Celtic fans are pissed off tonight, and quite rightly too, at the news that tickets for Dundee are going to cost as much as £40 apiece, when you take into account handling fees and everything else. It’s an outrageous sum to be charging for a game that close to Christmas.
Football has become a very middle class, cash-oriented pastime.
It was heading that way but that trend has accelerated in worrying ways these past ten years with clubs not even hesitating to charge fortunes for tickets and merchandising companies putting out three and even four strips and bucket loads of training gear.
Clubs like the one across the street have attempted to “incentivise” buying all this stuff and spending more and more money with stuff like the MyGers scheme, which to me resembles nothing more than a scam against supporters.
The fury over this is understandable, but I already know that Dundee fans and Hearts fans and Hibs fans and Aberdeen fans and others are all going to talk about Celtic Park ticket prices and restricted view seats and all the rest of it, and they are going to say that we have a cheek to complain, except that a lot of us have sympathy for their cause.
The Scottish Football Supporters Association, the only cross-club fan group in the country, wants an independent review of our game and their ultimate objective is some kind of regulator like they have in England, and one that will put the protection of the fans front and centre of things.
One of the long-standing campaigns they’ve supported is the £20’s Plenty campaign to limit the price of match tickets. Which I can easily understand.
That will never garner widespread support in Scotland, but putting a ceiling on ticket prices is not a bad idea and its one whose time is probably coming.
Season tickets are different; clubs can, and will, charge what they want for those … but fans should have the right to be able to purchase tickets on a match-by-match basis and to have the price of those set independently.
Will it cost clubs money? Yeah, but not much money.
Not enough to matter. Not enough to hold back from doing the right thing.
Most clubs in Scotland can’t get away with over-charging for tickets and would comfortably fall under any maximum price threshold anyway. Our losses from it would be marginal, especially if certain matches were exempt.
And of course, certain matches would be exempt.
We all know they would be and we’d tolerate that to an extent. But £32 cover price plus other charges reaching £40, for a ticket to watch Celtic in Dundee, throwing in travel costs from Glasgow and all the rest, on Boxing Day … that’s beyond belief, and the game is already live on TV.
Yet there are folk who will complain about all the empty seats … with the way fans are treated these days it’s little wonder that there are tens of thousands of them all over Scottish football every damned weekend now.
The costs, the travel,of that journey to wherever, as long the smile on the face on Christmas Day of your pride and joy has not been compromised by the away ticket.
My point is simple, the feffin robot or mermaid, the latest little toy that all our wonderful grandkids fall at our feet emotionally blackmailing us to make sure we miss the senntement of caring.
Night James, do a perspective piece on charity.
There`s a simple solution: don`t buy the tickets. The clubs are quite right to cash in on the mugs who do buy them. People must have sad lives if they can`t sacrifice attending a game of football, especially around Christmas time. Anyway, I can`t understand supporters` groups, especially in England, not demanding that some of the TV cash should be used to subsidise tickets. The pandemic showed that the fans are more a part of the game than they were previously given credit for. They are no different than film extras, especially in televised games, so they should demand payment via subsidised prices in the same way as they do in the movies, as film extras. If all games were played in empty stadiums there is no way billions of pounds would be pumped into football, so there you have your argumemt.
Comment of the year that, spot on, bud.
Fuck them.
See how much they’ll charge when there’s nobody there.
HH
They are actually subsiding, but the clubs choose not to give that back to the fans. And I’m sure the fans down there are quite content spending loads on season tickets to help pay for players on hundreds of thousands a week