Found this but this is for L2. This would show that @71.7% player wages in 2007/8 were 1.8million. However that had been reduced in 2013 where it was stated in a Lincolnshire Echo article that total staff wages including player wages was at £937k. Therefore player wages are coming down as are staff costs within the club yet the debt has gone up from 108k in 2013 to 380k earlier this year and there is pressure on from the Co-op bank who wanted to call in their overdraft. Sounds familiar. Lincoln City own the ground and the Land. Year 2007/08 (£ millions) Turnover 2.543 Profit / Loss -0.282 Wages % to turnover 71.7% No of employees 104
Agreed. You're asking questions in more detail than I put forward, but I would be asking essentially the same things. How are the Europeans able to charge less, or is it simply a matter of there being a traditional attitude to not being greedy?
You were wondering how many German divisions were wholly professional. There are 3, Bundesliga, Bundesliga 2 and Liga: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_football_league_system The above Wiki is actually very detailed.
Further to my earlier post above, the other day. The actual sentence was Transforming Fans Into Customers, and was the tagline for the Sales and Representation department from the FSG website and Liverpool FC, so my memory was slightly faulty, but not hugely so. Since the supporters walkout the S&R dept have changed their tagline to Transforming Consumers Into Fans. please log in to view this image To be honest it's debatable whether that's a fair thing to state about Liverpool supporters, but certainly it has no integrity at all after the shambles of the first version. If I was them I would remove any tagline at all for the forseeable future.
Which either goes to show how lucky we are in England or how much the English love football. Should the question be asked if the lower leagues should consider going semi professional after all it is only over recent years (a decade or so) that conference teams became professional My reason for carrying on with the lower league argument is purely that people will not pay £16 at lower league levels if they see Premier tickets reduced to £20. On the German side of things I would think that player wages for all but the top few teams are much more reasonable and that other club overheads and costs are much much lower. Policing and energy for a start. I think the main problem in the UK is that everything costs so much. This is the financial statement for Bayern 2013-4: http://www.fcbayern.de/media/native/presse-free/Kennzahlen_13-14.pdf
Dear Liverpool supporters, It has been a tumultuous week. On behalf of everyone at Fenway Sports Group and Liverpool Football Club, we would like to apologise for the distress caused by our ticket pricing plan for the 2016-17 season. The three of us have been particularly troubled by the perception that we don’t care about our supporters, that we are greedy, and that we are attempting to extract personal profits at the club’s expense. Quite the opposite is true. From our first days as owners we have understood that serving as custodians of this incredible institution is a distinct privilege and as such, we have been driven solely by the desire to return LFC to the pinnacle of football. In the world of modern football, growing the club in a sustainable way is essential to realising this objective. To that end, we have never taken a single penny out of the football club. Instead we have injected vast sums of our own money to improve the playing squad and modernise LFC’s infrastructure - exemplified by the £120million advance from FSG to build the new Main Stand. This massive undertaking was made in order to provide more supporters access to Anfield and also to produce additional revenue to help us compete financially with clubs that have greater resources. When it opens in August this year, the stand will accomplish those goals, thereby fulfilling a promise we made upon acquiring LFC in 2010. We were strongly engaged in the process to develop the ticketing plan for 2016-17. We met directly with representatives of LFC’s Supporters’ Committee and along with LFC management, wholeheartedly agreed with major concerns raised, notably: access for local and young supporters; engagement and access to Anfield for local children; access to Premier League matches for those in Liverpool most challenged by affordability. We believe the plan successfully addressed these concerns and are disappointed that these elements have been either lost or, worse, characterised as cynical attempts to mask profiteering in the plan as a whole. Rather, we prefer to look at them as the parts of the ticketing plan we got right. On the other hand, part of the ticketing plan we got wrong. In addition to the other elements of the plan we proposed price increases on a number of tickets. These pricing actions generated growth in general admission ticketing revenue on a like-for-like basis exclusive of revenue from newly-added GA seats. We believed by delivering a vastly improved seat offering in what will be the newest stand in English football, concentrating the price increases on those tickets typically purchased by fans least sensitive to affordability, and for LFC to begin repaying the £120million advance from FSG for the new Main Stand that these increases were supportable even in the context of growth in revenues from the new Premier League TV deal. However, the widespread opposition to this element of the plan has made it clear that we were mistaken. A great many of you have objected strongly to the £77 price level of our most expensive GA seats and expressed a clear expectation that the club should forego any increased revenue from raising prices on GA tickets in the current environment. Message received. After an intense period of consultation with LFC management we have decided to make major revisions to our ticketing structure for 2016-17: - Removal of game categorisation – regardless of the opposition fans will pay the same price for matchday tickets. - The pricing of tickets will be readjusted to