Don’t Blame Fans For The Empty Seats

[blueparrot]

Are you in a Supporters Club Branch mate? I think the OSC let people cancel ticket bookings if the date of the game changes.

Quick question on supporters clubs, just checked mine is 50 miles away in the wrong direction. Do they have tickets together, and are fans that get tickets expected to travel together ?

 

[Gingers Dad]

Yes. I've raised it before, more than once, and I'll continue to raise it until the club show me they have a coherent short and long term strategy. We've also raised it as a group, asking the club to think about the financial impact of charging high prices for a CL game at a time when, like last season, we'd been to Wembley and had a few London away games, plus we had every prospect of two more Wembley trips in the FA Cup. I see it as my job to inform the club that we don't have the bottomless pockets that our owner has or the wide support that Liverpool & United have.

In the short-term I want to see some transparency on pricing. I don't particularly like Category A, B & C prices, like many clubs have but it's a damn sight better than the 'Think of a number' system we seem to have at the moment, particularly with CL games. Liverpool (and I think United) make it clear to their fans what prices will be for PL, domestic cup and European games at the start of the season and I'd like us to go down that route, even if it's a case of them saying "The maximum you will be charged up to the semi-final will be £x". Liverpool & United also have a single price per seat for PL games regardless of whether they're playing us or Norwich. I'm not sure we'd get away with that at the moment but you can watch a Cat C game at Arsenal for £26.50 (and that's full price) whereas you'd pay £15 more that that to see the exact same team at the Etihad. I can't see how we can justify that.

Longer term (and this is a conversation I've had with them on a number of occasions) I'd like to see some evidence that the club is thinking strategically about how it attracts the next generation of fans. I've passed on a study to our own Head of Research that's been done by the MLB about that very subject. You can't sit there and hope that, in 20 years time when the large number of over-55's that support us now have stopped coming, there's a new generation that will have taken their place. You've got to do something proactive to encourage and facilitate that.

So it's all very well saying I should resign if they don't listen but they certainly aren't going to listen if no one is telling them these things. And I actually do think that they're starting to listen to us.

Thanks for your response. I'm glad to hear that you have raised the pricing issue with the club through City Matters. Just wondering why it has never been in the meeting minutes and that one of the City Matters Reps said recently on Ian Cheeseman's blog, that you were also on, that you weren't allowed to raise ticket prices with the club?

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Thanks for your response. I'm glad to hear that you have raised the pricing issue with the club through City Matters. Just wondering why it has never been in the meeting minutes and that one of the City Matters Reps said recently on Ian Cheeseman's blog, that you were also on, that you weren't allowed to raise ticket prices with the club?

Just because it's not minutes doesn't mean it isn't discussed. A lot of the really serious discussion takes place in the various sub-groups, such as the Ticketing Working Group, which aren't formally minuted. As for Ian's pod I was there & don't remember him saying that precisely. I haven't listened back to it yet but what I think he said was that the club don't consult with us about ticket prices before making decisions, which is a shame (but I think they know what we'd say!). But we can bring up anything we want and we do.

 

[Marvin]

City's Champions League ticket prices are the cheapest of any English club in this season's competition. Significantly so. That doesn't mean they are 'right'.

City are almost unique in going deep in all competitions.

If I were City I would think about offering a seasoncard that includes all Cup games at a preset price.


'

 

[jrb]

Keep up the good work PB. :-)

Those of us who haven't got an agenda against you, know you are working hard on behalf of the fans.

I know what you are fighting against. For everyone compromise the club makes, there are two or three compromises they won't make.

There's a lot of white noise coming from the club at times, and it can become a war of attrition on specific issues.

 

[Dave Ewing's Back 'eader]

If match day revenue does not have the importance it used to have, then the possibility of less-than-full grounds for less attractive fixtures revolves round making the tickets as cheap as chips, in fact, cheaper than the chips! That's if they have any chips upon which to fix a price!

 

[Gingers Dad]

Just because it's not minutes doesn't mean it isn't discussed. A lot of the really serious discussion takes place in the various sub-groups, such as the Ticketing Working Group, which aren't formally minuted. As for Ian's pod I was there & don't remember him saying that precisely. I haven't listened back to it yet but what I think he said was that the club don't consult with us about ticket prices before making decisions, which is a shame (but I think they know what we'd say!). But we can bring up anything we want and we do.

