Tag Archives: She Wore A Yellow Ribbon

Arsenal ripped off over land and sea

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Before you stop reading, thinking this is another moan about the club and how expensive our tickets are, please calm yourself down. Yes, this is a moan about ticket prices, but a moan with a difference.

So often the club is dug out by the press and opposing clubs for having the highest tickets in the land. Now before I move in, I agree, our prices are too high. £1000 for a season ticket is too much. £2000 for one is crazy money. And charging away fans £64 is ludicrous. But that is not the point of this blog.

When the recent proposal on capping away tickets at £30 was rejected, it was highlighted that “Greedy Arsenal – with the most expensive away tickets – led the argument against”.

What was ignored however is that when it comes to away tickets, Arsenal are not the greedy ones.

When you actually look at what Arsenal charge away fans already, in comparison to other clubs, we are actually quote reasonable.

I did a comparison this morning, and what it shows is that Arsenal fans get charged more at 13 grounds up and down the country, than Arsenal charges fans of those clubs.

Only the 5 Category A games (Spurs, Man U, Man City, Chelsea & Liverpool) and Watford (a difference of 50p) charge Arsenal fans less.

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In fact, over the 19 away games, an Arsenal fan will be charged between  £833 – £850 (due to some ground having lower & upper tier), whilst in total, Arsenal only charge the away fan £648.50. A difference of around £200

It is the biggest con in football. Categories. Clubs being charged more for having a good away following. Clubs fleecing opposing fans just because they support a popular club. Arsenal are greedy, yes, but almost every other side is equally as greedy.

The Premier League proposal was to cap away tickets at £30. Arsenal currently offer 5 tickets below this. Yet Arsenal away fans are do not get any tickets below £30.

When you take it to under £40, it is even worse. Every Arsenal game, bar the 5 Cat A games, are under £40. This season, a loyal Arsenal travelling fan will only get charged under £40 in 4 games.

When the BBC’s “Price of Football” comes out, clubs who have cheaper season tickets often have a go at Arsenal for their ticket price. And rightly so, however what they fail to remember is that every time Arsenal go to their ground, the side they praise for offering cheap season tickets come over with the greedy green eyes and hyke of the ticket prices.

And it is not just at home where Arsenal fans are getting mugged off.

A lot is made about how cheap football is abroad. Everyone always go’s on about how Barcelona do a season ticket for just over £100. So when we travel abroad to watch The Arsenal, we should expect cheap tickets, correct?

Of course, a club like Barcelona would never dream of upcharging fans depending on the appointment would they.

Yet for tickets at the Nou Camp, Arsenal fans are being charged £64. The exact same cost that we were up in arms about (and Barcelona plan to protest about) Arsenal charging.

So it seems again, the greed of Arsenal is continually highlighted, yet the greed of other sides is swept under the carpet.

There is clearly current issues with ticket prices over land and sea. Every club is greedy. Whilst I do not defend Arsenal, it is time the British media gave the situation a fair discussion. Do not just dig out Arsenal, dig out every Premier League side, and those in Europe, who dramatically increase the ticket prices just because of who they are playing.

Fans of Arsenal, Man U, Chelsea, spurs, Man City & Liverpool get ripped off everywhere they go, just because of who they support.

Keenos

The Arsenal are in the title race

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The Arsenal are in the title race.

Third in the league, playing the league leaders next week, we could be sitting here a week today just 2 points off top.

Recently, it has felt a bit shit to be an Arsenal fan.

Before yesterday, we had won just one Premier League game in 2016. After being the form team of 2015, our title challenge was collapsing around us.

On the field we have been in disarray in 2016.

Off the field it has been no better.

Yet another transfer window where we have kept our powder dry followed up with 3 days later that disgraceful email from the club about Barcelona being Cat A a surcharge set to be added to our season ticket costs at the end of the season.

I have never known Arsenal fans to be at such a low eb, both online and in the pubs. There was nothing to be positive about.

Then we have Bournemouth.

