When I first started drafting this piece, the general gist of it was that we had very little to moan about.
Cameron Jerome was in ‘beast mode’, Tony Andreu had begun to prove his doubters (me) wrong and to top it all, The Wolf went and got himself a goal. I half-expected to see Alex Neil taking a morning stroll across the Wensum.
Since then, we’ve lost our unbeaten away record, we still haven’t signed anyone and to top it all we’ve released a third kit that even Ricky would struggle to look good in. Cue the hysteria on social media and online message boards.
To the glass half-empty brigade, I’d like to point out that it was only a friendly and a good work-out for the lads. With regards to not paying inflated prices for Brady, Ed’s recent piece articulated the position far more eloquently than I could hope to.
And as for that kit, well it’s likely to make fewer appearances than Luciano Becchio. Besides if you don’t like it, (as with the others) you really don’t have to buy it.
However, there is one other gripe to which I do have a degree of sympathy – namely that of ticket pricing.
A Crystal Palace fan site recently published a letter it had sent to David McNally. It was an eloquent and impassioned plea for City to make a ‘principled stand’ by reducing away ticket prices for our opening match. The suggestion being that the £45 fee is both ‘unreasonable and ill-judged’.
It’s not the first time our pricing policy has been criticised. Last season the Derby fans were particularly vocal and embittered in the run up to their visit to Carrow Road at being charged a similar amount.
As it turned out, if anyone was robbed that day it was John Ruddy who was fouled when they equalised from a corner. I’d also argue that the move for Jerome’s opening goal was a thing of such beauty that it was worth every penny it cost them.
Not that I’d get any agreement from the Derby fans of course. But the fact that we were voted as the fourth worst away-day experience across all of the Premier League and Championship teams, suggests Derby were not alone in feeling hard done by.
With regards to the Palace letter, it could be argued that once you strip away the sentiment, it basically boils down to a whinge about things being expensive. A bit like me writing to the chief executive of Lamborghini to complain that their valuation of their products is pricing me out of owning a high-performance sports car.
Now I’m not suggesting that we are the footballing equivalent of a luxury supercar but we are a business and basic business principles suggest that it’s a pretty good idea to maximise your revenue. And for all the criticism, the Palace match has sold-out, which suggests that it may not have been such an ill-judged decision after all but a simple case of supply and demand.
However, the question it raises in my mind is what ‘duty of care’ does any club have to away supporters?
I suppose the absolute minimum is to provide a safe and family-friendly environment. Some would say exorbitant ticket prices are not particularly family-friendly but how far should any club go in order to provide customer satisfaction to those who provide their custom (at best) once a year?
Last season Liverpool fans took the moral high ground on high ticket prices at Hull through a boycott of their away match which was arranged by the Spirit of Shankly group.
As an aside, that spirit was obviously in shorter supply when Liverpool fans were prepared to charge ‘their own’ up to £1,200 for their seats at Stevie G’s last game at Anfield. Another example of supply and demand perhaps?
Hull won the boycotted game 1-0. Whether the diminished Liverpool support had any bearing on the result is hard to say. Only professional players will know the real value and psychological advantage of seeing a large travelling fan base.
However if it genuinely helps the away team, then there’s arguably little incentive to any club to encourage away supporters?
Presumably it becomes even less attractive for a club like Norwich where demand amongst City fans already exceeds capacity and any unsold away allocation could mean additional home support.
It’s true that Norwich City is a business and one that came perilously close to imploding before David McNally steadied the ship. I want us to be run sensibly and that means not paying silly money to whoever on Humberside demands it and maximising revenue through all the shirts, DVD’s and tickets they can sell.
However having flip-flopped across both sides of the argument, I can’t help but feel genuine sympathy for those who penned the Palace letter.
The ‘away-day’ remains something special and the atmosphere at games is enhanced by a large travelling support. However with more televised matches and online streams available, there’s an increasingly less compelling case to drag yourself halfway across the country for 90 minutes of football – especially if the whole experience costs you several hundred quid.
Swansea have taken the decision to subsidise their away support which is a positive step and one that I hope Norwich will consider. Living in our fantastic part of the world does come at a price – namely the hours it takes to get just about anywhere else.
As football fans we don’t consider ourselves as mere customers or consumers. We’re supporters with a unique ‘brand loyalty’ to a single product. That loyalty surely should be rewarded and not taken advantage of.
It’s getting tedious hearing the complaints of Palace and Derby fans etc.. I do think the tickets are overpriced, but do these people complain as much about the same high prices when they are charged by other clubs? It’s not that long ago that Palace were charging £40 a ticket for a seat in a rickety old stand with obstructed views – at least visitors to Carrow Road get a decent view and are seated in the most modern part of the ground.
I suspect that a large part of the griping comes from the long distances travelled by fans to reach Norwich, which of course increases the total cost of the day out – but NCFC has no responsibility to reduce tickets to compensate or subsidise visiting fans.