That's good to hear that you can raise anything you want. It would be good to see the discussions about ticket prices in future meeting minutes. If they're not it can only be presumed that it wasn't on the agenda or that the club didn't want it discussed

 

[Tim of the Oak]

Quick question on supporters clubs, just checked mine is 50 miles away in the wrong direction. Do they have tickets together, and are fans that get tickets expected to travel together ?

The fans don’t have to travel together in my experience. It might be that a particular Branch has a rule on travel though I guess.

Home game tickets are normally advertised to Branch ticket leads / managers by the Official Supporters Club / Kevin Parker 2 or 3 months before home games. You then let the person who manages tickets in your Branch how many you need. They then log your Branches request on the OSC portal and then your Branch is notified of your allocation (about 6 weeks before the game I think). If it’s a big game then the requests will exceed supply and I think the OSC look after those Branches that order regularly (we don’t for home games as we’re mainly season card holders). If there are more members asking for them than your Branch allocation then your Branch ticket lead will allocated according to how the prioritise / have local rules.

The tickets are normally together unless you are forewarned they are likely to be singles.

 

[blueparrot]

The fans don’t have to travel together in my experience. It might be that a particular Branch has a rule on travel though I guess.

Home game tickets are normally advertised to Branch ticket leads / managers by the Official Supporters Club / Kevin Parker 2 or 3 months before home games. You then let the person who manages tickets in your Branch how many you need. They then log your Branches request on the OSC portal and then your Branch is notified of your allocation (about 6 weeks before the game I think). If it’s a big game then the requests will exceed supply and I think the OSC look after those Branches that order regularly (we don’t for home games as we’re mainly season card holders). If there are more members asking for them than your Branch allocation then your Branch ticket lead will allocated according to how the prioritise / have local rules.

The tickets are normally together unless you are forewarned they are likely to be singles.

Cheers, might look into init for next season.

 

[AshLunn92]

Listening to the 93:20 podcast yesterday Ahsan and Howard raised a really good point. For the small cost in the grand scheme of things to our owners, what amazing publicity would it be if city went and halved all ticket costs and therefore packed out the stadium for every game?

the benefits to us are obvious but the benefits to the sheikh in terms of publicity, good graces and image would be massive. Seems like an opportunity being missed

 

[Blueknows]

Nobody really cared about empty seats 30 years ago, when they were far more abundant btw.

30 years ago city weren't a threat

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Listening to the 93:20 podcast yesterday Ahsan and Howard raised a really good point. For the small cost in the grand scheme of things to our owners, what amazing publicity would it be if city went and halved all ticket costs and therefore packed out the stadium for every game?

the benefits to us are obvious but the benefits to the sheikh in terms of publicity, good graces and image would be massive. Seems like an opportunity being missed

That would be great but it's not a small cost in the scheme of things. Halving ticket prices would cost us something like £15m, which may seem like nothing in terms of turnover but last financial year we lost nearly £30m, which was offset by nearly £40m profit on transfers.

Even since we've been in the CL in 2011, we've never made a profit before transfer dealings. Those transfer profits can't be relied on every year though even though our buying has generally been pretty good.

 

[trevorriley]

good post on the comparison of cinema tickets to wages to match ticket prices, be interesting to see the seem era compared to todays players wages.

three things stand out for me which are related to empty seats and my own personal bug bear.

1/ Times of KO's, fuck me who wants footy 5.30pm Saturday or 4.30pm sunday. Im sorry but I do have family and like to be traditional having meals out. Like hell I want to say no to a nice Saturday night out because im going footy.
2/ To much football, I like chocolate but stick it down my neck breakfast dinner & tea and its over kill. The problem is like any sort of entertainment be it music, films, soaps on tv, if the fat cats see success they ram it down our throats and kill the thrill of it. Premier league, 2 domestic cups, CL take over and on top of that keep pushing womens football on us and it becomes "not football again"
3/ Money spent per month on the game, somebody somewhere is coining it in, at our expense. You look at your bank over a year and see how much you have spent on tickets, yes to bloody much ! I go to football, don't pay for parking, eat before I go to the game and don't drink as I drive, I don't buy the one of four team shirts we have or buy a new scarf every month, also don't gamble or through a quid in all the buckets shaking every 100 yards. Might sound like a miserable t**t there but it keeps down the spend which is to high on ticket prices.

