Re: What happened to the "Tourists" thread?
This is probably going to develop in to a long reply. So, apologies in advance to those who are horrified by that and feel moved to express their disgust on threads every time there is a reply over three paragraphs. Hollyoaks is on at 1830, if that's any consolation.
This is is solely to do with THE SIZE OF THE STADIUM.
Let me just repeat that as it really seems to be a difficult concept for some people to get their heads around.
THE SIZE OF THE STADIUM.
It has nothing to do with being "the biggest fan", "the biggest Manc", racism, xenophobia, FFP, finances, revenue streams or anything else.
Manchester City's average attendances since moving to this site are as follows:
47,044 11/12
45,880 10/11
45,512 09/10
42,900 08/09
42,126 07/08
39,997 06/07
42,856 05/06
45,192 04/05
46,834 03/04
Apart from the small dip of a few thousand between Pearce and the takeover, the stadium has been as good as full for most of the tenure. A couple of thousand here or there is nothing in terms of excess capacity for a 48,000 stadium. The club certainly does not struggle to sell tickets.
Now, over the last 12 months, there has been the rise of the 'tourist' fan, obvious to anyone who encounters them and standing out like a sore thumb. The height of this was the Madrid game, where the atmosphere was unlike any other game in the history of MCFC. Meanwhile, as time progresses, league games follow the trend and a seemingly growing proportion of obvious 'tourists' are in attendance for high profile matches, including the derby and the Chelsea home games. At the same time, although a slightly different, but related, discussion, you have the most high profile away games, where tickets are often highly sought after and subject to stringent points totals, featuring noticeably larger numbers of people in the away ends who obviously (through their mannerisms and actions, rather than race, creed or anything else) have no genuine history of support or following MCFC.
The point is this. In order for such tickets to end up in hands of 'tourists', there has to be an exclusion of fans who would otherwise be taking up these tickets.
The recent fiasco with the outrageously priced 'block of five' end of season home game tickets is a case in point.
You have blues who have actually paid money to ensure that they are in a position to secure tickets, suddenly finding the goalposts shifted and that if they cannot afford (even more) inflated prices for 5, hiked up, tickets in one go, forced to accept that they might not be able to attend.
Meanwhile, the club are desperate to get these tickets on open sale as soon as possible, taking the unprecedented step of allowing non members, anyone at all, to get their hands on these tickets months before some of the games take place.
That is nothing more than a plan that was designed to ensure that less regular, or semi regular, match going blues are taking up the tickets and that they are shifted into the hands of people who wish to be tourists.
You can debate as much as you like about whether that is good for the atmosphere or makes any difference to fans who are at the game. But that isn't the point. The point is that there is a deliberate shift to exclude long standing blues and get tickets into the hands of people who the club deem to be a more attractive demographic.
It is quite simple. To get 'tourists' in, people who would otherwise have bought the tickets have to be excluded. Due to, let's see if we can remember this one class, all together now, THE (limited) SIZE OF TH STADIUM.
Every blue, unless they live under a rock, must know long standing blues who can't, for whatever reason, get to every match. Or who used to get to every match but now can't. People who would have loved to get to see City play in the FA Cup final but couldn't because, despite having miles more loyalty points and history of attending, long term and short term, the goal posts were shifted on who cup final tickets were, and will be in the future, allocated. The same applies for home and away tickets now, although it is far more blatant than just selling 'loyalty' points or announcing a back door compulsory cup scheme after the quarter finals have been played.
For home and away games now, chunks of tickets that would have, in the past, gone on sale to genuine, long standing City fans now don't even see the light of day. They are ushered into the hands of 'tourists.
So, in the 'one in, one out' circumstances of a limited stadium capacity, the same number of blues who would have attended are denied the opportunity.
On top of this, the club continue to ramp up the price of attending. Season tickets to some extent but more cynically, the price of tickets for non season ticket holders. Again, this serves the purpose of, financially this time, excluding long standing blues, and, conveniently, replacing them with more financially able tourists.
That is the issue, pure and simple.
The way most people on here respond to it, it seems that this board is full of self interested season tickets holders who, as long as they are attending, couldn't give a fuck and adopt an "I'm alright, Jack" attitude - although strangely they seem too ashamed to be totally up front with that phrase. Or, you get people who couldn't give a fuck about attending anyway and therefore couldn't care less about the issue.
There is a third group, possibly encompassing some of both of the above groups who don't care about the above issue. And the polite way to describe them is the misinformed.
Any thread like this, including what comes after this post, sees dozens of people lining up to offer one of the following pearls of wisdom
"It's good for FFP"
"It's big business now"
"Stop trying to be the biggest blue"
"It's disgraceful to advocate giving grief to people who are just attending a football match"
"The stadium is going to be expanded"
"Without loads of tourists attending we wouldn't be a good team"
or various other cliches that they have heard plenty of others repeat mindlessly and therefore have, in their head, taken to be Gospel.
You could spend all day picking the holes in these dense offerings but there's little point because it won't stop them. They come in torrents, are self perpetuating and will continue to do so.
However, briefly:
"It's good for FFP"
City's operating costs are so huge that to suggest that a bit of extra spending at the club shop by a tourist will make a dent in it is absolutely ridiculous. Will making sure the stadium is full of 5,000 extra tourists a game have a long term effect on people spending on City merchandise outside of Manchester in the future? Well, ask yourself this, if you attended a game at the Nou Camp (a stadium that has the capacity to hold big tourist numbers, by the way) how much money over the next five years would you realistically spend on Barca gear? Not that much, I venture. Plus, more importantly, the shirt sales that big clubs generate abroad to people who have never and will never set foot near their stadiums completely dwarf anything sold to people who actually attend games as tourists. The big clubs could say that they are banning anyone from attending who wasn't born with 1 mile of the stadium and they would still sell thousands of items of merchandise abroad because for the vast bulk of people buying merchandise, attending a game does not come into it.
"It's big business now"
I think we are all aware of that but the amount of times this dullard line is thrown out there by some two bit clown who has never been outside of Levenshulme, as if just saying it is tantamount to listening to a sage piece of wisdom from Warren Buffett is laughable. Yes, it is big business, but that cliched observation doesn't add anything to the debate.
"Stop trying to be the biggest blue?Manc"
A nice diversionary tactic by people not interested in addressing the points raised. No-one is doing that, almost everyone can be made to look like they hardly ever attend when compared to someone, but when you can't address the points it is nice to suggest they are.
"It's disgraceful to advocate giving grief to people who are just attending a football match"
Again, something that only a scumbag would advocate or do to a person who has decided to attend at City. But still, it's something that people like to suggest is a horrible undertone to such debates.
"The stadium is going to be expanded"
Possibly. But people say this as if that is a fact. No-one knows for certain. If it does happen quickly, say to be ready in five years time, that is five years where all the issues raised above are extremely relevant and any attempts to increase the amount of tourists in the ground is, at the same time, an attempt to exclude long serving blues from the ground. For five whole years.
"Racism/xenophobia"
Such a cliched, pathetic and offensive suggestion to make that it barely warrants a response. Especially given some of the genuinely offensive comments of such nature expressed in the off topic section of this site regarding matters that are much more serious and important to other human being's lives than football.
Let the criticism, slagging off, snide remarks and little cliques go to work on that one. I expect at least 15 insults, nonsense cliches or pointless replies for every single thoughtful reply to the issues discussed above.<br /><br />-- Wed Feb 27, 2013 6:13 pm --<br /><br />
Ric said:
It was moved because of an argument between two posters that had been reported. I'll clean it up and move it back when I get a minute.
Cheers, Ric
