By Howard Borrell
Just a year ago Deloittes had announced the results of their annual review of football and everything was buoyant with revenues in the Premier League up 11% across the board and the top four clubs averaging £178m income compared to £50m for the rest of the league. A year on and things are starting to look a little different. At Manchester United the debt loaded onto the club by the Glazer family when they "bought" the club in 2005 is increasing. They bought the club for £828 million but borrowed £556 million to help them do it, securing about 70 per cent of that against the club.
That debt now exceeds £700m and will have had a significant bearing on whether or not United sold Ronaldo !
Many top flight clubs depend on the largesse of major companies to both sponsor and buy luxury box hospitality, it remains to be seen how hard the economic downturn will bite. Thankfully most clubs have chosen to recognise the difficulty that supporters face in trying to balance their own personal budgets and have generally chosen to keep season ticket prices at last season's level. In the Premier League just Manchester United have bucked that trend by next season increasing every ticket by £1 per game; elsewhere the rest have either frozen or reduced their charges.
Last season Middlebrough and Bolton, both located in areas suffering economically and with other clubs competing for their money, encouragingly saw healthy increases in attendances as a result of astute pricing, the £95 season ticket for under-18s at Middlesbrough proving particularly popular.
Football League clubs are being particularly pragmatic about what they can reasonably expect their supporters to pay. Just six Football League announced price increases for next season and not a single local club have increased their charges.
Locally theOwls have actually made reductions ranging from 5-10% in recognition of the loyalty their fans have shown and are currently reaping the reward with impressive increases in season ticket sales. The Blades held their prices and are thrilled with almost 19,000 sales to date. Rotherham reduced their season ticket prices across the board from a 9% reduction for adults to a whopping 33% discount for juveniles and hope to retain the bulk of their supporters as they deal with having to play outside the borough and in a stadium that can only be kindly described as not ideally suited to football.
A little further afield, last December,Bradford City offered season tickets for 2009/10 for just £99. Port Vale made similarly enticing offers but, last season having made similar offers the previous season, both failed to increase their revenue income despite adding some extra bums on seats.
Locally Mansfield Town have also dramatically reduced their season ticket prices and look set to benefit as they can expect to play in front of impressive 3,000 plus crowds in the Blue Square Premier.
However both Rotherham and Doncaster have recently announced that next season both Mark Robins and Sean O'Driscoll will have to work with a trimmed budget as they seek to create a balanced budget. Bradford City's crazy price deals hasn't stopped them announcing that Stuart McCall, who was considering stepping down, will also have to work with a reduced budget.
The most interesting approach to season ticket pricing must be at FC United (the club that emerged when fans showed their displeasure at the Manchester United Glazer takeover) They've allowed fans to pay what they feel is appropriate (with a £90 adult minimum) despite running an operating loss for the past two years.
Their philosophy always has been to put the fun back into football. The board recently explained " We need to raise more revenue but we don't want to do this by imposing unilateral ticket price increases - particularly in the current economic climate and in keeping with our philosophy of providing affordable football.
However we would ask supporters that when you are deciding what you can afford it is important to use last season's average price of £140 as a barometer of affordability rather than the £90 figure. Accordingly, rather than set a target of numbers of season tickets sold, the board has simply set a cash target from the season ticket campaign.
So we hope the "Your Season Ticket, Your Choice" campaign will do two things. First, it will offer a lower season ticket price for those supporters who cannot now afford last year's price. Secondly, it means those supporters who can afford a bit more can choose to donate as much as they wish to help fund the club's operating costs.We have been asked if we're being foolhardy but why shouldn't a football club trust its own supporters?
FC United is after all a member owned club, so everyone has a vested interest in making this a success"
This novel idea was to be reviewed after a month which had seen two thirds of the financial target achieved. After the deadline Press Officer Jules
Spencer explained that"It's an ambitious campaign but we have raised
similar amounts of money in the past so we hope we can do so again. This is about empowerment, of collective responsibility, of us all pulling together to ensure the club's future in a way that reflects our founding principles."
Heart warmingly sales are up, three times as many season tickets have been sold than at the same point last year - Jules added "the success of the campaign will not be measured in purely monetary terms and is not the driving force behind the idea. We proposed the scheme because we know that people are feeling the pinch and we wanted to place supporters at the very centre of decision making and be allowed to pay what they can afford rather than be told what to pay. People have asked if it is a risky strategy, but we always trusted supporters. It is their club after all. Why shouldn't a football club trust its own supporters? "
Why indeed ? - a different approach but I suspect not one many hard-up league clubs will be brave enough to copy!
(A version of this article has earlier appeared on the Sheffield Green'Un)
