All out on 77 minutes

[navbasi]

If the choice was between half price tickets, and spending only £30m a year on players, which would you choose?

 

Tickets all day for me, but with a caveat that ST holders don't exist any longer.

 

Fair's fair.

Freezing ticket prices next year at this years prices would have a negative effect of £2m to LFC or 16 weeks wages for Sturridge.

 

Here's a novel idea. Why not invest properly in a scouting system and/or a proper CEO if you really want to run it as a proper business and make MONEY, rather than have Ian fucking Ayre and a group of spastics sitting behind a computer saying, yes, let's pay £32m for Benteke but not £5m for Alli.

 

[navbasi]

 

[Jairzinho]

If the choice was between half price tickets, and spending only £30m a year on players, which would you choose?

 

Tickets all day for me, but with a caveat that ST holders don't exist any longer.

 

Fair's fair.

We spend about £30m net anyway don't we?

 

NETSPENDESMA

[dobbalina]

"No-one is being priced out of the stadium. There is a seat for everyone at the right price." - Ian Ayre

 

That's possibly one of the stupidest comments in the history of LFC.

[Anubis]

Just had a listen to 606 while I was out in the car. I don't know who is presenting it but he was very supportive of the walk out, kept describing it as very important news, and all of the texts and emails from the fans of other clubs were 100% supportive. Hopefully there is an appetite for more widespread action.

[jimmycase]

I've been in work, well done to everyone who bailed! How many would people say walked out?

 

I estimated no more than 1 in 5. It was noticable the Main & Centenary Lower emptied quicker than the Kop which only really started to see people exit on the 80th minute.

 

People calling themselves fans calling the people in charge of the club "Cunts".

People saying "Fuck them (the players).

People saying "The team are weak minded"

People picking up on spelling errors in the hope of distracting from their poor, poor argument.

 

Greatest fans in the world eh?

 

We used to be.

 

Spot on.

[Sputnik1]

Liverpool fan protest: It is time for ‘customers’ to fight back and be treated as fans again

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/liverpool-fan-protest-it-is-time-for-customers-to-fight-back-and-be-treated-as-fans-again-a6858106.html

 

Yesterday’s walkout by Liverpool supporters, in the 77th minute of the home game against Sunderland, was an unprecedented demonstration of anger, frustration and resentment at a newly unveiled ticket pricing scheme, which quickly degenerated into a PR car crash.

 

Ian Ayre, the chief executive, chose to speak down to fans on dress-down Friday, when he turned up at the Melwood training ground in jeans, trainers and a v-neck sweater over a plain white tee shirt. Blissfully unaware middle-aged chic and condescension usually betray a botched crisis-management strategy, he found protests “staggering”.

 

His argument that the club are seeking to engage younger, more local, fans was effortlessly undermined by his nonsensical insistence the TV windfall “goes into a completely different product on the pitch”.

 

More subtly, corporate camouflage in the US countered the perception that the pricing policy is being driven by a faction within the club’s hierarchy who favour “monetising the asset”,  to use an increasingly familiar phrase at Anfield.

 

The website of Fenway Sports Management, the marketing arm of the Boston-based investment group  which seized control at Liverpool in October 2010, suddenly changed its mission statement from “transforming fans into customers” to “transforming consumers into fans”. 

 

It was a small but significant gesture, aimed at bridging a cultural chasm. Many Liverpool fans had taken understandable offence at the implication that, as customers, they are  valued merely for their spending power, rather than their residual  allegiance to a transitional team. 

[Dr Nowt]

People calling themselves fans calling the people in charge of the club "Cunts".

People saying "Fuck them (the players).

People saying "The team are weak minded"

People picking up on spelling errors in the hope of distracting from their poor, poor argument.

 

Greatest fans in the world eh?

 

We used to be.

It's almost as though the club itself has completely changed.

[stringvest]

He will be offering us all free electricity next.

 

well he's having a shocker so far.

[stringvest]

Kennys Bell.

 

happy days

[stringvest]

Billy Lidl

 

I've been watching Liverpool since 1891 and I remember Sid Wadell darting down the wing mumbling to himself.  

[Anubis]

It's worth printing that Indy article in full.

 

 

Premier League footballers don’t tend to ask the cost of their indulgences. They inhabit a world in which facilitators effortlessly ensure bookings at the best restaurants, deals for the fastest cars, and opportunities generally unavailable to the great unwashed. The price is incidental.

