More About Season Tickets
Mark Lawn is a no nonsense sort of guy.
When he talked about a plan to give Halifax people cheaper season tickets to go to Valley Parade as being a way to get them to follow a second club he did so in honesty. You can tell this because if he had nefarious intent his plain speaking style would have had him say “We are going to steal your fans.” Say that he did not.
Lawn is still finding his feet in this football game in the long term the offer could be a public relations hiccup but little more. If Bradford City were to drive to the Shay and - at gun point - force every Halifax Town supporter to buy a season ticket, a replica shirt, match days programmes and 23 pies a year then the story might get a column inch mention deep in the sport section buried under the news that Christiano Ronaldo had got out of bed on a different side this morning.
Stealing fans - as City stand accused of - is a reality in modern football. Back in the late 1990s Peter Risdale talked about Leeds United having a catchment area that included all of West Yorkshire disregarding the three other league club but Leeds themselves were under threat from bigger fish.
A wander through any town centre in those days would have shown you Manchester United, Liverpool and the odd Arsenal shirt. These days you can add Chelsea, AC Milan and Real Madrid to that list. Bradford City and Halifax Town are hardly getting a look in.
Whole industries are based on pushing the Premiership product and small clubs are getting swamped. Newspapers see clubs go to the wall but never break from the coverage of the top flight. 24 Sports News coverage does not flinch when administration but ranks the story under someone’s contract negotiation from someone at Old Trafford.
The likes of Halifax Town and Bradford City ring supporters to ask them why they have not renewed season tickets but the football fan on the other end of the line is assaulted on a daily basis by competitive messages. If football below the Premiership level got smart it would band together to make a more attractive proposition for all.
Halifax Town supporters are probably be right to be angry at Mark Lawn who like all other chairmen is looking after his club first and while I doubt he had any malice in what he did and like 99.9% of people who have seen a game in the lower two leagues last year he will be horrified by what is happening at The Shay there is still a persistent problem with self-interest in the game.
Recent articles on BfB about Leeds United and Huddersfield Town have produced a 2:1 ratio of abuse to sense in the comments the site receives and much of that abuse centred on the idea that it would be “funny” if Bradford City went out of business.
Football fans are programmed to want each other’s destruction when in truth the better our rivals do the better we tend to do. When we were in the Premiership Leeds were in Europe, Huddersfield the second flight and Halifax in the league. Is it really a coincidence that now we all struggle? Often - to steal a phrase - what is good for the tea and biscuit company is good for me.
Huddersfield Town vs Bradford City over the last few years has seen both clubs enjoy large attendances, added interest and the spoils of rivalry that make supporting a club so enjoyable but one comment on BfB last week said (paraphrasing) “I hope you don’t sell the 7000 tickets you need to stay in business.” as if there is a benefit for Town in not having a Bradford City.
City kicked off something special in football and some - including I note Huddersfield - benefited and is now offering cheaper tickets and getting full stadiums with great atmosphere. What was good for the one was good for all. Perhaps the same sort of innovation should be continued in a way that admitted that clubs at this - and to be honest every - level are yoked together.
I would suggest one chairman contacts all 24 clubs in League Two and proposes an away season ticket that did the same for travelling fans as City did for home fans and offered cheaper prices. Imagine paying £240 in the summer for away entry to every City game. Sure Rotherham would lose out on the £17 they scalp you for on the turnstile when you have driven down the M1 but they would get that money back from those Exeter supporters who took advantage of the offer for cheaper, nearer games.
All of which is to illustrate what could be done if clubs worked together. As it is the culture in football is very much every man for himself and while Halifax Town’s supporters trust rails against Lawn they do so because City have emerged as a clear target when they are up against a faceless system which robs them of support on a far greater scale than the Bantams ever could (or would) and exist in a community which has yet to recognise that when one is damaged all are.
One of the great things about emailing people is you can pretend to be sincere.
