Yet another ticket fiasco - time to UEFA to waken up

[RMCF]

So yet again we have another showpiece final, and yet again we have another ticket fiasco.

Isn't it time that UEFA, who apparently always say they are in it for 'the good of the game' to wise up and act.

I have been at 4 CL finals myself and have seen the number of 'suits' that fill large parts of the stadium. Plus their fleet of Ford people carriers to ferry them from the hotels to the free beer tents.

I appreciate that they have to offer tickets to their sponsors, but the balance is totally wrong. Plus so many corporate tickets end up being touted to fans at sky high prices. I read that they expect at least 30,000 Pool fans are expected to be in the ground tonight. Yet they got 17,000 tickets. Yet UEFA stand idly by and watch the stadium fill up with people who they know had to take loans to buy tickets from corporate touts!!

Also, I hear that of the 17,000 that Liverpool got the 1st x 6,000 went to corporate sponsors of Liverpool FC. So 11,000 genuine Liverpool fans got tickets for the final.

The fans are losing football to big business. And it is a shame.

[Badger0-0]

Agreed, bloody scandalous.
But what can you do?
The only thing would be boycott the club you love

Short and curlies springs to mind.

[Croker]

Originally Posted by RMCF

So yet again we have another showpiece final, and yet again we have another ticket fiasco.

Isn't it time that UEFA, who apparently always say they are in it for 'the good of the game' to wise up and act.

I have been at 4 CL finals myself and have seen the number of 'suits' that fill large parts of the stadium. Plus their fleet of Ford people carriers to ferry them from the hotels to the free beer tents.

I appreciate that they have to offer tickets to their sponsors, but the balance is totally wrong. Plus so many corporate tickets end up being touted to fans at sky high prices. I read that they expect at least 30,000 Pool fans are expected to be in the ground tonight. Yet they got 17,000 tickets. Yet UEFA stand idly by and watch the stadium fill up with people who they know had to take loans to buy tickets from corporate touts!!

Also, I hear that of the 17,000 that Liverpool got the 1st x 6,000 went to corporate sponsors of Liverpool FC. So 11,000 genuine Liverpool fans got tickets for the final.

The fans are losing football to big business. And it is a shame.

I honestly mean you no disrespect, but you need to wake up - this has been going on for years, and is really starting to get beyond the joke now. There has been so much money thrown at football (in particular at the players), that the only way to survive is to do as much corporate whoring as possible. Every time you see a new stadium built, have a good look at how much of it is taken up by corporate boxes and the like. It's a huge proportion in comparison to how much it used to be.

The game is now in a position where the vast amounts of money being spent by clubs on and off the pitch can only be sustained by taking more and more of the yankee dollar (to coin the old expression). If Carlsberg are paying you millions every year, and want 1000 tickets for the final (an exaggeration, I know, but bear with me), what do you, as a board-member, do? Shaft random people who pay you £500 a year, knowing that you can get someone to replace them fairly easily? Or risk pissing off your sponsors and corporate partners, and have the club running into serious money problems? It absolutely stinks, but it's simple business sense. Keep the ones who give you the most money, the most happy.

In a few short years from now, the average man will have been priced out of the game almost entirely. And to think, football clubs used to be the heart of working class communities.

It's nothing short of ****ing disgusting.

[overkill]

RMCF, the only way to beat it, as I said to the wife tonight when she mentioned the silly money these id... fans paid put, is to boycott the final, or ordinary games come to that. Sorry, but it's only a game. If you want to beggar yourself over a game of football, well tough really. They rely on our gullibility, and I for one have had enough of it.

When I'm paying the best part of £30 to take my son and I to watch a bloody 3rd flight game, a bus journey away, you know it's gone way out of hand.

The choice is simple. We either carry on sumping up, or, do as we did in the 80's and stop sumping up a fortune to watch, quite frankly rubbish week in week out. The only power for change a fan has is to stop going. Then, and only then do the clubs do something.

[thfccambs]

Originally Posted by Croker

but you need to wake up - this has been going on for years, and is really starting to get beyond the joke now.

Has and will only get worse with the amount of money involved.

[RMCF]

Good reply.

I am a realist and appreciate that you have to have sponsors to fund the modern game.

But we let it get out of hand. Players should never have been allowed to earn the wages they do, because this just meant that it went into meltdown.

Getting back to the sponsors - the main gripe I have with them is the touting of their tickets. Its fair enough if you have to give thousands to big companies, but if these are then touted on to real fans at vastly increased prices then its not acceptable.

I realise that it has been going on for years, but that doesn't mean we should accept it.