result in zero revenue growth from GA ticketing on a like-for-like basis. - Though individual ticket prices may move marginally from this season, we are freezing our 2016-17 GA ticket revenue at the 2015-16 level exclusive of newly-added seats in the new Main Stand. - The price of our highest general admission ticket will be frozen at the 2015-16 level - £59. - The price of our highest season ticket will be frozen at the 2015-16 level - £869. The lowest price reducing a further £25 from the 2015-16 level to £685, as well as all other tiers being frozen or reduced. - £9 GA seats will be offered for each and every Premier League match, an allocation of more than 10,000 tickets across the season. We would hasten to add that the other initiatives announced last week in the 2016-17 plan will remain: - 17-21 young adult concession – 20,000 tickets across the Premier League season available at a 50 per cent reduction for young people. - 1,000 tickets to Premier League matches across the season will be given away free of charge to Liverpool schoolchildren based on merit, as recommended by their teachers. - As a sign of our commitment to this improved ticketing structure, we are further announcing that this plan shall be in effect for both the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons. - For the next two seasons, LFC will not earn a single additional pound from increasing general admission ticket prices. We believe we have demonstrated a willingness to listen carefully, reconsider our position, and act decisively. The unique and sacred relationship between Liverpool Football Club and its supporters has always been foremost in our minds. It represents the heartbeat of this extraordinary football club. More than any other factor by far, that bond is what drives us to work tirelessly on behalf of the club and its future. We have great conviction in our world-class manager and our young, talented squad and know that in time the on-pitch success we all crave will be realised. We look forward to sharing in that success with you. John W Henry, Tom Werner, Mike Gordon
Yeah, alright. But am I still allowed to hate them? Begrudging respect for the club. Massive respect for the real fans who have made a stand.
Is it just me or does that statement read like it has several little digs at the supporters in it? They refer twice to 'foregoing any extra revenue' which when I read it is trying to defend the price rises.
Before anyone gets all luvvy-duvvy with Liverpool, or at the very least cuts them some slack, do remember they are still fleecing their supporters with the prices from this season, the season before, and so on, until back to when it was still affordable for anyone to get into the ground on the equivalent of a paper round wage. That goes for practically every football club.
Before we all go misty eyed...football at tickets that cheap consisted of crowding together in concrete stands covered in urine. We are now relatively comfortable and all able to see.....which means women, the elderly and young are better able to enjoy it. You can't stay at the Ritz for Travel Lodge prices.
These days I simply cant afford to go to Saints games. Well that's likely untrue, i could make cuts elsewhere in my life, but as nearly all matches are streamed somewhere, sadly felt the season ticket was the thing to go. My wife says I should get one, but I'd feel selfish spending all that money just on myself. But I also understand that the club is a business and doesnt need me to go. It has a set number of seats to fill, and if it can fill them at prices I cant afford, then that's my problem, not theirs.
Before you go all misty eyed at the comfort. It's still outside and, most of the time, cold. And many people stand anyway.
And they have continued the policy under many different owners of boarding up houses in the area to make it derelict so that they can build the stand in question.
I do have a season ticket, but I don't have any dependants, so I don't have to feel too guilty about how I use a large chunk of my disposable income. Even so I still have to make cuts for this love/hobby. I'm staying in on a Friday night and on internet forum for a start! Like Fran said above, football has invested and invests a lot of money in providing a safe, clean and comfortable environment for people to enjoy the game. We are not standing and crammed into decaying stadia worrying that violence could potentially erupt in the terraces without repercussion. Football does not owe the local community a seat at the match and they should charge a price which allows them to support the match day costs and wages of the staff and players. Prices have got out of hand and Liverpool supporters are right to protest and hold clubs to account. Football clubs are exactly that, clubs and as such should never be run for profit. With the TV money prices should be frozen at worst and away tickets should be supported as away fans are integral to the atmosphere and experience of a match day, but any social revolution over ticket prices is unrealistic.
I know what you mean, but as someone who fits none of these criteria (don't even think about making a an ageist remark) I also find it more comfortable. I remember going with my teenage kids onto the Kop pre-Taylor and hearing them sing "You can stick your ****ing seats up your arse". Found it depressing given that the deaths of 96 of their own had led directly to the all-seater stadia which allowed fans to watch games safely. As you say we pay for safety
That's the point though; those Liverpool fans have refused to acceot that a football club is a businesd. Didn't they have a banner that read 'Im a supporter not a customer'? Easy to knock scousers in general for their apparently outmoded pre-Thatcherite aocial values, but they've just proved the power of collective action. They're not the only people fed up with a workd view that monetises every aspect of our lives. Football clubs, co-operative societies, Building Societies even- none of these things started out as businesses run for profit. They were founded on values other than the purely commercial.