NCFC might have been reading your thoughts, as the club just announced discounted ticket and coach travel prices for the Sunderland away game.
The only way forward is reciprocal prices. We charge Palace £20 then they charge us the same. If enough clubs did this and looked at there own fans costs I think they would all start dropping the price. As mentioned before on many websites, with Norwich getting promoted all teams in the premier league are better off as the parachute payments we were entitled to will now be split between all clubs. Surely with the money around the game now all clubs could just agree £20 is enough for an away ticket. Also I don’t care how poor the stand is. In fact most of my best away days have been at run down grounds.
The biggest frustration about ticket prices is that they make up such a small amount of the revenue that clubs bring in. TV money makes up the biggest portion by far. Then there’s sponsorship and so on. £45 for a match against Palace smacks of wringing every last drop out of both sets of fans, when it doesn’t make a huge difference.
I’m glad to see the club is subsidising tickets and travel for the Sunderland game. Only the hardiest would make that trip and they deserve a break. Swansea should be applauded for their approach, since they have more reason than many to ‘maximise revenue’ without the financial backing that many clubs have. If they can do it then any club could, surely?
I’m guessing that similar fixtures to the Palace game won’t be full price all through the season, and that the lure of the first match of a new campaign is what led to the steep (near vertical) price. But that would suggest that the only motivation the club has for making home tickets more affordable is the possibility of not selling all of them.
Any fan that has aspirations for the club to expand the stadium will have to support the club in raising enough revenue to do it.
McNally highlighted that it will cost x thousand per seat if we build a new stand – and the quicker it is repaid, the better.
Once the stand is built, debts repaid and there is reduced demand for seats, THEN we will (hopefully) see more reasonable ticket prices for all fans.
We are selling out most games. As long as demand outstrips supply, it would make no sense to reduce prices.
A football club has to consider both short term and long term aims. If it is simply going to maximise profit in the short term by ripping off its supporters as much as it can, it won’t help its long term aim of maintaining a loyal fan base – particularly as in City’s case, this fan base is very much a generational one. And yes, all Palace’s away seats have been sold, but at what publicity cost? Has it really been worth it?
Maybe we could placate those piqued Palace patrons by leaving a simple gift on each seat – apparently, the club shop has a load of striped shirts they can’t shift – would be an ideal gesture.
As has been said many times before, ticket prices will only come down when bums aren’t going on seats regularly. For all their irritation, the Palace allocation has sold out. Meanwhile Derby face another Championship season..
Market forces will always decide the price of tickets, unless those running the game decide to make them more affordable, and legislate to that effect, but I don’t see any reason for them to do so. Reciprocal arrangements for away supporters make a lot of sense. I’d love to see City take a leading role in that kind of initiative.
I wrote on here before that I refused to buy an obscured view ticket for Palace at £44.50, which included £2 discount. For me that’s just too much, but others were happy, so the club don’t see a problem. But I think it’s a poor show, from the point of view of NCFC being a part of the community it grew from, and represents.
The only encouraging aspect is that I believe we’ve reached a peak. It was a fairly dull Premier League last season, and with the growth of things like TV On Demand there’s so many avenues of entertainment available, while average leisure time has not increased like people hoped. They can’t get away with prices much higher than this.
Steve, Palace fans might get more sympathy from me if they didn’t charge a standard adult price for visitors of £40 at every game last season. Has the fan site alluded to written a similar letter to their own board?
1) PMC – Our fans have to travel to their grounds, so I find the ‘travel cost’ argument a little wearisome. In fact, we’re in a worse situation, one of the reasons Derby fans were moaning is because we were one of their longest trips last season. Our game there was one of our closest!
2) That 3rd kit – reciprocal pricing? So we charge Newcastle £20 for some of our best seats and they charge us £20 for some of their worst. Yeah, that works! Ditto Sunderland, Liverpool, ManU, Everton, Palace and so on. Some of my best away days have also been at run down grounds, Portman Road and Cuckoo Farm for example.
4) Rich – I can’t see a new stand happening any time soon, if you build a stand to satisfy maximum demand it will not be full 95% of the time. The premise that we will continue with the same number of season tickets holders if we add another 8,000 seats is fundamentally flawed because not every season ticket holder will then feel the need to renew and they will then start to pick and choose matches.
the tone of the palace letter was so pompous and patronising that they should bump the price by a tenner
Place should clearly do more to help their supporters get to away games. Moving to north London would be a start.
Personally, I like the idea of reciprocal pricing arrangements between two clubs for their respective home and away fixtures.
However, it seems that very few clubs have chosen to go down this route.
Instead, most seem to be opting for the “look after your own” approach, offering discounted travel and / or ticket prices to their own away games.
With 22,000 season ticket holders, and a 27,000 capacity, there’s circa 5,000 tickets to be sold to casual supporters, half of which go to the away team.
Therein lies the biggest problem, there’s actually very few tickets available for each game and that’s why the prices are what they are.