I too fear for the future of football. This type of spending can't go on without it all exploding. Players who supposedly 'care' about a club (likes of Gerrard or Terry) are demanding £120,000 PER WEEK, which in turn forces the club they supposedly love to force up all their prices and take on more corporate sponsors, which means that the fans they supposedly love will get less and less tickets for matches.

Football stadium atmospheres have changed over recent years due to lack of standing but mainly due the real passionate fans being priced out of the stadium. I agree that it will continue and real fans will have to settle for the house or the pub to see the games.

Football teams can ignore the real fans now, but these are the ones with passion to follow teams in the bad times. The big companies won't. The suits won't. If a team is playing crap, form goes over a few years, they go downhill and the sponsors leave, its then they will be looking to the real fans to save their bacon.

[overkill]

Originally Posted by RMCF

Good reply.

I am a realist and appreciate that you have to have sponsors to fund the modern game.

But we let it get out of hand. Players should never have been allowed to earn the wages they do, because this just meant that it went into meltdown.

Getting back to the sponsors - the main gripe I have with them is the touting of their tickets. Its fair enough if you have to give thousands to big companies, but if these are then touted on to real fans at vastly increased prices then its not acceptable.

I realise that it has been going on for years, but that doesn't mean we should accept it.

I too fear for the future of football. This type of spending can't go on without it all exploding. Players who supposedly 'care' about a club (likes of Gerrard or Terry) are demanding £120,000 PER WEEK, which in turn forces the club they supposedly love to force up all their prices and take on more corporate sponsors, which means that the fans they supposedly love will get less and less tickets for matches.

Football stadium atmospheres have changed over recent years due to lack of standing but mainly due the real passionate fans being priced out of the stadium. I agree that it will continue and real fans will have to settle for the house or the pub to see the games.

Football teams can ignore the real fans now, but these are the ones with passion to follow teams in the bad times. The big companies won't. The suits won't. If a team is playing crap, form goes over a few years, they go downhill and the sponsors leave, its then they will be looking to the real fans to save their bacon.

Exactly. All it takes is a recession and just watch, as has happened before, all the money, all the suits just melt away. And where will the real fans be then? Gone. Priced out of the stadia, tired of watching on the sterile medium of TV.

It's all very well pandering to corporate sponsors, but they won't cover the bills if the real fans have walked.

It's simple economics.

[RMCF]

Originally Posted by overkill

RMCF, the only way to beat it, as I said to the wife tonight when she mentioned the silly money these id... fans paid put, is to boycott the final, or ordinary games come to that. Sorry, but it's only a game. If you want to beggar yourself over a game of football, well tough really. They rely on our gullibility, and I for one have had enough of it.

When I'm paying the best part of £30 to take my son and I to watch a bloody 3rd flight game, a bus journey away, you know it's gone way out of hand.

The choice is simple. We either carry on sumping up, or, do as we did in the 80's and stop sumping up a fortune to watch, quite frankly rubbish week in week out. The only power for change a fan has is to stop going. Then, and only then do the clubs do something.

overkill, I too think that a few empty stadiums would wake the teams and UEFA up, but lets be honest thats not gonna happen.

football is a game that instills so much passion in people that the stadiums will always have enough people looking to fill them (well for big Euro finals anyway).

Attendances are dropping off in the EPL now, with thousands of empty seats now a common occurrence at loads of EPL grounds. But does it really bother the teams? As has been said above, teams now get only a small proportion of their income from gate receipts. They need the sponsors more.

But I would love to see people boycott games to make a point.

But for me it is a simple problem that UEFA are just ignoring. Liverpool fans were given 11,000 tickets for tonight (actually 17,000 but 6,000 went to sponsors) - yet I would say there was at least 35,000 people decked in Liverpool colours in the stadium tonight. Surely Platini (who is trying to change the way football is run) can look and see this. It doesn't take a genius to work out that fans will get the tickets somehow, so why not cut back on the no. of tickets to the middlemen?

Also, remember England v Paraguay at WC2006? England got around 12,000 official tickets for that but about 95% of the stadium (about 48,000) were England fans - FIFA didn't care!!!

[thfccambs]

Originally Posted by RMCF

so why not cut back on the no. of tickets to the middlemen?
!

Why would UEFA want to stop giving sponsors thousands of tickets?That would be pure madness on there part.

Originally Posted by RMCF

Attendances are dropping off in the EPL now,

Are you sure on that?

[overkill]

Originally Posted by RMCF

overkill, I too think that a few empty stadiums would wake the teams and UEFA up, but lets be honest thats not gonna happen.

football is a game that instills so much passion in people that the stadiums will always have enough people looking to fill them (well for big Euro finals anyway).

Attendances are dropping off in the EPL now, with thousands of empty seats now a common occurrence at loads of EPL grounds. But does it really bother the teams? As has been said above, teams now get only a small proportion of their income from gate receipts. They need the sponsors more.

