as it goes against safety and security. They need to know who is in the stadium, if something happens, they would be looking for me not my brother. If I was caught doing that I could have my season ticket taken away!
What I got told anyway…

 

[PistonBlue]

Feels like the club are treating us like the enemy. Whenever I've sold my ticket on the TE or even on here, it's mostly been at late notice and out of necessity as I simply could not get to a game, usually a night match, for whatever reason - usually work/traffic related. My work takes me all over place and can be unpredictable, meaning that for night games at home it can be quite late in the day when I have to admit defeat and sell my ticket - which I hate doing. The 24 hour rule now means I have two choices. Sell in advance on TE for a game that I may well have had a chance to get to. Or, don't put it on TE, hope my day goes well and I have time to get to game, but risk losing the ticket sale, not attending anyway, and the club having a pop at me for not going. It's like the Club are actively making it difficult for people like me.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

I think the ‘utilisation’ of your ticket 16 times is absolutely fair enough and many clubs do similar.
Arsenal is 17 (or 22/23 if you’re on the CL games included ticket) but, if you put the ticket on the exchange after midnight, it only counts if it’s sold.
Brighton do 75% ticket utilisation.

Where city have absolutely fucked up is the 10 in person games which seems to be an absolute howler of an own goal and must be discriminatory.
Someone falling ill and needing treatment, somebody taking a turn for the worse, who’s already not so good and, given the ongoing attempt to appeal to women and families, any woman who should have the temerity to not only fall pregnant but to give birth at any point during the season Will, in fact, be treated exactly the same as a hooligan and banned…
I know DEI has got a bad name but surely even City can spot that this is a terrible policy, which will not stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny?

 

[franksinatra]

As I’ve said before
This 10 game rule and other stupid ideas will be the idea of some wet graduate straight out some rebadged polytechnic as a university with a 2-2 in events management.

Trying to make a name for themselves sucking up to the leadership team whilst having no thought or recognition of what the overall impact will be on thousands of individuals however they’ve had a pat on the back
Give your a heads a wobble city !

Stupid first paragraph. This is a deliberate attack by the club to move supporters on and a strategy agreed at the highest levels of the club. They know exactly what they are doing.

No idea why you would use it as a way to attack young people trying to better themselves by earning qualifications.

 

[Saddleworth2]

The head of Citymatters had advance notice of the statement. Not all groups need to be on the same statements clearly there will be differences in getting agreement all the time and everyone is entitled to convey differing views.. if there are any

I asked because City Matters are the group that has regular discussions with the club and since Alex left its radio silence. I want to know what the hell they are doing about the issues listed in your excellent note , if anything. Guess the only option is to email the season ticket rep and find out.
Keep up the good work mate.

 

[paulchapo]

Feels like the club are treating us like the enemy. Whenever I've sold my ticket on the TE or even on here, it's mostly been at late notice and out of necessity as I simply could not get to a game, usually a night match, for whatever reason - usually work/traffic related. My work takes me all over place and can be unpredictable, meaning that for night games at home it can be quite late in the day when I have to admit defeat and sell my ticket - which I hate doing. The 24 hour rule now means I have two choices. Sell in advance on TE for a game that I may well have had a chance to get to. Or, don't put it on TE, hope my day goes well and I have time to get to game, but risk losing the ticket sale, not attending anyway, and the club having a pop at me for not going. It's like the Club are actively making it difficult for people like me.

Exactly this. These days life often can't be pre planned in advance. With modern technology surely it should be easy to set up a late resale page. This then lists those tickets onto the ticket office computer so they can sell these right up to kick off.
Also if we supposedly have so many people clamouring to watch us then why are the club being so hard nosed about this ten game in person attendance figure? The club will often make more money on a resale, particularly if it's a foc ticket put up for sale. No, the club want rid of season tickets, that's the only reason.

 

[cleavers]

If they are just not accepting a season ticket renewal from someone then there’s nothing illegal about that. They don’t even need to say why.

Also, it's got nothing to do with legality.

If you buy a season ticket, you do so agreeing to their terms on it's use, so you've signed up to whatever they are, and it's up to you if you attend or not, they're then restricting you from buying in the future, IF you don't go to enough of the games you have paid for this season.

 

[Tbilisi]

Whether they mean it or not the club are making it harder for fans to attend matches on the back of trying to increase match day revenues.

With the ticket price reductions after the protests the club have to somehow claw those lost match day revenues back.

Look out for more desperate ticketing policies and more draconian ticket sales policies in the future, so cheap season ticket seats can be clawed back by the club and resold as more expensive match day seat tickets and hospitality packages.

Who are they going to sell them to?

We cant fill the stadium now for low key PL games so with 8000 more seats to fill the clubs fcuked itself imo.

 

[cmcm0808]

I'm not sure as with my circumstances I don't need to do this. It does look like you can download to 2 phones though but I wouldn't like to say that for certain. Perhaps someone else can clarify?

Yes you can download them to 2 phones. Me and my brother have both got both of our season tickets on our phones, as we're no longer able to transfer them to each other. Hopefully none of us change phones until the end of the season as we've reached our 2 download limit.

