Any American model isn't viable in football due to the international nature of it.
And I for one wouldn't want it.
The NFL 'experience' is the wet dream of most money men at football clubs. Extortionate prices, loads of shite and hoopla going on before, during and after the match trying to get more cash out of people, ridiculous wages, huge revenue streams and generally a completely sanitised sporting environment..
The German model is the only fair way to go. But there is no desire for it amongst English clubs. Despite all their bluster, they want nothing to do with that sort of thing because they value their fans infinitely less than they value maxmising revenue (or at least the decision makers in the clubs do).
Now, a lot of people see football as purely a business and have no problem with that. It's a valid point of view.
But what really sticks in my throat is the absolute bullshit that every English club comes out with about valuing their fans and being so pro the fan. And I have to say, the current City regime (or at least parts of it) are at the forefront of that duplicity.
It is absolue shite. English clubs could not give a shit about their fans other than in the respect of a customer/maximising spending and revenue relationship.
The one overwhelming issue that is important to fans is fair pricing. Whether that is the normal fan, scraping together their last few quid to afford tickets, or the bloke in a box who stumps up a big chunk each year, they all want fair pricing and are all affected by attempts to sqeeuze the fans.
Next to fair ticket pricing the availability of chiken tikka wraps, an open air bar, a kids play area, an inside ticket office, certain types of beer, a glitzy website, open days, etc, etc are insignificant. Nice maybe, but massively insignificant.
And no English club (except perhaps recent examples of Wigan and Blackburn - and that is most probably driven by profit motives after fans deserted their previous gross profiteering) is interested in giving the fans a fair deal. Whether that is because they fear losing a competitive advantage if they do so, or other reason, who knows, but they aren't interested.
"Oh, but compare club X's prices to club Y's prices, they are very reasonsable." No they aren't. They are only very reasonable in the grossly skewed, perspective completely out of the window world of Premier League/English football and pricing.
I know people don't like hearing this, but this is a City site after all so it is worth while looking at it from a City perspective.
At some point last year someone, who knows exactly who, sat down and decided that they could sqeeuze the fans for significantly more money both this season and in the following seasons and that they wanted to implement this by putting up costs. This was a specific and wide ranging decision made that flies in the face of "we value the fans" rhetoric. This process probably went on at a lot of other clubs too but it is not so glaring as it isn't the club we support and the boundaries of possibilities are so much bigger at City.
Despite all the big talk of being big fans men, when it came to the single overwhelmingly most important matter to fans - affordability - certain people at the club went completely against that and have decided on a course of sqeezing and profiteering. Costs have been generally put up across the board - tickets, season tickets, parking, etc.
City Square, ten foot hotdogs, new beer, face painting. None of it is worthy a jot if you are one of those sqeezed out so that someone at the top can say that they have been able to justify their salary by increasing fan revenue streams.
Again, fine if you think English football should just be run as a business and the fan is nothing more than the equivalent of ASDA's and Sainsbury's customers. For me though, English football stinks and I recognise that I am a mug for being subject to it.
Even though it might seem to be, this isn't an anti City post (they are just the closest to home and a ridiculously high profile example who had the opportunity to back up the standard "we value the fans" English football bulsshit rhetoric with something worthwhile), it's an anti English football post.
