Tim I did DM you from the 1894 twitter account couple of weeks ago saying we were going on podcasts talking about flexi gold and did you want to put your side across to a wider audience- the show had 3 flexi gold people on it. We surveyed fans and 131 FG members replied and said they should have a choice of FG or ST - not with a 16 game criteria to upgrade but that they should be able to get one without having to “prove their worth” as a City fan first, you yourself have loads of FG members in your branch, we are fighting they have the right to be full season card holders. It’s not good enough in the eyes of fans to just have a pathway to a season card - a difficult pathway jumping through various hoops and remembering to buy on time etc - the citymatters statement was liked on twitter by the club with a blue heart. For fans who want more they will see that the club is then trying to use citymatters for PR. I know the guys have worked hard they have had practice sessions and talked about what to say. But we pre-date citymatters by many years we pass on advice every day to many of them and have done for years and we say don’t be too close to the club, don’t accept the tunnel club tickets, don’t agree to joint statements all the time, but some distance between yourselves and the club so that you are able to go further.
Club’s behaviour towards citymatters has been coercive, they ignored the chair’s comments on modernisation and changing the governance of it, they ignored them on prices, on the actual way FG should be rolled out for example, they did what they want, all of a sudden citymatters is then at the request of some of their members, back by outside forces like ourselves- we start doing more joint statements, the bottom line is the club sees citymatters as it’s toy to get whatever it wants through, however doesn’t like to see fans giving their voice independently outside that bubble and not having to work under the constraints of how citymatters reps work with the club.
So what we have started seeing and what we will see moving forward is the club trying to play a PR game , giving some concessions to CM as they go along but still try and maintain a stranglehold over it. They would rather amplify citymatters voice and show the public “it is working” rather than feel they have to show they are giving in to “mob rule”.
The 3 protest groups plus solid citizens who signed the letter to pep this week know full well how it works politically at City, that City will give their announcements to CM reps first, which is why the date of the concourse protest was chosen for Wolves because it weaponised the citymatters meeting of 1st may ie here is a chance for the club to bring in season cards, reduce prices, change the reseller agreements, amend the attendance criteria but none of this happened, so of course the protest went ahead and was well supported. 7000 instead of 10000 but the first one was practically the biggest anywhere inside a stadium in the prem since the kop walk out. It’s still huge numbers. It’s like saying K2 isn’t as big as Everest.
The same now applies to the citymatters meeting on 12th June we would expect club to give some more concessions- they know the citymatters reps are supported by the fans outside the room.
Some of the citymatters reps might not appreciate that even now and might feel it’s taking some of the limelight away from them, if so that’s their issue. They have to see the strength of feeling from fans. Last season the season card rep didn’t read the room and didn’t understand the criticism when she didn’t sign the letter most of the others did. This year she has been working through the mails from fans and passing them all onto the club and we did thank her for her work - maybe that stuck in her throat slightly- but we are here to pass on feedback from fans and the issue was she was the season card rep and it was her area.
The ticketing sub group was bypassed in citymatters when the OSC were doing their own private negotiations with the club on securing more flexi gold for their members.
That undermines the whole point of citymatters. All the club have tried to do is try and stop protests happening and they have failed miserably.
Because they haven’t listened.
Flexi Gold isn’t the answer to getting rid of empty seats. The pricing and the way tickets are allocated is.
