I don’t think there’s anybody who realistically expects to get into games for a tenner a pop to watch the best football team on the planet mate. Even some non-league clubs charge more than that. However, there has to be a balance somewhere and revenues can be maximised without employing some of the more dubious practices we’ve seen from our club and other clubs of late. If you were in charge of maximising revenues, you say that you would do exactly the same as City are doing but I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and say that you wouldn’t have been daft enough to sign off on the disabled car park pricing policy that the club have recently introduced. Even after meetings with the disabled supporters groups who suggested other ways of dealing with the situation which didn’t result in everyone using the disabled car parking facilities copping for the prices, they still went ahead with it and ended up with a shit load of bad publicity which resulted in a welcome climbdown but they couldn’t even tell the truth as to why they backtracked on it.
More worryingly, it’s suspected that PL clubs are involved in joining forces behind the scenes in employing some of these deeply unpopular ticketing policies. It’s surely no coincidence that it’s not only City who have suddenly started targeting disabled fans. Villa are doing it too, and United. It’s surely no coincidence that it’s not only Spurs who have suddenly targeted concession prices. West Ham are doing it too. And for what? An extra few quid in revenue and a fuck ton of criticism? Is it really worth it? How about coming up with more creative ideas to maximise revenue that don’t involve constantly taking the piss out of supporters? There are plenty of ways of doing it - if clubs actually bothered properly engaging with fans in the first place that is.
As for some of City’s ticket prices, it’s short-term thinking based on exploiting our current position of being the best team on the planet with the greatest manager on the planet. Once he goes, we won’t be quite so dominant and there WILL be a drop-off in demand from the JCLs and tourists. Then you’re left with an issue of who’s going to take up the slack. Unfortunately, if they’ve also priced out some of the hardcore fanbase in the meantime it’ll be nigh on impossible to entice them back because believe me, once fans get out of the habit of regularly going to football matches it’s unlikely that they’ll get back into it.
