Ticket Prices

[Deleted member 77198]

I've been an armchair fan since 2014, ticket prices have become ridiculous. As an average working man I can't justify spending approx. £100 including expenses to watch football. The game is completely out of touch with your average fan.

And what our boardroom don’t understand is that people like you make up the vast majority of our fanbase. We don’t have a load of tourists, out-of-towners, corporates, and nobodies to take up the slack when people like us start to drop away.

We’ll just see ever decreasing attendances. It’s happened at Arsenal over the last decade, and they’re the biggest supported club in the South of England and they do have a load of tourists etc.. So where will it leave City when the breaking point hits with our fanbase?

 

[Marvin]

Seems like a good idea in theory, but in reality many families in and around Manchester cannot afford 1200 quid for a holiday nevermind a season ticket. And £100 a game per family when the cost of living is rising. Some may pay if money isn't a problem but some parents struggle to feed their kids.

Ticket prices are too expensive for plenty of non attending blues, sadly. And the club need to lower prices accordingly in order to fill the stadium, but they most probably won't.

But the ground is full. Every league game. What city are doing is pricing the match-day tickets so high that they drag every Penny of value.

I don't think City fans have really grasped that football is a billion Pound business and that your support is monetised along with everything else. We know that instinctively and then we get these daft comments that City could make more money if they did it another way, or they should prioritise fans rather than business. This neglects the obvious. City know their business better than we do, and it is a business not a fan owned football club.

It is not Manchester City's business to take into account the budgets of their supporters. What they do is an empirical task of taking the seats that are available after season tickets, corporates and away fans and maximise the revenue that it's possible to earn from those few thousand tickets.

You may not like it. But that is what they do. And they are more or less spot on every single game because all the games sell out or as near as damn it on the day. I would say they are quite brilliant at it. You're not supposed to like it. It's called capitalism.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Quick question, why was there no campaign for home fans to pay a cap of £30 for tickets like they did for away fans?

No idea, but it should come in. Nobody outside a corporate area should be paying more than £30 to watch football. You get 60 minute’s worth of action at City games out of the 90 + added time, that’s proper fucking shit and we have the most minutes of action in the league (some teams it’s as low as 52 minute’s and some individual games are in the 40s!).

All that money to spend 30-50 minutes watching 25 blokes (both XIs and three officials) stand about on some grass!

 

[Marvin]

I think it’s clear that the boardroom have no fucking understanding of our fanbase whatsoever, and I don’t think they care to try and understand.

There are enough City fans in Greater Manchester to have a 65,000 stadium packed to the rafters every single week. Yet we’re in a situation where we’ve been struggling to get people through the turnstiles and are awash with empty seats. We have been just about the worst in the Prem for them over the last five years, I reckon only Arsenal and Southampton are anywhere near us.

It’s not the empty seats that bother me so much, especially when we’ve historically been a fanbase of fluctuations in attendances from game-to-game. But what has bothered me for years is that mates and family have fancied going to a game yet it says the game is “SOLD OUT” (usually with a big announcement on the website), only to see thousands of empty seats around the stadium when the game is being played; or they have fancied going to a game and then find out that tickets are £65 and £41 for kids (it’s £9 for kids at Anfield, NINE FUCKING QUID FOR FUCK’S SAKE!)

The contempt our fanbase is held in by our board is apparent.

Even season tickets are not good value for money. My ticket works out at £44 a game, when it was decided by the FSF and Premier League that fans shouldn’t be charged more than £30 for tickets (which our boardroom unsurprisingly voted against). All I’m doing is the exact same thing I was doing when we were in the third tier of English football; just going to watch my football team.

It only costs £570 to do all 19 away games!

They do not need to know what your budget is. It's irrelevant. This is UK plc. Business runs to make a profit.

There is no way of reforming business so it works for customers. Have you seen any significant chances in the relations between capital and labour in the last 200 years. The condition of the English working class may have changed much but not in relatively. One exploits the other and there's no middle ground.

 

[mancityvstoke]

But the ground is full. Every league game. What city are doing is pricing the match-day tickets so high that they drag every Penny of value.

