The beginning of a change for the worst at City

[fathellensbellend]

For the people who suggest those who don't want to pay the new prices "F-off" and do something else be careful what you wish for.

Because i did!!!

I took the view last season that the season ticket prices rise, and the other rises to parking/food/beer just weren't worth it.

So took my season ticket money £465, added it to my parking money £100.(which jumped to £200)
I then added half my food/beer money £100. (other half is now for beer from supermarket)

I then spent the £665 on a brand new shiny motorised High Definition satellite system.
I get EVERY football match available. Home/away..3pms or just about every channel available.

Now the thing is i'm not proud of this as such..
I love City, i love going to the match. I was in 110 and loved the standing/singing.
But as mentioned, i just took a choice.
I could only see the season ticket price rise and rise, yet my income wasn't going to rise at the same rate.
I knew there would be a point in the future that i would be priced out.
So rather than wait, i took the choice to quit now.

I still go to the odd league game. I go to most Cup games.
It is hard to just watch some games on TV, knowing i should be there.

People suggest you have to pay for success.
Well something has to give, and since my income hasn't changed, should my kids miss out for example?

I can live with it, and in some ways i get a better "match day experience".
For example, i now don't queue to get in or out of the car park. (or get robbed £10!)
I get to see all home AND away matches.
I get the best view/seat in the house. (on a eight foot HD cinema screen)
I get the best choice in beer.
My food is actually edible.
Surround sound provides the background singing/atmosphere.
Having a few mates round provides the banter.

So for me, City having more success can only be a good thing.
If you view me as somehow a lesser fan, then so be it.
My passion for City hasn't changed, i just don't go to as many matches now.
My only commitment is £120 a year.

I'm not a whinger......i have already made my choice.
I wanted to support City.
But i'm not in City's new plans.....fine by me!!!

good luck to you, i can see loads following suit.

 

[fulabeer]

Can you give me the details of how I go about getting this?

I like the sound of it!

Seriously.

Just google VU+ DUO for a good system or spider box/IP boxes for a much cheaper system.

 

[Skashion]

and another thing, i've seen the majority of posters say that it is what we have to do to become a top club. It is aload of bollocks and shit excuse. With the FFP rules coming in we won't be able to give the likes of Barry 120k a week or Bridge 90k a week or even Yaya Toure on 220k a week, so the wage bill will massively come down from what it is now.

So quick maths here say we have a squad of 20 on £70k a week each, that is a wage bill of £72.8m year.

If we were to expand to 65,000 and 40,000 of them seats were £20 with the rest being £40 based on coparate people then that brings in £1.8m per game x a minimum 19 league games brings in £34.2m.

Shirt Sponsorship at £15m per year.
Stadium Sponsorship at £10m per year.
Merchandise at a minimum £10m per year.
TV Money based on a 1st-5th place finish £40m.
Minimum Champions League money by just being in the Group stage £30m.

Which equates to £139.2m which is a big profit from the £72.8m wage plus before any other expenses are taken into consideration such as council rent, and other sundries.

So please don't give me the load of bollocks about how we have to pay through the nose to see us perform well. It is simply not true and more fool you if you really beleive that.

£20 is less than the average now. The average amount paid by a season ticket holder per league game is around £16.

I won't even go into your Fisher Price accounting because it is completely absurd and hopelessly optimistic. We're already making a huge loss on almost equal revenue to the one you state. We've got to seriously raise revenue, more the fool you if you don't believe that. It doesn't have to come from charging the ordinary fans though. Corporate is where the money is.

Two of the three following factors can be true.

1. A world class club with world class players and world class wages.
2. Sky-high prices for ordinary fans ala Real Madrid and Barca.
3. Make space for the corporates and corporate facilities. (This is probably one of the big reasons Sheikh Mansour invested in us in the first place because Manchester is an attractive business city compared to Liverpool or Newcastle and is served by a major airport, again, unlike those two.)

I choose 1 and 3.

 

[Anonymous]

JMA....

Great post. Don't agree with a fucking word, but as always, well written.

Couple of quick points - regarding City's work in the community - yes, I would rather the club continued their work in East Manchester (d'you anyone who lives there?) in terms of regenerating the are, and also continue their CITC projects (again, do you know anyone who's been involved?).

Regarding the 250 pound season ticket - it was NOT offered to people who were forcibly moved from their seats, it was offered to anyone and everyone.

WNRH...

