As long as people PAY whatever price is asked, the clubs wont worry. Stop going and that might make them look differently at the situation.
But it's not merely about people going - Football is always of great interest, even for people who don't really support a team, and as such people will always watch it on TV, or read about it through websites and newspapers - leading to the clubs earning huge revenues with TV deals, sponsorships (because companies will always pay to have their brand splashed across the back pages each week). And while fans maybe priced out of the core act of getting together to cheer on their team in the stadium, cheering, groaning and crying with the highs and lows that get them so close to the team and the passions of supporting a club. There will always be the secondary option of watching it on TV, or in the pub with the mates, which means the club/league still make masses of money. It may subtly change the nature of the game, and the supporters if the prices keep rising, but there's enough interest and money in the game for it to matter little. One thing I do think has changed for the positive is that there's a lot less of a hooligan/violence element to supporting teams these days. Just a shame that the really passionate fans can't get to see their team without either a) sharing season tickets or b) heavily leveraging other parts of their life!
Mourinho touched on this when he slagged off Chelsea fans for not singing against QPR. Nowdays the demographic of football fans has changed and stadiums are filled with a mixture of middle class, corporate type and tourists as well as the ordinary fans. There's also now an expectation from some of these fans for high quality entertainment every week and they will only start singing when the team start playing well, mixed with frustrated groans when it doesn't go to plan. We've suffered from it and so have Utd, City, Chelsea and Liverpool. For a parent and two kids to attend a game, you're looking at £150 so it's not a cheap day out. I think the premier league and the clubs take the fans for granted and take advantage of their loyalty to their clubs. Without the fans there would be nothing and I do think that they are pricing both young people and the lower income families out of the game. My solution would be to bring back terracing and have cheaper tickets and a better atmosphere. It works in Germany and it would work here if the Politicians pulled their fingers out of their arses and actually looked at the evidence, instead of falling back on the old fear and scaremongering tactics that ensued from Hillsborough.
People are actually going to reply seriously to this? Right OK then... How many Arsenal fans are there in the world? 27 million? More? How many regularly attend games? 40000? Which is about 0.15% of Arsenal fans. Ergo 99.85% of Arsenal fans don't regularly attend Arsenal games... so why would ticket prices affect them?
Well actually... if they never attend... why should their opinion matter? That's like saying that politicians should listen to people who don't vote.
Or it's like saying that wars fought in other countries don't concern us so we shouldn't have an opinion on them.
Arsenal are the worse for this really because such a large chunk of our ticket altercation goes to Corporate memberships etc.. Its a shame we never added another 20,000 'cheap seating' (i know they couldn't because of issues with the council) - to the Emirates when we built it. Would have added alot to the atmosphere.
Rip out the seats in the lower tiers behind the goals and replace them with safe standing, thereby increasing the capacity, offering cheaper tickets and improving the atmosphere.
You're right. If you look at a video from a match from any Club 20/25 years ago the majority of the fans would have been male and a lot would have been young males. The issues from several stadium disasters have changed the landscape and with all seated stadiums has come extremely expensive seating areas - which have more or less eradicated young males from attending as they have only just joined the employment ladder and don't have much disposable cash (that is if they are lucky enough to have a job). In effect, the football "hooligan" has been priced out of the stadium to be replaced by "the sit down brigade" and football is poorer for it. There is a solution and it's called Safe Standing. It's been on the political horizon for a while, but the sooner it's brought back in the better - and football can partially return to it's working class roots.
Let's make tickets cheaper so that hooligans can fill the stadiums again. Football is definitely poorer for it. If the hooligans came back we could have scenes like this which we all love: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/29898203
And while we're at 'returning football to its working class roots'... lets return medicine to those that develop treatments and drugs and offer operations and treatments for cost price and only let the wealthy have them. Let's also return society to its roots and welcome back rampant casual racism, homophobia and sexism. Life was much better 30 years ago.
Don't be so stupid Cini Nobody is saying return to Hooliganism or outdated societal problems, we're talking about offering cheaper tickets so that it's more affordable to lower income families. It's narrow, small mined attitudes like yours that are the problem not the 'working class'. I suggest you educate yourself about the safe standing campaign and look at the benefits of its introduction which can offer cheaper tickets, improved atmosphere, choice for fans whether to stand or sit, increased capacity and the ability to reduce the need for new build stadiums, which in turn is more environmentally friendly and prevents clubs from taking on unsustainable debt. Start here http://www.fsf.org.uk/campaigns/safe-standing/ and then come back with some intelligent comments
Stupid people would be those that can't read comments properly... which appears to be you PISKIE. Yours is probably one of the dumbest comments I've seen showing you don't read comments properly before replying. Come back when you're intelligent and actually read stuff before replying.
Explain to me then how making tickets cheaper will bring back hooliganism ? Also explain how making tickets cheaper will revert society back 30 years to casual racism, homophobia and sexism ?
I haven't said it would. I was merely creating facile arguments to ridicule PGFWhite's comment that football was poorer for the hooligans being priced out of it. Moving to the point at hand... why would safe standing make tickets cheaper? At Arsenal even if we created 5000 extra tickets per game, there would still be a more demand for tickets than actual tickets available so the prices would still be driven to high amounts. Unless clubs were told to price them cheaply. In which case creating a standing section is still irrelevant, because clubs could be told to do that anyway now. The only way prices will drop is if ticket sales drop or clubs are forced to drop them. Creating a standing section is not going to lead to either of those.
