The 1st of April has become synonymous with making a fool of those around you, but this year it has been challenged by news of a more serious nature. President Barack Obama was in London for the G20 Summit and it may disappoint some of you to know that was not at Wembley last night. A great shame and a photo opportunity missed I feel; if the world was to combine Obama's stability and determination with Mr Capello's discipline and steeliness, we could maybe find the cure for the global credit crisis.
Alas, there were no such distractions for us fans, we made do with England’s anticipated, dare I say expected, dismissal of the Ukraine. Meanwhile, the President of the United States will be dining extravagantly with many other world leaders at Downing Street, only of course after they have held discussions during today with regards to the economic downturn. I haven't seen the menu but I am going out on a limb here and will predict that the 'value' ranges from supermarkets won't be a prominent factor.
More to the point it is interesting to take a look at what exactly the football clubs are doing for fans in and around the country whilst money is tight. Several Premiership clubs have already stated that they will be fixing their ticket prices for next season as a gesture towards the supporters, these include Arsenal and Newcastle Utd. Of course, if Alan Shearer is not the messiah that Newcastle are looking for and they are relegated, then Mike Ashley would most definitely be regarded as a very naughty boy if he wasn't to drop prices in the Championship.
In reality, though, the freezing of ticket prices is appreciated, it turns out that football fans in the United Kingdom are taken for granted. Reports from a couple of years ago found that on average, ticket prices in Leagues One and Two are as expensive and sometimes more expensive than those at top flight matches across western Europe! In other words you could pay more money to watch Bristol Rovers in the third tier of English football than you would to see a game in Serie A. Quite simply it makes a mockery of fans.
When this study was carried out, the UK was still riding the wave of the economic boom, and yet football clubs were greedily taking advantage rather than passing on any of their surpluses. Being a supporter of a club in the rest of western Europe was therefore still comparatively cheaper, despite the then strength of the Pound to the Euro. Now that the worm has turned, prices have risen further still and we are more worse off than ever.
Clearly there would be other expenses involved if anyone was to take up the challenge, namely travel costs and accommodation. Remarkably though, the Guardian found at the beginning of this season that some fans were doing exactly that. They reported that there is a growing number of football supporters who are taking in the sights across Europe as a part of supporting a team on the continent. Not only that, they found that by traveling to Germany and watching a game in the Bundesliga, the combined price might still be less than a Premiership match, which can cost in excess of £60.
It was widely reported last summer that season-tickets in the Premier League were due to rise for this season by 7.2% from the cost of last season. That is simply ridiculous, especially when it was noted that the rise was twice that of the consumer price inflation for the same period. Why this is being allowed is beyond sense, the Premier League is now richer than it has ever been and it is continuing to benefit from increased revenues from its TV contracts.
These TV contracts have dictated kick-off times more and more over the years and have sometimes seen games moved at very short notice, causing a massive inconvenience to the fans who have already made their necessary arrangements. Even though no games are shown live at 3pm on a Saturday, we now regularly see games played at times throughout the week away from this no-go area.
The result, especially now when people are less willing to spend on a pastime, is that attendances are falling in many stadiums. I know as an Arsenal fan that the Emirates is almost always sold-out, but they are now bucking the trend rather than being the norm. At the same time I have to be realistic and know that I cannot go to every home game as much as I'd like to, £46 at best every other week is not reasonable enough for me to justify. Sadly this means that the days of many friends and families going to games together regularly is unlikely compared to when football was less glamorous in the seventies and eighties.
It is all relative to what I have mentioned before, there is a real need to try and find a way of spreading money across football clubs in all divisions more fairly. Coupled with this a wage cap of some description is imperative, if this was to be done in line with the rest of Europe, then there need not be any fear of players deserting the Premiership. This season has seen teams such as Wigan and Middlesbrough watch their attendances dwindle, football particularly at the top level - where the fat cats lie - needs to realise that the fans are ultimately their life source.