I don't think City fans have really grasped that football is a billion Pound business and that your support is monetised along with everything else. We know that instinctively and then we get these daft comments that City could make more money if they did it another way, or they should prioritise fans rather than business. This neglects the obvious. City know their business better than we do, and it is a business not a fan owned football club.

It is not Manchester City's business to take into account the budgets of their supporters. What they do is an empirical task of taking the seats that are available after season tickets, corporates and away fans and maximise the revenue that it's possible to earn from those few thousand tickets.

You may not like it. But that is what they do. And they are more or less spot on every single game because all the games sell out or as near as damn it on the day. I would say they are quite brilliant at it. You're not supposed to like it. It's called capitalism.

This may well be the facts of the matter but are they acceptable to take football away from local people who support their local team? It is a cultural matter for me and should be affordable not fucking rip off prices that most normal people simply cannot afford.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

They do not need to know what your budget is. It's irrelevant. This is UK plc. Business runs to make a profit.

There is no way of reforming business so it works for customers. Have you seen any significant chances in the relations between capital and labour in the last 200 years. The condition of the English working class may have changed much but not in relatively. One exploits the other and there's no middle ground.

But I’ll repeat, it’s £9 for kids at Anfield. It’s £41 for kids for the City v Chelsea game.

My uncle sits in a similar seat at Old Trafford to mine at the Etihad. His seat was £750 ten years ago and it’s £750 now. My seat was £520 ten years ago and it’s £830 now.

 

[BlueMoonRisin’]

But the ground is full. Every league game. What city are doing is pricing the match-day tickets so high that they drag every Penny of value.

I don't think City fans have really grasped that football is a billion Pound business and that your support is monetised along with everything else. We know that instinctively and then we get these daft comments that City could make more money if they did it another way, or they should prioritise fans rather than business. This neglects the obvious. City know their business better than we do, and it is a business not a fan owned football club.

It is not Manchester City's business to take into account the budgets of their supporters. What they do is an empirical task of taking the seats that are available after season tickets, corporates and away fans and maximise the revenue that it's possible to earn from those few thousand tickets.

You may not like it. But that is what they do. And they are more or less spot on every single game because all the games sell out or as near as damn it on the day. I would say they are quite brilliant at it. You're not supposed to like it. It's called capitalism.

Sorry Marvin but I think you go to the game with blue tinted specs on. The stadium is certainly not "full every league game'' at all. I really cannot understand you saying that because there are gaps in almost every section for all but the top league games, but you fail to see them ?

Daft comments, eh? : /

The club do not give a fuck about it's working class supporters, the very same supporters that were there when they bought the club!
I've had a SC every year( and before) they invested in us and until recent seasons every SC holder was sent an email survey on what we want and can afford, etc etc. The club decided to hedge their bets and try to attract affluent match day ticket glory hunters to the stadium at the expense of long standing supporters, and quite frankly it hasn't worked out.

A lot of former City fans want to go but cannot afford to because they've been priced out, fact!

Only the big games sell out and the club announce a sell out but very few sold out games tally in with actually bums on seats. The various ticket agencies the club offload tickets to often have seats unsold at vastly inflated prices, hence empty seats dotted about the stadium.

If tickets were reduced it would ensure an actual full house and encourage parents to take their kids because they can afford to

More bums on seats means more food drinks and merchandise sold, but at this moment in time we still have unsold tickets that the club sells on to agencies...

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Unsociably early kick off times have an impact

It’s at 12:30 on a Saturday afternoon, not 05:30 in the morning. The kick off time is absolutely fine.

It’s the price that is the issue, not that it’s on the afternoon of the best day of the week for a game of footy.

 

[Northerndave]

But for most people they are 'one off' type events.
Not 19 league games and umpteen additional cup games.

If you wanted to attend 19 games a season, you'd buy a ST and take advantage of the reduced prices surely?

 

[mancityvstoke]

If you wanted to attend 19 games a season, you'd buy a ST and take advantage of the reduced prices surely?

Season tickets arent that easy to buy. They are limited and each season there is a small window of opportunity.

Last season that lasted about 2 minutes