As if Manchester City needed further problems to go with their lengthy injury list and abysmal league form this week the club created further grief for themselves by hiking up ticket prices for their forthcoming Champions League quarter final clash with PSG.
Such is the double-take stupidity of this decision it is difficult to know where to begin so let’s start with the inevitable fall out and work our way back.
City fans were sufficiently outraged by the steep bump up to sixty pounds in some sections of the ground to seriously consider a mass walkout on 60 minutes in the preceding league game against West Brom. Fearing this might split the fanbase – who are largely unanimous in their disgust at the price hike but were in disagreement over the means of protest – one of the club’s leading supporter organisations – The 1894 Group – has now vowed to display banners at the game instead. Another prominent group – City Watch – this week penned an open letter that was commented upon by every national newspaper and discussed on Sky Sports.
The letter ends with the pertinent line – ‘You turn your backs on the fans, and we’ll turn our backs on you’.
All positive coverage then for a club’s hierarchy that in recent years have been borderline obsessed with creating a brand. Indeed their decision to unnecessarily fleece their loyal support for an extra few quid amounts to a spectacular own goal.
That own goal worsens to a Demichelis-in-the-derby horror-show when you factor in the surrounding circumstances. Ticket prices have become a cause celebre of late with Liverpool supporters forcing their club to reason and the Premier League agreeing to cap away tickets at £30. The narrative to the play that is unfolding is very simple: clubs are the avaricious villains, the fans are the underdog good guys and the good guys are finally winning. For Manchester City to go against the grain on this – to such an extent that their official statement on the matter can be summarised as ‘We don’t give a flying one about your feelings. Come if you want but don’t forget to buy a Jamie Oliver burger!’ – is a PR head-scratcher of the highest order.
Most times in life, when you find yourself strongly disagreeing with something, it is possible to at least gauge it through the other person’s eyes and see their objective. You just happen to disagree with it. In this instance however, it is wholly nonsensical and self-defeating. It is entirely illogical even when you look at it from their perspective.
With assistance from City supporter Colin Savage we’ve calculated that the additional ticket revenue from the game is expected to harvest the club an additional £250,000 to £300,000. That’s assuming of course that there’s a full house. Which now there won’t be. Far from it. Considering City will make close to £12m anyway for the two games, that’s an extra 2% they are attempting to squeeze out of loyal fans’ pockets for a game that would not have been included in their 2015/16 financial forecasts. Having not reached the quarter final stage before, this is bonus territory for City. Money for nothing.
However, as just stated, this is all hypothetical anyway because now – due to their startling greed – there will not be a packed out Etihad roaring on the lads in a second leg of a momentous fixture where they could very conceivably need to overturn a first leg defeat. To what extent you believe fans help determine a result there’s no question that it is always infinitely preferable to have a ground electrified by passionate supporters being the proverbial twelve man. It lifts the team and if Manchester City are borderline obsessed with making their club a global brand they are out-and-out obsessed with landing the biggest club competition of them all. So it is in their own best interests to ensure supporters turn up en masse, unified, pumped up and positive.
Additionally, from a purely PR perspective a capacity crowd so loud they almost drown out the television commentators reflects very well on the club. On the brand.
Instead, by alienating their fans who spend small fortunes on season tickets, in the club shop, on the watered-down piss that masquerades as beer – who follow the team religiously home, away and abroad – they have caused a deep division at a time when the club needs our support the most and at a time when their social media guys and players will be entrusted to put out brain-storm-sessioned hashtags celebrating unity. We fight to the end. We play for you. We’re all in this together.
No we are absolutely not. We are now very much apart and for some bizarre reason, Man City appear to want it that way. All for an extra quarter of a million that can be viewed as pocket change with the club self-sufficient and enjoying healthy profits.
The sensible option was to keep the ticket prices the same as the previous round against Dynamo Kiev. The even better choice however would have been to reduce them. City have empirical knowledge of this due to doing likewise in their last European quarter-final back in 2009. Then it was Hamburg in the UEFA Cup and the atmosphere that evening is still talked about by Blues to this day.
But they would lose revenue the more capitalist among you say. No, they would not. The fiver knocked off an adult ticket (and allowing kids in for a token tenner) would easily be recouped with the additional sales elsewhere. Programmes. Merchandise. Beer. And imagine what the club’s PR people could have done with such a gesture, leaking to the newspapers and Sky that they are rewarding their loyal fans, their twelfth man who have stayed with the club through thick and thin to such a remarkable extent that the average gate when they plummeted to the third tier was 28,261.
“The fans ARE Manchester City and as we relish the prospect of an exciting Champions League quarter final we want every Blue celebrating the experience with us and cheering the lads on. Hashtag pride in battle.”
A PR victory, the supporters deluding themselves that the club don’t see them as walking, talking ATMs, a powerful sense of togetherness, a rip-roaring atmosphere that impresses the watching world, and more chance of progressing to the semi finals. All for a minimal loss in revenue. Oh City, look at what you could have won.
That last sentence is strangely pertinent because City’s decision to up the ticket prices at the first sight of glory reminds me of another quiz show. It used to air around teatime in the UK and was hosted by Jasper Carrott. Called Goldenballs, the premise at the finale was the last two remaining contestants had essentially already won the jackpot. All they have to do is both show a split ball but if one revealed a steal ball instead that person kept all the prize money and the other went home with nothing.
City have cruelly, coldly shown the steal ball here.
A last point and a pertinent one. The timing of this betrayal and consequent rift could not have been worse either. Even if viewed from the club’s perspective – as I have endeavoured to do throughout – and even if supporters are considered customers and the sport one big commercial venture their price hike is bafflingly ill-considered. Because every retail chain, airline, hotel, electrical manufacturer, or any other business you care to mention knows that if the service they are presently providing is sub-standard – with customers complaining of it vociferously and publicly – then that is absolutely not the time to raise your prices. It is flawed basic business sense.
In a horrible economic climate City fans have somehow found the finances to pay through the nose and follow their side home and away this term witnessing players who are, quite frankly, going through the motions and putting in the minimum of effort. Jacking up the price now is akin to a supermarket marking a new fruit and veg display by expecting their customers to pay a third more for their bananas. Only the fruit remains rotten.
An entire fanbase is up in arms over this week’s developments as I, a lifelong Blue, am too. But the naked greed is only very disappointing, not remotely surprising. Somehow worse for me is the knowledge that the club is not run by astute minds as I assumed.
Some among them are quite astoundingly poor at doing their jobs.
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