Man City Season Tickets and Dodgy Sticks
With me and Charlie Methven
In the latest episode of the ‘Where’s The Money Gone?’ podcast, Charlie Methven and me discuss the campaign by Manchester City fans for cheaper matchday prices and additional season tickets at the expanded Etihad.
City fans have argued that the club’s failure too issue new season tickets for six seasons is choking off inter-generational support and pricing out ordinary Manc families.
Charlie - previously a director at Charlton Athletic and Sunderland - is unsympathetic. He argues that City’s traditional fan base was much lower than it is now, and that when the away allocation and members’ tickets are taken into account, the club has more than enough season ticket holders.
The City fans, he claims, are guilty of ‘cake-ism’ - wanting to have their cake and eat it, by enjoying some of the best football in the world, without having to pay for it.
“They say ‘we want cheap season tickets. We want cheap match tickets. We want supporters in the stadium who won't buy merchandise. We basically want our club to fail as a business. That's what we want. We want failure. We want proper failure as a business. And we want those rich people in Abu Dhabi to stump up and cover those losses, because that's their duty, and the rest of us are just here to enjoy ourselves.’”
We also discuss the rise of the ‘dodgy stick’ as a means of accessing illegal football streams. Charlie warns that this will damage the value of broadcasting rights packages, damaging the game as a whole.