A proper old fashioned away  at tiny stadium in a backwards part of the country. A small allocation made the atmosphere feel a little bit older, a bit more mature, a bit more old school. No beer throwing. A few old songs sang. NO BEER THROWING.

And we win. 2-0. With 2 quick goals. Something to keep us warm for the half hour trek back to the station in the wind and rain.

The Bournemouth victory certainly does not paper over the cracks of the last month, and does not hide the fact that the greedy head of our club has reared itself once more, but what it should do is remind us that there is a league title to be fighting for.

I often see a lot of people make two statements.

Love The Arsenal, hate those running it
It’s Arsenal FC, not Arsene FC

I completely agree with both statements. And it is important therefore that over the next few weeks, Arsenal FC, the 11 men out on the pitch, get our full backing.

You might hate Wenger, but do not let this hatred for the man allow you to continually get on the back of the team.

You might be disgusted by the way the men running the club are currently running the club, but do not let this hatred for the board allow you to continually get on the back of the team.

Yes, protests are planned. Against ticket pricing. Against kick off times. Against Sky. Against everything there is to hate, to despise about the modern game. And these protests are justifiable. They are needed.

But at the end of the day, it is the XI men on the pitch we turn up to cheer on. They are the ones going to win us the league title this year. They are the ones we need to be backing.

So remember, back the team through thick and thin, no matter if you are not currently backing those running it.

Keenos

English football and American owners – A worrying combination

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30% of Premier League clubs have ownership or investment by an American.

Obviously you have Stan at Arsenal. Then the Glazers at United. Liverpool are owned by an American sports fund, FSG. Ellis Short is at Sunderland. Randy Lerner at Aston Villa. And most recently Crystal Palace have had Joshua Harris invest £50m into the club.

There are an additional 3 American owners in the lower leagues (Fulham, Millwall & Coventry).

Whilst the Eastern European and Arab investors saw buying a Premier League club as play thing. Something to chuck a lot of their personal fortune at for their own please. Like a yacht, a super car, or a chalet in the alps, the American’s saw it as an investment. A way to make money.

Back 15 years ago, you would be crazy to buy a Premier League club in the hope of making money. The majority made massive losses. The ones that made a profit, it was barely worth speaking of. Maybe a million or so.

Arsenal often bucked the trend, especially with the new stadium build, making profits in the £10s of millions. We were the Bank of England club.

American investors saw a gap in the market though. They looked at the sports clubs they owned, how much money their franchises made, especially in the NFL.

In 2015, the 32 NFL franchises had a combined revenue of $7billion. Almost every single franchise is worth over $1billion (£690m). Only 5 Premier League sides are worth above this.

So the American investors sat their and looked and the Premier League and noticed its short falls against the NFL. Places where the NFL was raking it in, and the Premier League clubs had barely scratched the tip of the iceberg.

What we have then seen over the last decade is an explosion in Premier League revenue. Arsenal, as an example, have seen a 46% increase in revenue since 2008 (Source: Swiss Ramble). And that is before the new TV. It is more than likely that after the new TV deal has come in, the average Premier League side will increased its revenue by over 100% over the last decade.

And it is not just the domestic TV revenue that has been exploited.

The Premier League, whilst already popular abroad, has increased its popularity overseas. Alongside this we have the new commercial deals. The sponsored naming of Stadium’s is one thing that Americans have bought in recently.

Back 10 years ago, it would have been unheard of to have a ‘Diesel Engine Partner’, ‘Savoury Snack Partner’ or a ‘Malaysian Official Integrated Telecommunications Partner’. All of these Manchester United have, and more.

Premier League clubs are now bringing in more commercial revenue than ever before, with Manchester United and their American owners leading the way.

A lot of what the Premier League has done recently to increase revenue has been done on a global commercial level. Bar the TV deal, which sees less and less 3pm Saturday kick offs, very little was changed at a local level, effecting the local fan.

This is now changing.

When you look at the American franchise models and how the deal with their fans, it creates a cause of concern for the future of the English game for the local fan, as it is clear that the more American owners in the league, the more they will push for us to follow the American model.

