It's true. It's already happeniong, and with teams in the premiership abondoning the free-flowing attacking football that used to be it's hallmark (whilst still retaining the poor technical standards) things can only get worse....
Quote:
It's a rip-off - and not just in the Prem
Paul Wilson
Sunday September 18, 2005
The Observer
Last month we predicted that empty seats and high prices would be the talking points of the new football season and, although Wayne Rooney has done his best to provide a diversion, the damning evidence was there to see in midweek. Football's empty seats even made the front page of yesterday's Financial Times
A crowd of less than 30,000 watched Chelsea start their Champions League defence against Anderlecht, while Steve McClaren was so incensed at the 14,191 turnout at the Riverside for Middlesbrough's Uefa Cup game against Skoda Xanthi he accused fans of letting down Steve Gibson.
'The chairman has worked very hard to bring European football to this club and I am disappointed for him that the team has not been backed by the fans,' the Boro manager said.
It is rarely a good idea for clubs to start haranguing supporters over their non-attendance: that's not how the entertainment business is supposed to work.
McClaren's comments were well intentioned but misguided. You could tell the club were worried about selling this fixture because they dropped the price to £20, something Chelsea have yet to do. McClaren needs to bear in mind that Teesside is not the most prosperous area of the country, that Boro were not exactly scintillating in the Uefa Cup last season, that no one outside Greece has ever heard of Xanthi, that football had been all over the television all week and that the Uefa Cup itself is a sadly devalued tournament. Bolton drew only 19,000 the same night for their first ever European game.
These attendances do not suggest the English game is in better shape than it has ever been, on and off the pitch, which is what its marketeers keep telling us. Empty seats suggest something else entirely: a game that has its sums wrong.
While the product on the pitch is still recognisably English, and good, knockabout fun much of the time, life in the Premiership is far from fun for the dozen or so clubs who are scared to death of going down. Far too many fixtures are about survival and many are much too grim to be classed as entertainment. And money is the problem.
Money is also the problem in a much more obvious sense - and not just in the Premiership - when you compare ticket prices around Europe. In the summer, Juventus signed Patrick Vieira from Arsenal and Woking signed Clint Davies, a goalkeeper, from Perth. It costs more to watch the Aussie stop the shots in a Conference game in Surrey than it does to watch the World Cup winning Frenchman at the Stadio delle Alpi. Woking £14 a seat, Juventus £13.80. Explain that.
Here are some other prices: Real Madrid €20, Valencia €18, Roma is €15, Juventus €20 for league games and €30 for the Champions League - less than half of what it cost to watch Chelsea v West Brom reserves last month.
In Germany, long the home of decent football at reasonable prices, a mere €12 will get you into Bayer Leverkusen, Bayern Munich or Borussia Dortmund next week, and tickets for Bayern's next Champions League game are €25. Children can watch most German games for €6 (£4.30). Everton, the people's club, will be charging kids £17 next week to watch Wigan. Chelsea want the full £45 for any seat, any age, any game. Plus booking fee.
Premiership clubs are not uniformly avaricious - Blackburn and Aston Villa have adult tickets for £15 and West Brom and Wigan have schemes where children can watch for a fiver - but taken as a whole English football is far too expensive. It is not easy to take English football as a whole - price fluctuations even within the Premiership are enormous - but when it costs more to watch Woking or Accrington Stanley than it does to see Roma or Bayern Munich, there is probably something wrong.
And, nice try, Steve, but it's no good blaming the fans.
Where shall we go? Selected seat prices for one adult and one child for next home game, not including this weekend. (Prices exclude booking fees.)
Chelsea £90 Birmingham £60.50 Newcastle £56 Portsmouth £52 Everton £46 Real Madrid £28.60 Bolton £26 Valencia £24.80 Crawley Town £24 Hereford £22 Roma £21.40 Juventus £20.70 Blackburn £20 Aston Villa £20 Woking £19 Bayern Munich £12.40 Borussia Dortmund £12 Bayern Leverkusen £11.70 Schalke £9.30
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If you watch the Premiership on Saturday nights and you look around the clubs outside the top 5 there's an alarming number of empty seats.The game in England is gone to shit. You have guys like Kewell earning 80k a week while fans are getting robbed of their cash left, right and centre. Look at Bogarde while at Chelsea - 40k a week for 4 years and not one first team appearance. Then you have the likes of MK Dons who will be extinct in 10 years time. Serves them right too.
If you watch the Premiership on Saturday nights and you look around the clubs outside the top 5 there's an alarming number of empty seats.The game in England is gone to shit. You have guys like Kewell earning 80k a week while fans are getting robbed of their cash left, right and centre. Look at Bogarde while at Chelsea - 40k a week for 4 years and not one first team appearance. Then you have the likes of MK Dons who will be extinct in 10 years time. Serves them right too.
Yeah, it's bad alright. Barring United and Pool, the costs involved for fans must be intolerable. In fact, even including United and pool.
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