 

Yet when Liverpool’s players were offered first refusal on “an executive hospitality experience” in a US-style “super box” capable of seating 25 people in Anfield’s new main stand, they baulked at the expense.

 

The sales pitch spoke of a “specially designed roof which will project a wall of noise from over 20,000 fans on to the pitch,” but the fee, “approximately” £13,000 per person, per season, affronted even the multi-millionaires who are supposed working-class heroes.

 

Allowing for wriggle room in the negotiating process – many first-team players currently share 10-seater executive boxes which retail at around £75,000 despite being officially priced at £100,000 – that meant finding in the region of £300,000 a year. No deal. No way. No how.

 

In the words of one source, who admitted he thought he was inured to the absurdities of football’s value system: “The game really is going mad.” His incredulity was shared by the owner of another executive box, who was offered an upgrade for £250,000 last July.

 

To put such figures into perspective, the most expensive box at Old Trafford is £175,000. Arsenal charge a top price of £150,000. Soaking the rich to assuage the poor may be an equitable economic principle, but in football the proceeds flow towards the shareholder rather than the spectator.

 

The episode signals an existential problem which eats away at the fabric of a club which promotes the passion of its fans as a “brand”, and the benevolent socialism of Bill Shankly as its defining principle. The contempt of the modern owner for those who have an emotional commitment to institutions they regard as investments is unconcealed.

 

There can be no greater indication of the greed on which the Premier League is founded than the rejection of a £30 cap on ticket prices for travelling supporters by clubs who had just been informed they will share £8.3 billion in TV revenue from next season.

 

The only dissenting voice was thought to be from Everton, whose self-styled status as “The People’s Club” irks their neighbours, whose followers also cherish their proactive role in the promotion of a sense of community.

 

Yesterday’s walkout by Liverpool supporters, in the 77th minute of the home game against Sunderland, was an unprecedented demonstration of anger, frustration and resentment at a newly unveiled ticket pricing scheme, which quickly degenerated into a PR car crash.

 

Ian Ayre, the chief executive, chose to speak down to fans on dress-down Friday, when he turned up at the Melwood training ground in jeans, trainers and a v-neck sweater over a plain white tee shirt. Blissfully unaware middle-aged chic and condescension usually betray a botched crisis-management strategy, he found protests “staggering”.

 

His argument that the club are seeking to engage younger, more local, fans was effortlessly undermined by his nonsensical insistence the TV windfall “goes into a completely different product on the pitch”.

 

More subtly, corporate camouflage in the US countered the perception that the pricing policy is being driven by a faction within the club’s hierarchy who favour “monetising the asset”, to use an increasingly familiar phrase at Anfield.

 

The website of Fenway Sports Management, the marketing arm of the Boston-based investment group which seized control at Liverpool in October 2010, suddenly changed its mission statement from “transforming fans into customers” to “transforming consumers into fans”.

 

It was a small but significant gesture, aimed at bridging a cultural chasm. Many Liverpool fans had taken understandable offence at the implication that, as customers, they are valued merely for their spending power, rather than their residual allegiance to a transitional team.

 

The North American business model, seen at its most grotesque at Manchester United, where the Glazer family is systematically siphoning income from the club, has built-in obsolescence, since it is dictated by the bloodless nature of a franchise system, which promotes the profit motive over such inconveniences as promotion and relegation.

 

Arsenal’s largest shareholder Stan Kroenke is in the process of uprooting his NFL franchise from St Louis to Los Angeles. The club might have grudgingly scrapped the proposed £30 ticket surcharge for the forthcoming Champions League tie against Barcelona, but sooner or later, such a cold-eyed businessman will cash in.

 

English football is different. It should cherish its underpinning pride, perversity and prejudice. We are rapidly approaching a tipping point, where the decent majority must make a choice between militancy, in the face of ruthless exploitation of their loyalty, and meek surrender to market forces.

 

Choose the latter, and your children will be denied the chance to fall in love, the way most of us did when we first walked into the wonderland of our first grown-up football match. The sights, smells and sounds which made the game a sensory experience will be memories, museum pieces.

 

Football is being remorselessly repackaged as homogenised, tourist- friendly mush. It is being pushed beyond the reach of its traditional audience. It is not as if the new breed of brazen entrepreneurs is very good at the core job of overseeing agreeable results and acceptable entertainment.

