At first glance it was not obvious why Manchester City fans were so upset about the announcement at the end of last month that the club had signed a multi-year agreement with Viagogo. After all, the difference between their previous tally of eight ticket resale partners and nine is pretty marginal and, besides, it was stipulated that tickets would not be taken from ordinary fans but from the existing allocation of hospitality seats. But the story touched a nerve and at the next home game thousands responded to the call from three supporters’ groups to leave their seats empty until the ninth minute.
“These resellers, they don’t offer anything of value,” Chris Neville, secretary of one of the fan groups, Trade Union Blues, told the BBC. “They have a completely parasitical business model where they take something that already exists and sell it for a profit. We’re loyal fans. We don’t object to people who want to come to Manchester and have a good time and take in a City game. What we object to is the fact the club now seems to be prioritising these fans over longstanding loyal fans.”
This fear appears well grounded, for reasons the club’s leadership has never made any attempt to hide. Ferran Soriano, City’s chief executive, made his approach to match days absolutely clear in a speech he gave at the World Government Summit in Dubai in 2014. “There has been a major change in the business model,” he said. “Twenty years ago, 30 years ago, what was the business model of a football club? It was the same as a circus in the sense that you get the money from people going to the stadium to watch a show live. This is where you get the money. That’s it.
“The business model is not a circus any more. The business model looks similar to Walt Disney or Warner Bros. Walt Disney has characters, Mickey Mouse; Warner Bros, Bugs Bunny. With a character they do TV programmes, movies. They have theme parks. They sell shirts and caps. A football club does the same thing – we don’t have Mickey Mouse, we have Sergio Agüero. And with Sergio Agüero, we sell shirts, we sell caps, we sell TV programmes – the games. We have a theme park – the stadium. So our business today, the business of a football club, is very similar to any big media company. It’s not a circus any more.”
The problem with long-term fans, the indefatigable old-timers who turn up week in and week out for year after year, is that they tend not to see the ground as a theme park, or to buy many caps and shirts. “To a certain extent season-ticket holders have outlived their usefulness,” says Kieran Maguire, an associate professor in football finance at the University of Liverpool and co-host of the Price of Football podcast. “If I’m a Championship club and I’m trying to get my ground three-quarters full I need my season-ticket holders there. For smaller clubs, the benefit of season-ticket holders is clear. But Manchester United could easily sell 80,000 tickets to 80,000 different people every home fixture. For the elite clubs, season-ticket holders are bedblockers to a certain extent. They tend to be older and if they buy merchandise they buy it once a season. Tourists are more likely to empty their wallets on overpriced tat in the club shop.”
Liverpool gave a clear indication of their attitude to long-term fans last year, when the opening of a redeveloped Anfield Road Stand boosted the stadium’s capacity by 7,000. Their season-ticket waiting list runs very comfortably into five figures, and is so unwieldy it has been closed since 2017; some people have been on it for more than a quarter of a century, patiently waiting their turn. For most, this was not it: they got only 1,000 of the new tickets, the rest earmarked for occasional or one-off visitors. Manchester City’s plans for their North Stand, currently being redeveloped, include “new premium, seated areas”, with the club hoping to entrench their position as “a world-class entertainment destination for fans and global visitors alike”.
Resale partners help clubs access international fans while distancing themselves from the high prices charged. Many offer tickets to matches across Europe, and by default list prices in dollars or euros; one major reseller, listing tickets at nine Premier League grounds, has sold packages through Expedia, Groupon and Thomas Cook; another is based in Israel; Liverpool have partners in Sweden and Denmark. But these ticket offers do not just populate home areas with tourists, they offer an easy route in for away fans, with sometimes violent results.
Manchester City have also struggled to police their exchange scheme, which allows anyone who pays a £35 fee to access, at face value, seats returned by season‑ticket holders. Many of those tickets have ended up in the hands of away fans – before February’s FA Cup tie against Plymouth, City cancelled nearly 250 snaffled by first-time buyers living within 30 miles of Home Park – or of touts, and this season more than 500 accounts have been suspended or closed for touting. Last year City recruited a ticket compliance officer to help them regain control.
While ticket exchanges may have been conceived to ensure full stadiums and good atmospheres, several clubs have come to see them as another opportunity to boost profits. “Clubs are realising that if they tell fans they will resell tickets on their behalf, they can repackage those tickets at a higher price as a premium product via one of their resale partners,” says Maguire. “So at Manchester United you might go to a warehouse in Trafford Park, get a pie and a pint, hear a few anecdotes from a former player, and you’ll pay a premium price for that. Commercially, that absolutely makes sense.”
Season-ticket holders tend to see themselves as the heartbeat of their clubs, as keepers of the flame, essential, irreplaceable. But it is increasingly clear that some clubs see them as more hindrance than help and are slowly, quietly starting to squeeze them out. As City’s protesting fans seem to have realised, the consequences may be anything but Mickey Mouse.