When I mailed a Leeds-supporting friend if she’d at least enjoyed her day out at Wembley last weekend I was able to do so without the immature smirks and wisecracks Leeds-supporting colleagues who sit near me have had to endure. I was equally glad she wasn’t able to see me shaking my head in despair after receiving her reply.
Yes she’d enjoyed the occasion, but was still carrying a sense of injustice that her beloved whites had lost to Doncaster Rovers. Not because she felt the players deserved more than the 1-0 defeat they suffered, but because the Leeds United supporters had notably outnumbered their South Yorkshire counterparts.
The Doncaster fans were rubbish for the number of empty seats they left she claimed, while ignoring the fact Rovers were forced to suspend ticket sales due to the number of ticketless Leeds fans attempting to buy them. I couldn’t help but feel it was a flawed logic to believe one club deserved to beat another on account of how many supporters they could muster.
Typical Leeds United fans - arrogant and looking down their noses at clubs who are now their equal, perhaps another season in England’s third tier will teach them to be more humble.
But wait. Supporters convinced success is their privilege on the basis of the number of their own, belief that opposition players won’t be able to handle the ‘intimidation’ of your big crowds, the feeling you can sit back and enjoy assured success…it all sounds a bit familiar – like us a year ago?
If there’s one thing the 2007/08 season should have taught us it’s that having more supporters than your rivals is not an advantage on its own. With our crowds averaging 10,000 more than many others, it was easy to get carried away in the belief these small clubs wouldn’t fancy running out at Valley Parade and we’d sweep everyone aside. The reality proved somewhat different as nine defeats contributed to the best supported club in the division managing only the 11th best home record.
Another year on and, despite the lack of success on the pitch, the aim is to dramatically increase crowds once more with a second remarkable season ticket offer. The daily updated figure at the bottom of City’s official website suggests it doesn’t appear to have yet captured the Bradford public’s imagination, but with many likely to be holding out until the last minute the club are still confident that the 9,000 adult applicants needed to trigger everyone getting a free second season ticket will be reached.
The season ticket initiative deserves all the applause it’s getting, but it does throw up plenty of questions for the season ahead. Will everyone who receives a free season ticket find someone to use it and, even then, will they go to every game? Are there enough supporters anxiously waiting until just before the deadline to see if the club are close to the magic 9,000 target, where they can then split the cost with a friend confident of getting that free season ticket?
The number of season ticket holders increased markedly following the £138 offer for 2007-08 season, but many of these were clearly floating supporters lured by the optimism that Stuart McCall’s return generated and novelty of live football. If, after watching a failed campaign of League Two football they renew it’s an achievement of sorts, but do they have other friends they can persuade to join them or will they think £75 a ticket or not bother? And what if 9,000 isn’t reached, what does the club plan to do then?
The growing uncertainty of if the season ticket initiative will succeed is similar to last season, where as City failed dismally to fight against relegation the number of supporters pledging to buy a season ticket was worryingly short of the 10,000 target. Julian Rhodes decided to run the offer anyway and the summer euphoria of Stuart’s return and Mark Lawn’s investment helped the uptake exceed expectations. There will be no such off the field moves this close season and it’s unlikely Stuart will be making the sort of headline signings that would trigger large queues at the ticket office. The next few weeks are going to be very interesting.
The hope is that the offer will succeed for more reasons than for those of us who have bought a season ticket for 2008/09 to get a second free. When Rhodes unveiled the first season ticket offer in February 2007 his motivation was to make the local football team affordable to everyone in the area. Football’s incredible rise in popularity over the last 15 years has sparked unprecedented interest, but seeing it in the flesh has gone beyond the reach of many.
The original season ticket sought to readdress the balance and, after some prodding, captured people’s interest. Other clubs have since replicated what City pioneered and, as the Premier League becomes further grasped from reality, Football League clubs have the chance to re-establish their importance in local communities by being a place young and old can afford to be.
