Petrovs left peg said:
Skashion said:
moomba said:
Paying less for nothing of value than I would have paid for nothing of value 10 years ago doesn't fill me with excitement I must admit.
And as one that is paying £200-300 (possible a bit more) more on a ST than I was ten years ago I'm not inclined to make a further donation to the club for something that diesn't offer me or my kids anything.
But again, I'm talking about season ticket costs. A season ticket in ANY area of the stadium + £20 (from the year before for City Kicks), COSTS LESS than a U16 season ticket in 2003. So really, what it comes down to, is that you're not going to take your kids because you don't want to pay £20 for higher priority and a gift pack. Ok, fine, but I think it's absurd. If season tickets cost £20 more now, than they did back then, from what you're saying, you'd be happier paying more, despite the argument being about the affordability of football, and presumably, the implied issue of the club exploiting the fans. But the club are exploiting the fans LESS in your case because you're paying less, so I just don't see how this is anything other than stubbornness. Stubbornness for which your kids are the sacrificial lambs.
You are spot on and to put it bluntly if someone cannot afford to pay for a season ticket then they just have to accept watching it at the pub. I had to give it up whilst i was a student but i accepted the fact that i couldn't afford it.
There has to be a charge for the Blue cards otherwise every fucking rag and tout would have one snapping up tickets and creating something worse than Viagogo.
I know I'm missing something here. Some sort of joke. Because I am sure that you are not trying to justify something with the example of having to make cutbacks when you were a student.
Students - no, or very little, income. Huge debts. Huge costs, relative to income. Basically, a time in life when people can afford fuck all and resort to eating beans on toast for every meal because they are permanently skint.
Are you really using that example as comparable to blokes in full time employment who, despite always having been able to watch City, find themselves more and more priced out. Priced out, not of eating out every night. Not of 5 star holidays. Not of extravagant luxury. But of watching 90 minutes of 11 blokes kicking a football about for the football team that represents their area.
And that's also why Billy's point doesn't stack up. Don't get me wrong, I know blokes who 25 years ago stopped going for a while because they had a new family or whatever, it has always gone on. But people in a similar financial position would not even be anywhere near close to making that decision these days as they have been completely priced out years ago.
So, the argument that "people always have to miss out on stuff if they can't afford it - fact of life" is too simplistic.
If suddenly the price of every carrot in the world was fixed at £300 each, none of us would buy carrots. We wouldn't just think "Oh, well, I can't afford carrots, that's the way of the world".
We would think "This is mental, carrots fixed at £300. The carrot industry is taking the piss. Something is all wrong with the world when people are charging that much for carrots and fleecing carrot addicts for something so run of the mill."
Well, football is pretty run of the mill. Every area has it's team that the people there want to go and watch. Just because the price of football in this country is fixed by the cartel in control and none of them really have the bollocks (or means, in terms of the smaller clubs) to address that, doesn't mean that it is just 'the way of the world' and not scandalous. It doesn't mean that City don't take the piss out of addicted fans in the knowledge that they have them over a barrel. It doesn't mean that their aren't people at the club who sit there most days viewing the fans as a cynical money making commodity and who couldn't care less who is priced out or how the fanbase is affected, as long as the figure on the bottom line goes up.
Football prices, in the country as a whole, but significantly at City in recent years, can't be viewed through the prism of "some people can afford things, some people can't". Firstly, because watching football has never been a luxury until football became overrun by cynical twats in recent years and made it so, purely because they can and it looks good on their CV or pays them a dividend every year. And secondly because the cynical squeeze that is being put on City fans every year, with the price of everything increasing way beyond inflation, year upon year in the middle of economic hardship, and various extra charges for nothing being added at every turn (ticket priority, cup schemes, platinum nonsense, etc) is so out of line with the normal considerations that any other non football business has to work under it is unrecognisable. Simply put, they know they have fans by the bollocks and that they are desperate to stay watching City. They know that there will be plenty of bellends willing to glory hunt and replace a percentage of anyone priced out. And as such, they have become cynical beyond belief when it comes to trying to extract every last penny. What makes it even more distasteful is that fact that the figures involved mean virtually nothing to the club in the long run, so it is actually just done so someone can show that they are uber efficient in doing so.