No offense but someone who's on their fourth or fifth username should not be throwing stones about my leaving the forum. I know you're young and I don't mean to sound particularly patronizing, but there's so much naivety running through your posts in this thread.

 

[BertTrautmann'sParachute]

"JohnMaddoxAxe", take a bow! On another note, funny thing about this thread is the amount of people who think that they are entitled to broadcast their ignorant, half-witted opinions to the rest of us.

 

[Nicholas van Whatsisface]

just to add to the debate, i have been watching munich v dortmund, 66000, dortmund allocated 8000 tickets, i bet they werent 55 quid.

what a fantastic spectacle the budersliga truly is.

I too am watching it and i am enjoying it more than any premier league game that doesn't involve us and you know what? The bundesliga has just overtaken Seria A for the extra champions league place in 2012 so they now have 4 champions league places and are on course to overtake Spain in a few years and then the premier league. In 5-7 years time it will be the best league in the world especially with the FFP rules coming in. That is the model we should be aiming for, not the fucking rags or arsenal.

Alot of hipocrites in this thread who have slagged off the rags and the likes of arsenal and chelsea for the prices they charge and the way they operate and yet here they are lapping it up because they think it is the norm.

WELL ITS NOT, Germany's model should be the norm and they have it so spot on because they never sat there and took any price increase up the arse because they thought it was the way to go about it.

This constant referral to Germany and to Bayern shows a complete lack of understanding about the specifics of the situation in Germany, and how that differs completely from the specifics of the situation in England.

It is naive at best, and disingenuous at worst, to constantly keep harking back to the German model in relation to City - it is not relevant, just as the Spanish model, where Real and Barca split half of the TV revenue between them, leaving half for the rest of the Clubs, is completely different from the circumstances City operate in.

To use Bayern as an example - they have the largest Commercial Revenues of any football Club in the world. They have access to commercial revenue streams we could only dream of. In 2009-10, they brought in 172.9million Euros. They also benefit from being the undisputed biggest Club in the undisputed largest economy in Europe. The commercial revenues available to English Clubs are just not on the same level as those seen in Germany. Consequently they rely on the money coming through the turnstiles for just 21% of their total revenue. That's why they can keep their ticket prices so cheap. Without this level of access to commercial revenues, Bayern would be unable to compete at the level they do, and would no doubt have to look elsewhere for revenue.

It may surprise you to know that City actually have the 4th highest Commercial Revenue as a percentage of Total Revenue in the World, with ours being at 37% - some way behind Bayern at 53% and Schalke 04 at 57%. So the Club are doing a good job in this regard, but there is only so much they can raise by commercial revenues in this country.

The Bundesliga also made a conscious decision not to go down the route of over-selling the TV rights to games, and have largely kept Sky at bay. This forces the fans to attend games as the only way of actually seeing them, whereas over here you can make the decision not to go to a game, yet you can still watch it on TV. In Germany, fans react the way they do about ticket price hikes becasue they have very little choice in terms of how they can watch the games. Price the fans out of the Stadium, and they won't see the game. That is not the case in England, and that ship sailed long ago in this country. Sky is firmly in control of football over here, and there is very little City can do about that.

As a side point, he Bundesliga also benefitted from Germany hosting the World Cup in 2006, as there was huge investment made in the Country's football stadia to support the competition - these Clubs therefore did not have to foot the bill for the regeneration of their staduim. Clubs didn't have to find the money by exploiting existing revenue streams to upgrade their stadia. Again, this is not the case in England.

It would be great to think we could just map the German model onto City, and we'd all be laughing - but that ignores the specifics of the countries we are operating in, and the specifics of the football landscapes in those countries. It is completely unhelpful to constantly bring up German Clubs, as it actually stifles debate as to how City as a Football Club operating in England can look to improve our revenue.

 

[SWP's back]

"JohnMaddoxAxe", take a bow! On another note, funny thing about this thread is the amount of people who think that they are entitled to broadcast their ignorant, half-witted opinions to the rest of us.

Irony is a beautiful thing.

 

[Sheriff Fatman]

I have a bit of a problem with this being born in Manchester and now living in Cheshire - Could you please explain what you mean?

My post is ironic after some working class warrior stated the real fans would soon lose out to Cheshire wankers. Read the thread to see.

Then you have my apologies. I tried to read the whole thread but sorting the wheat from the chaff when there are 15 pages of bickering can be difficult at times.