Should the 9,000 be reached, prompting the second free season tickets, more fans will be supporting City next season than during the 1998-99 promotion season exactly 10 years earlier, a fact which underlines the high ambition of the initiative. Clearly it’s going to be touch and go if this is achieved and, even if it does, question marks over the future will remain. What about season ticket prices for 2009-10? What about 2010-11? It’s unclear if Rhodes and Lawn will have such a long term strategy and ultimately it could be out of their hands.
All of which underlines the importance of things going right on the pitch next season. City must mount a stronger promotion push sooner rather than later or the renewed interest in the Bantams will fade for many as quickly as it was rediscovered. There is a hardcore support who will continue to follow City come what may, but no amount of great offers will persuade the more fair-weather supporters to keep coming if we’re going to continue struggling against the likes of Accrington and Barnet. If City can be celebrating promotion the cheap season tickets will remain popular, but it seems unlikely there will be a strong uptake next year if another season of mid-table mediocrity follows.
The statement of ambition from Julian Rhodes this week, while putting pressure on the management team, is welcome. Whether the club should believe they can be in the Championship in two years is debatable, but the old saying of shoot for the moon and, even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars could be on the chairmen’s minds. Certainly the immediate aims should centre of promotion from the basement league and provide those of a claret and amber persuasion the first opportunity to celebrate success in nearly a decade.
The pictures of Leeds United supporters crying at Wembley might have give us all a good laugh, but they should also act as a warning that big crowds at Valley Parade next season offer only limited help to achieving the goal of promotion. It’s appears such lessons are being taken on board with the announcement Stuart is to have a larger than anticipated budget to mould a team capable of achieving the dreams of a fickle and impatient Bradford public – before they conclude that even some of the cheapest season tickets in the country aren’t worth it.
Today I got a message on my Facebook page - yes dear reader even the bloke what does BfB wastes time on Facebook - talking to me about trying to help City reach the 9,000 mark for season ticket sales. Have a visit and think about how City are using modern media to promoted the club which is welcome and a turn away from the face of most football clubs.
On Saturday I stood under canopy at Valley Parade at midday queuing for the single window of the ticket office to renew my season ticket and as each of the six or seven people in front of me were processed slowly. It was not cold and there was no wind whipping past the ticket office. The queue moved slowly but this was understandable because applications that go beyond the simple take time and the one guy processing them was working as fast as he could but in the end he is still one guy.
“I hope this is a simple one,” he commented as I got to the front and it was and I left having queued for a long time that kept within the limited of what could be called acceptable - probably because I was not too cold or too wet - and went on my way and my issue is not that I felt like I had been treated badly just that I did not feel as if I had been treated well.
The largest club superstore is attached to the ticket office. It is big, it is warm, it is empty - more or less - and in my head I picture a sofa with a coffee pot waiting for you as you go through the details of your application opposite the same man who rather than having to shout through a glass wall is opposite with a laptop in front of him entering information. I imagine the kids that were wandering around me outside watching the TV screens of the Manchester United game or browsing for products. I imagine a much more welcoming experience of renewing a season ticket.
For this May ritual of renewal is - for many people - the only contact with the club outside of a match day environment and while it is very typical of the rest of the game it is hardly something that one would relish and perhaps the club that lead the way in season ticket pricing might look at the way that tickets are renewed.
The day of treating all football supporters as if they are potentially violent thugs one must be separated from by sheets of glass are surely behind us and with so much space available to the club and understanding the unique nature of this contact between club and fan could more effort not be made to make a better experience?
A comfy place to sit while you are dealt with and a warm environment around you is going to make for a more pleasant half hour than one current enjoys when making the once yearly contact. The club that led the way on customer pricing can also start to make moves on customer service. I’ve no complaints with how I was treated when getting my season ticket but with some care and attention it could go from necessary evil to a comfortable, rich and enjoyable way of the club saying Hi to its main backers once a year.