Ticketed off
Surprised about the lack of mention of Arsenals ticket price rise for the Barcelona match in this mornings mailbox. For those unaware Arsenals season ticket includes 7 cup games, Arsenal have in their wisdom viewed that as the 7th (already paid for) game is against Barcelona we have to pay an extra £10-£20. Or return the ticket.Seriously wtf??
Generally the Arsenal entries in the mailbox are from either end of the spectrum (Arsene is god/Arsene must go) hence the flip-flop appearance of Gooners depending on the most recent result. Most of us are actually somewhere in the middle – the excellent arseblog sums up the views of me and just about every Gooner I know and even he is saying what an own goal this is in driving a wedge between club and fans.
This has to be a Kroenke decision and it has to be asked why was (most of) the club sold to him?? He’s not a fan, he’s not after success, he’s there purely to make money. Fair enough in the business world but if the directors were fans and wanted to see the club to be successful in the future why sell to Kroenke?
Spence Gooner
I may not be the only one to write in about this, but Arsenal have just screwed over their fans.Last night, the season ticket holders received an email telling them there’s going to be a surcharge on next year’s renewals because the Barcelona match is a Category A game. The massive price of a season ticket is based on there being a certain number of Category A games, and the upcoming shellacking by Barca means that total will be exceeded. Ergo, dear customer, pay the f**k up.
So what, you might say. The charge is in line with the terms and conditions of sale. But there is always something called “discretion”, and in this case the suits have callously failed to exercise it. They’ve taken a look at the enormous bank balance they’ve amassed by charging us ridiculous prices and not spending it on much and thought, “sod it, we’ll make another £1m.”
The only way the club could have handled this worse is if Kroenke had announced it from his own Scrooge McDuck-style money room while wearing a Spurs shirt and a Piers Morgan mask. There’s no question it’s a PR own goal, coming as it does after announcements on frozen renewal prices, on the back of another parsimonious transfer window, with the club slipping in the league and, worst of all, at the same time as news broke that they were one of the clubs blocking the move to limit the price of away tickets (an issue Arsenal fans are affected by more than most, given our games are always in the top pricing bracket of the clubs they visit).
But this is more than just ham-fistedness and poor timing. When setting the pricing structure of the current season’s season tickets, everything pointed to the number of Category A games being exceeded. Our dismal run in Champions League knock outs had seen us drop into the second seedings, meaning that 1) a Cat A game vs one of Europe’s elite was always on the cards pre-Christmas and 2) finishing in 2nd in the group, and therefore being drawn against another of Europe’s elite, was the likeliest outcome. Basically, we’d have had to cause an upset or get very lucky with the draw to comply with the pricing structure. Put another way, Arsenal advertised a price for a season ticket that they basically knew would be false.
Putting to one side the fury/embarrassment over our decline in Europe being used as a tool by the club to make more money out of us, rather than drop its prices, or the fact our money doesn’t seem to serve an actual purpose at the club (Kroenke financing the construction of this huge stadium in LA makes me uneasy), I just hate how low-grade the club is. It’s basically Ryanair: disdainful attitude, hidden fees, and modified standards of what constitutes success.
But the major difference is if you’re that eager to avoid flying with that shower of pestilent sh*tlarks, you choose a different airline or holiday destination. Football fans – especially the ones with season tickets or in the insanely long queue for one – don’t, can’t, just choose a different club, or stop caring about their current one. Arsenal is like the only drug dealer in town, and us saps in the stands are the addicts, dependent on a product that we know all-too-well could be better.
It’s clear that while we care about glory on the field, the powers that be are motivated most by profit. My only hope is we can find a way of hitting Kroenke in the pocket without damaging the performances on the pitch. That means not refusing to go, or turning the atmosphere toxic, but boycotting concessions and not buying official merchandise. It all seems a bit meagre, but what else do us junkies have?
0 komentar:
Post a Comment