 

[citymad]

Yeh I totally agree, you can’t blame fans for empty seats......I mean who’d come to sit and watch City giving their team a schooling ?

 

[jrb]

Yeh I totally agree, you can’t blame fans for empty seats......I mean who’d come to sit and watch City giving their team a schooling ?

Even more City fans if tickets where easier to get hold off and more affordable.

The FA Cp games being a prime example where season ticket holders give it a miss, and new City fans and families turn up in their 10,000’s because they can get affordable (family) match tickets.

 

[JGL07]

This nonsense about empty seats really needs to be junked. I reckon that it is one reason why the stadium has not been expanded to 62,000 as yet.

With a bigger capacity, it would open things up for new supporters in League matches and help to grow the fan base. It would also force the club to keep ticket prices low.

There have always been spaces at matches since I started watching in 1963. Even in the Championship winning season of 1967-68, City would often have crowds of 35,000 in a stadium holding 63,000. United had slightly higher attendances in a similar sized ground. No-one mentioned it as an issue at the time.

 

[shevtheblue]

The majority of the blame goes back to the club imo. Does everyone think that OT and the like are full of fans that have been going for years? Are they fuck. They have their hardcore and then the rest is made of match day trippers and foreign fans, we have our own share but nothing in comparison. I know everyone cringes at it but its part of football now, like it or not, we are a business and our product is amazing football. I remember driving past Stamford Bridge on a game day once and they had lines of Chelsea branded coaches with thousands of Japanese fans all kitted up from the club shop, being guided by an official Chelsea tour guide to get to the stadium. Its fucking horrible, i know, but every club does that shit except us, so we can't then complain when the whole of fucking Manchester doesn't turn up to fill the stadium. Having radio adverts on TalkShite and the like does fuck all except make us look small time.
Another point which i've made a few times is, the club give a lot of tickets away. I'm sure other clubs do this as well, but we do it front row, right in front of the cameras instead of up in the 3rd tier. I did Red Cross collections at The Etihad 3 years ago and all the volunteers were given free tickets, a nice gesture i thought. However these tickets were split between 3rd, 4th and 5th rows in the Colin Bell and were in big batches. Half of the volunteers went home after collecting so those seats were empty, in fact it was just me sat on my own watching the game.

 

[Blue Mist]

We're being fleeced and our supporter representatives won't raise it. They should offer to resign if the club won't listen to them.

What good would resigning do ? If your union rep goes to management and asks for a pay rise they don't resign if you don't get one. The best thing they can do is tell the club that we are pissed off and I believe they have, just because they are ignored doesn't mean they are not trying.

 

[Marvin]

Listening to the 93:20 podcast yesterday Ahsan and Howard raised a really good point. For the small cost in the grand scheme of things to our owners, what amazing publicity would it be if city went and halved all ticket costs and therefore packed out the stadium for every game?

the benefits to us are obvious but the benefits to the sheikh in terms of publicity, good graces and image would be massive. Seems like an opportunity being missed

There have been many more empty seats at Old Trafford this season.

Do City fans actually realise that City are experiencing record crowds in all competitions?

 

[Gingers Dad]

What good would resigning do ? If your union rep goes to management and asks for a pay rise they don't resign if you don't get one. The best thing they can do is tell the club that we are pissed off and I believe they have, just because they are ignored doesn't mean they are not trying.

I didn't say they should resign, I said they should offer to resign. The club pride themselves on having fan participation but if you read the minutes of previous meetings then you will see that ticket prices has never even been on the agenda. The City Matters reps have been told its a subject they are not allowed to talk about. They talk about vegan pies and six pint pourers but what's the point if some fans are being priced out?
Maybe if the club realised that it's a big subject amongst the fans they would react.