 

Manchester United are a case in point. Hugely successful financially, they are hamstrung by executive incompetence when it comes to sporting issues. Succession planning in the post-Ferguson era has been so badly conducted they are likely to have little alternative than to appoint an unsuitable new manager, Jose Mourinho, in the summer.

 

The language of the game is changing into a mangled version of powerpoint piffle. The marketing men tried to woo Liverpool players with a document which insisted the new stand “will be uniquely Anfield”, whatever that means. It is time to take the fight to these people.

[navbasi]

 

http://en.as.com/en/2016/02/06/football/1454787971_408108.html

[Ginny]

We need an uprising. A revolution. People to stand up and say no to greed. In all areas of society. This is the start and I hope the start of something good. Get those greedy fuckers shitting themselves. Paying £40 is too much to watch that pile of worthless shite and then look up to the box and see Sturridge standing there taking his £100k a week or whatever. The jig is up

[navbasi]

 

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/match-reports/liverpool-fc-2-2-sunderland-10852263

[Nightcat]

How on earth do they sell so expensive tickets to the fans in order to watch a gutless Swansea quality team in Liverpool outfits?

 

Apart from the expensive tickets, there is also the quality of the "product" as they call it which is appalling. Their customers (as the call the fans) are being sold an expired mayonnaise for the price of a vintage matured, balsamic vinegar.

 

There is a £300m transfer fraud. .

[Sputnik1]

[bossy]

Well in everyone who walked out at 77 minutes. The club would rather you just didn't go so they could sell your tickets to clap happy consumers. A great start and hopefully more clubs fans will join in.

[RedKnight]

until football clubs are owned by the fans it ll never change. london prices in liverpool but its been like that for a while. im paying 60 quid on the kop for the city game.

 

im all for protests but I think they need to be more creative and less divisive. I d guess it was mostly locals who walked out today and the club belongs to them but also belongs to the daytrippers and the weekenders who come from england Scotland wales northern ireland republic of ireland scandinavia france spain germany just like the players and managers who along with the local lads won the club all its trophies.

 

I drove a five hour round trip to walk out on 77 and I'd do it again. Solidarity means more than geography.

[smicer07]

According to Paul Mariner, who knows all about this, because...

 

I've just caught a bit of an interview on Sky with whoever it was standing in for Klopp (not the bloke with the floppy hair, the other one) and he defended the fans' right to protest and said that it did not affect the players.

So it was pure coincidence that we went from a comfortable win to a draw in the ten minutes following loads of people leaving?

 

Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk

 

 

[Lee909]

No not coincidence just a shit fucking keeper giving them a lifeline

[chris71]

Well done all. Was watching it on Setanta and it made a great visual impact. Hopefully the yankee money men sit down and rethink this now.

[Stickman]

So it was pure coincidence that we went from a comfortable win to a draw in the ten minutes following loads of people leaving?

 

Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk

 

Well if that's the case it show important fans are I guess...

[Sputnik1]

 

 

How do you get universal change? By doing nothing? Shrugging your shoulders and saying well its the same everywhere and we cant change everywhere at once with the flick of a magic wand, so we should do nothing, nothing at all, just bend over and take it.

No, you start somewhere. You start small. You start with your own back yard and then move on to the rest.

We have started with ours. We will sort ours. We will get the prices down, we will do what it takes. Then when we have shown how its done others will follow and we will help them. This today has sent a message not only to our own owners, but to fans at every other club, it can be done, you can protest. 

We actually have the power, we are the many, they are the few. Whether they label us customers or fans, we are the audience, we are the consumers. When you are selling a product, you alienate or piss off your consumers at your peril. 

Instead of putting it down get on board, join in and help, in the very least be supportive. If you don't think it will work, you don't have to do anything, no one is forcing you. 
You also don't have to tell us how it wont work, you don't have to sit here and throw this negativity out. Which you are only doing so that later on you can say, see told it wouldn't work and act like a smug twat. You aren't offering solutions or alternatives, just doom mongering.

So, just button it and watch what happens.

[Guest Pistonbroke]

Well done all. Was watching it on Setanta and it made a great visual impact. Hopefully the yankee money men sit down and rethink this now.

 

They won#t give a shit mate, not whilst the dollars keep coming in.