 

[thegoatsthegoat]

Great statement. Sadly city don’t give a shit. Whilst last years protests allowed us to win some small battles, the new changes and ones in the future will win the war for city. I’m not connected to the club anywhere near like I used to be and it’s down to the decision makers. My prediction here is they agree and compromise on a few points then slap us even harder with something else

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

How many times is it in the new rules your ticket can go unused (not put in exchange, not passed on) before they block a renewal?
I know it's not likely, but as an anxiety driven person I need to know which mornings I drag myself off my sick bed I'd I'm suddenly I'll (or my son is) and stagger to a game (if too late to transfer). Like when I got took to a+e in may with meningitis, just after season ended. If that was the night before a game now and maybe happened twice is th at it, no renewal?I

(Mines never gone unused. But stress makes me want to know answers to scenarios before they haooen!)

I can understand why you feel anxious, there’s a lot of new rules and nobody wants to be a rule breaker or even have to ask to be treated differently to anyone else.

The official website does say that they will be seeing how the first few months goes and if you need to speak to the Access team then give them a call, if it’s making you anxious then ring them and let them know, it’s something they need to understand and if feedback like that is recorded it might help them be a bit more considerate in future.

Personally I doubt the club will be wanting to lose thousands of regular fans with an expanded stand to fill so will probably need to reconsider a lot of the changes.

 

[birchvillablue]

Who’s in charge of ticketing at City, Donald fucking Trump?

 

[Northerndave]

So the season before last I would have fallen foul of the 16 out of 19 game count. For the very valid reasons of having to rush to the side of a hospital bed of people I love at short notice and that was with a 3hr window to list my ticket.

With the constant changes to fixtures, how can the club even think of introducing the minimum 10 games personal attendance

It's just so obvious that ST holders are barely tolerated by the Club anymore. Imagine if we had not stood up against the proposed price increases last year what other rules would the club have instigated?

 

[Blue Calx]

Who’s in charge of ticketing at City, Donald fucking Trump?

I wish it was.Would be none of this shit going on.

 

[Tbilisi]

I wish it was.Would be none of this shit going on.

I think the poster meant to say Sleepy Joe Biden.

 

[Tim of the Oak]

This won't be popular but I find that notion of our Club hating our fans a bit far fetched. I am more a fan of the cock up theory.

The changes may be unpopular and misguided but there is a rationale to some of them. For example, there is a hierarchy of attendance:
a) Match day members choose individual games.
b) Flexi-golders attend 10 games or more (I think they can transfer 3 games now though).
C) Season card holders are expected to attend most or all games, with a minimum of 10 in person. There are exemptions for illness, shift working etc.

When season card holders attend less games than flexi-golders or match day members it becomes irrational. That might have been happening and I don't care that much about, especially where season cards have been shared amongst family..

I would have been happy for the changes to be put on the back burner, particularly with the expanded capacity coming.

Just a thought but maybe the statement could implications for filling the North Stand. One of essentials to getting a good signing section going was said have the same Blues around each other every game during the season. Is this no longer the case?

Obviously, there are still concerns about premium / hospitality seats at the front of the stand.

 

[birchvillablue]

I wish it was.Would be none of this shit going on.

I think the poster meant to say Sleepy Joe Biden.

Both clowns, probably still do a better job than the current joker.

 

[Big Joe Corrigan]

I wish it was.Would be none of this shit going on.

The **** would put tariffs on the tickets so none of us could afford to go.

 

[stoneblue]

Yes, you can't do that anymore.

I raised this with the club several times and I think they were surprised anyone would do it. Which is why this is the kind of thing people should be picking up with their City Matters reps. If people email it'll help City Matters to demonstrate the number of people it'll effect.

This is exactly the predicament I have with my son's ticket. He often finds that he can't attend at short notice, sometimes a matter of hours before ko, so he's transferred his ticket to me and I have taken someone with me. I'm on hold with the ticket office as I type this to see what can be done - I know that there was a facility to nominate a non-member for transfer but wasn't aware that what we have previously been doing is no longer possible.

 

[BertM19]

This won't be popular but I find that notion of our Club hating our fans a bit far fetched. I am more a fan of the cock up theory.

The changes may be unpopular and misguided but there is a rationale to some of them. For example, there is a hierarchy of attendance:
a) Match day members choose individual games.
b) Flexi-golders attend 10 games or more (I think they can transfer 3 games now though).
C) Season card holders are expected to attend most or all games, with a minimum of 10 in person. There are exemptions for illness, shift working etc.

When season card holders attend less games than flexi-golders or match day members it becomes irrational. That might have been happening and I don't care that much about, especially where season cards have been shared amongst family..

I would have been happy for the changes to be put on the back burner, particularly with the expanded capacity coming.

Just a thought but maybe the statement could implications for filling the North Stand. One of essentials to getting a good signing section going was said have the same Blues around each other every game during the season. Is this no longer the case?

Obviously, there are still concerns about premium / hospitality seats at the front of the stand.

There are absolutely no exemptions to the attendance policy for shift working so I don't know where you've got that from.

They have still not come out publicly and said that there are any exemptions. The Club are relying on fans with health conditions and disabilities to ring them up - in itself atrocious - and there already examples of affected fans having simply not renewed this season because of these rules.