Already we have seen discussions of taking a Premier League game abroad. Or the creation of a 39th game.

Now this is where I find some English fans hypocritical.

They will happily go to Wembley for an NFL game. With more games scheduled to be played at Twickenham and potential Spurs new stadium, there will be even more NFL games held in England. I am of the opinion that if you go to these games, you lose your right to moan when a Premier League game is held abroad.

And in my opinion, within 10 years, we will see Premier League games held abroad. It is inevitable.

Then we have the idea of the franchise itself.

America does not do failure very well. So their league systems do not have promotion and relegation. It ensures that no matter the sport, there are only a finite amount of top level professional clubs, all able to keep hold of the money,

Their are 32 NFL sides. 30 NBA. 30 MLB. 30 NHL sides. There are 92 professional clubs in England and hundreds more non-league who could one day become professional.

There is no great American dream of a side being able to rise through the leagues to win. No Nottingham Forest. No Wigan Athletic. No Swansea. No Leicester City.

You have your franchise, and that is that. The only changes you get are when an owners decides to uproot his franchise to a different city. Sometimes even a different state. Wimbledon to Milton Keynes is the norm in America.

So how long until we see a full Premier League break away from the FA. A decision to pick the 20 most popular sides. Or even create new sides (Sheffield Wednesday & Sheffield United becoming Sheffield City, Rovers and City of Bristol becoming Bristol United, etc).  A 20 team Premier League, with billions of pounds of revenue, where there is no relegation. Sod the rest of the league. That will be the viewpoint.

Imagine London, a City with 10 million people. It has 15 clubs currently in the top 4 leagues. A franchise situation would probably reduce that to 3. 4 at the most. As generations go on, that is a lot of people to be spread amongst not many professional clubs.

There was talk last week of securing places in the Champions League for the big sides. Guaranteed places. This did not surprise me.

It is the big sides that generate the viewing figures which in turn dictates the advertising revenue. More people will watch Manchester United globally than Leicester City. So it is only obvious that the money men would rather Manchester United play than Leicester.

Guaranteed slots for the major sides. This could then lead to an extension of the Premier League franchise. And European Super League with Europe’s top 30 sides, playing each other week in week, in a normal league format.

If all this is concerning, wait until the American investors introduce new pricing structures.

In the NFL you have something called the Permanent Seat Licence (PSL).

The PSL gives the owner the right to “own” a seat. It does not give the owner a ticket, week in week out, like our season ticket, but the right to buy a ticket week in week out. Basically, you buy you PSL, then you buy tickets in that seat on an individual basis. So you are paying twice.

Owning a PSL can cost anywhere between $500 – $150,000. And you still have your season ticket to pay for.

Based on per game (in the NFL, you get 8 games with your season tickets), the average season ticket prices in 2014 are:

Cheapest season ticket prices (averaged on a per-league game basis):

Premier League: $27 per game

NFL: $46 per game

Most expensive season ticket prices (averaged on a per-league game basis):

Premier League: $73 per game

NFL: $266 per game

Son in terms of pricing, the American investor will see that there is still a long way to go. Doubling, even trebling, the prices of the tickets.

Alongside franchising (potentially at a European level), it would create a situation where their are less top flight interests, with more top flight fans (over time), therefore dramatically increasing the demand for tickets.

Finally, you add in the foreign tourist fan. We have seen it for 2 decades, but even more now. Packages sold by the clubs to travel agencies to come on holiday to London and watch a game of Premier League football. Often your Chinese or Korean or Arab fan do not care who they watch, they just want to watch Premier League football.

The American investors will continue working the foreign fan base, creating more interest, selling more packages abroad, creating a situation where there are fewer tickets available at a local level.

We already here about Arsenal selling 200-odd tickets to Chinese travel agencies for the away game against Manchester United.

The less supply to local fans, the higher the demand, the more they can charge.

 

Everything in America is about money. and how to make as much as possible no matter how you step on. If you are unhappy with the state of the game now. In 10 years times, it will be a lot, lot worse. You probably won’t be going anymore.

Keenos