Yarrgh
Player Valuation: £70m
It's a fine line to tread when you become successful in the modern era. For any club.
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Manchester United
- Thread starter 4737carlin
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Not sure about that. These days every single club would welcome glory hunters. The plastic sky fan has overtaken the match going fan in importance. More people watching on tv means more ad revenue and more sponsors. Add different countries in the mix and the list of potential sponsors grow. Clubs are also turning their back on their core working class support. Much more profit in attracting a nice middle class family who will spend money at the stadium, than the lad who only spends on their ticket and maybe a beer at half time. You only have to look across the road for verification of that. Liverpool don't have many season ticket holders compared to other clubs. Much more profit in the tourists and occasional match goer who tend to make a day of it and buy tat from the club shop.
PaulPowersTash
Player Valuation: £15m
Spot on with that post.
This has happened big time at City. The 'normal' match going fan is now basically a nuisance which is tolerated.
It's all about attracting the corporates who pay a couple of hundred quid for a ticket and spend the same again in
the club shop before and after the game. Champions League games are a joke! Full of Asian day trippers who
don't even follow football. Maybe things will change after the pandemic as the clubs realise the importance of
the match going fans, but I very much doubt it.
Seathestars
Player Valuation: £60m
Rashford getting racist abuse on social media, sickening and heartbreaking in equal measure
city a bizarre one, not only have they embraced football tourism, they have lost a lot of their traditional fans. Many will say publicly the takeover was the best thing that could have happened to them, but I would imagine many local fans pine for the old days.
As a club they have resorted to offering “influencers” free tickets in exchange Instagram posts, continue to try to validate themselves as a “big club” through false attendance figures & seem to be soul searching despite the success.
I was working beside the ground 18 months ago and went along to a midweek game on my own, it was Laportes debut & it was soulless, the ground was less than half full, despite its quality views it’s an awful stadium & it was all a bit sad, while running away with the league at the time.
Laporte made his home debut 3 years ago to the day mate. Must be your pre match nerves clouding your memory.
Who are these meffs who do this? Who was it in midweek giving Martial abuse? Are these man utd fans giving their players crap or just knobheads in general who think its acceptable?
Honestly i don't know how people get away with it.
PaulPowersTash
Player Valuation: £15m
I've hardly missed a home game for years and I'm not sure I can agree with your comments about the stadium being empty. Our attendances are up there with the best. As we have a lot of season ticket holders, many who are middle to old aged they might give the game a miss if it's a silly kick off time for example. That does happen to be fair. The club also sells tranches of tickets to hospitality outlets for the day trippers and unless it's a big game they rarely sell out. No doubt though the club have sold out to the corporates and try to deliver a 'matchday experience' (their words) which means some really cheesy pre match and half time entertainment which is truly cringworthy. We season ticket holders get bombarded with online questionnaires from the club about the said match day experience. I got booted out of my seat which I had since the day the Etihad had opened so they could make even more corporate seats and from my new seat I could see my original seat and those around them are empty if it's not a big game. We don't pine for the old days, we just wish the club would at times give thought to us hardcore old timers who were there in the darkest of dark day (the old division 3) but it's never going to happen. That was then and this is now. The game is a business and clubs are business so the money talks. The takeover was the best thing that has ever happened to us. We woke up morning to find out not only had we won the lottery, we had won the biggest ever Euromillions rollover in the history of the world. Not many of us would want to go back to being the circus and joke of a club that we were previously. Everybody's second favourite club because we were a comedy act. No thanks. Basically there is a divide with the people who run the club who want it to be Barcelona Lite and the match going fans who are in the main working class people who don't have a lot of money. East Manchester is a seriously deprived part of town and the vast majority of City fans are locals. As you say more than a few of the older fans have decided to pack it in due to the above in recent years, which is a real shame but just a reflection on the PL as it is today, which is a manufactured product, with manufactured hype in an effort to sell highly priced monthly SKY subscriptions to the millions of armchair fans who have never been to a football ground in their lives.
catcherintherye
Player Valuation: £80m
How many ST holders do you have and hiow many do you reckon in Manchester mate? What do you reckon for United?
Are there different bits of Manchester where each club are stronger and different age groups? Or a bit more random?