But I would love to see people boycott games to make a point.

But for me it is a simple problem that UEFA are just ignoring. Liverpool fans were given 11,000 tickets for tonight (actually 17,000 but 6,000 went to sponsors) - yet I would say there was at least 35,000 people decked in Liverpool colours in the stadium tonight. Surely Platini (who is trying to change the way football is run) can look and see this. It doesn't take a genius to work out that fans will get the tickets somehow, so why not cut back on the no. of tickets to the middlemen?

Also, remember England v Paraguay at WC2006? England got around 12,000 official tickets for that but about 95% of the stadium (about 48,000) were England fans - FIFA didn't care!!!

Oh I quite agree, fans will always turn out for the big games, but as I say, all it takes is a recession, and the sponsors, who themselves feel the pinch, start to pull out...........

The tickets thing has always wound me up. It is no excuse that sponsors are given 'privileges', because as you say, if that's the case how come so many end up in the fans hands? Via the touts of course.............. It's a scam, it always has been a scam, and sadly, it always will be.

I can't see Platini putting an end to whats been the norm throughout my days as a football fan - and that's over thirty years now.

[LFC_SL]

UEFA have a point - the number of English supporters who go abroad regardless of whether they have a ticket or not vastly outnumber their continental counterparts who would have the same idea

Airlines and hotels know they shouldn't, but when people will pay stupidly inflated prices, a fact not even hidden, why do anything?

[overkill]

Originally Posted by LFC_SL

UEFA have a point - the number of English supporters who go abroad regardless of whether they have a ticket or not vastly outnumber their continental counterparts who would have the same idea

Airlines and hotels know they shouldn't, but when people will pay stupidly inflated prices, a fact not even hidden, why do anything?

This is the problem. Obviously the continentals aren't as daft as we are when it comes to going to big matches. Ie, if you're going to have to mortgage the house, then sorry no, get real.

[RMCF]

Originally Posted by hunts1uk

Why would UEFA want to stop giving sponsors thousands of tickets?That would be pure madness on there part.

Disagree.

If UEFA cared about the game, as they always claim they do, they would just say to the likes of Heineken, Sony, Ford etc - "I sorry but there are far to many tickets ending up on the black market - so next season we are giving you only 60% of what you got last year'.

Now, sponsors might do 2 things.

1st - they might just pull out. Fair enough. But football is so big there would not be any hassle getting a replacement sponsor. There are hundreds of other massive companies who would love to get in to this closed shop (same sponsors for years).

2nd - they accept it and pay 60% less than they do now. This will mean that UEFA will have to cut prize money by 60% and the teams will have to accept it. Thus the madness of wages might slow down a little.

Either way, UEFA can give more tickets to the 2 teams in the final.

I have been at 4 CL finals since 1998. I have seen all the suits in my hotels standing around at free tents eating plush food and drinking free beer waiting on Ford to come and ferry them to the game. I saw many many people who I would bet my mortgage on who had no interest in football but wanted a free weekend abroad. I have witnessed loads of empty seats that took 20mins AFTER halftime to get refilled, as the suits took their time coming back from their free halftime refreshments. They have no interest in the game. This is killing football, and it hurt me as I had to go out into town to buy a touted ticket from guys who had hundreds in their hands!! How does a guy in his 20s (most are usually English by the way even when there are no English teams uinvolved) end up with vast bundles of tickets. Would you believe my conspiracy theory that they are selling them on behalf of companies? Or that they bought them off the likes of Sony for half of what they are selling them for?

[Dave]

It's not just UEFA, look at the play off final for the championship.

I'd love to go but a decent ticket is 70 quid, then I have to get down there, eat and drink. So I'm looking at nearly 200 quid to go and see one game.

That's assuming I could get a ticket of course. I don't have a season ticket so can't get tickets through that, a mate that does already got 2 for her and her son. The only other way of getting a ticket is being a "member" which would cost me a tenner for the season, of which there is one game left and then I could get just one ticket. So my mate I normally go with would then have to pay a tenner too on top of the ticket price.

It makes my blood boil that me and my mate have been going regularly all season yet can't get a ticket for the play off final unless we throw even more money at the club, not to mention the fact that 30% of ticket allocation is corporate anyway.

I could get tickets off ebay or something but I simply refuse to pay the price so I'll watch it in the pub.

Rant over.

[RMCF]

Admittedly this is really only a major problem when an English team is involved.

Spanish, German, Italian fans like their football, but they won't pay £1000 for a ticket. That is just crazy.

You can guarantee if no English are involved then the tout market is not very lucrative.

As for the attendances dropping in the EPL, I have seen the empty seats spreading a lot over the last few years when I watch matches on TV. The FA Cup is dying especially.