PaulPowersTash
Player Valuation: £15m
I think we have around 35,000 season ticket holders and pre pandemic there was a waiting list. I would guess at least 90% are from Manchester. United have more season ticket holders due to their capacity and there pricing is pretty reasonable as well (apart from being forced to buy tickets for the domestic cups which is a bit naughty), but no idea how many to be truthful.
Yep bits of Manchester have blue & red strongholds. East Manchester is virtually totally blue and always has been. North Manchester is blue also. South Manchester is definitely red and again it always has been. As for the age groups, City does have an older fan base for sure. The core will be aged 55+ I would guess. It's a bit more random these days, but it goes back to the allocation of season tickets. I've had my season ticket since 1983 and will probably hang on to it forever and so will a lot of others. It will be interesting post pandemic for most clubs I reckon. How many people have got out of the habit of going? There will be a lot more unemployment so money will be tight etc etc.
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catcherintherye
Player Valuation: £80m
Interesting that mate. Any idea how many ST holders United might have in and around fthe Manchester area?
I spoke to a teaching colleague, it was a few years ago now, who had taught primary ed in Manchester and said most of the young kids in the city now supported City. I found that a it surprising actually, but do wonder if your recent success will ahve translated down a bit.
PaulPowersTash
Player Valuation: £15m
I have no idea to be honest mate but there is a large amount of out of towners for sure. Same as Liverpool. And if anyone doesn't believe that they should take a trip on the M6 northbound on home match days. It's genuinely ridiculous it really is. Car after car full of stickers, cushions in the back, scarfs draped over the back seat for miles and miles with huge queue to come off at junction 19 - Knutsford turn off. The services all the way up the M6 are swarming with coaches full of them with cockney accents. Same at the airport full of Irish fans coming over to watch the game. The local City fan base comes from the 'Junior Blues' scheme which was the idea of Malcolm Allison in the early 70's to get the young kids in the town following City. It was one of the first of it's kind. Every kid at school was in it. You got a membership card, club visits and if you were really lucky you got an invite to the Christmas pantomime which was put together and staged by the players! It really was a huge success and secured a loyal fan base for decades to come. There is no doubt that our recent success has been the reason the kids nowadays want to follow City but as you know, it's not like it used to be. Kids are fickle and just want to support the winning teams - and do. City is very similar to Everton. Very much a local fan base from within the vicinity of the city itself and would support them and go to the match regardless of what league we were playing in. When we got relegated to the old division 3 attendances actually went up! We were getting an average of 30,000 per game playing Macclesfield & Wycombe - crazy! The success has brought the day trippers in by the bucket load and the club promote and pander to them for the simple reason they spend loads of money on tickets and merchandise. I guess it's the price of success. It does have it's negative sides but there is no way around it. It's all part of the package.
catcherintherye
Player Valuation: £80m
Thats why I am asking really mate. It's an interesting case study.
FWIW Everton did similar to that under early Kenwright. Had heavily discounted kids ST. Always felt it was really sensible and has probably allowed us to maintain and grow the fanbase in what has been difficult terrain.
I suppose the interesting question is, to what extent has City's success allowed them to potentially overtake United amongst the next generation.
I live down south, and I will see kids in City shirts now, which is just mad when you grew up in the 90's. So something is clearly starting to happen.
The likes of me and you will obviously look down our nose at how young people chose their teams. And in a lot of ways for good reason, as it's a break with the working class, local bond of a team. But loads of kids will just pick the team with their favourite team, or at times payer on the latest Fifa game. If that is KDB, they will follow City. It's a bit nuts really but part of me thinks, if you didn't grow up into a football family, that's probably how you end up with a team.
PaulPowersTash
Player Valuation: £15m
Great point about coming from a football family and being influenced that way.
I could have easily become a United fan as my dad was a United fan and he took me to Old Trafford a couple of times. However, my older brother who was obviously a big influence on me took me to my first City game when I was 9 years old. It was a night game and all of the kids were put at the back of the Kippax stand to watch. I still remember it to this day. The flood lights, the bright green pitch the crowd the smells and the atmosphere. That was it I was a blue! I think you are bang on with the Fifa game for the kids. That's how they are influenced these days. I remember as a kid hardly knowing about any foreign teams. We got our knowledge from magazines like Shoot & Goal and if you were posh (which we were not!) it was John Buchanan's Football Monthly. Nowadays the kids know all of the big overseas teams and their players. It really is a different world.
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