I think the protests around resisting price rises at all are rather missing a trick to make a reasonable proportion of the tickets affordable to ordinary fans in the long term. Maybe if they could put a ceiling on matchday tickets that is proportional to the minimum wage, it would prevent this kind of argument on an annual basis.
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I am very hesitant to criticise the match going fans for these sorts of things because fandom for me 4000 miles away is very different. But even when the club have tried that sort of thing the match day protests have still come and largely ignored the attempts that had been made to target where they want to increased revenue to come from
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I donât mind fan groups pressuring the club when it comes to ensuring affordability for local matchgoers. Where they always lose me is the messaging. Itâs frequently misleading or downright dishonest, which is hardly going to help their ability to have meaningful dialogue with the club.
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This is from Spirit of Shanky, who supports/organizes this protest:
âThis is a club that recently posted record revenues of ÂŁ703m. The Head of Finance at LFC confirmed during discussions that a 3% rise to general admission and season ticket prices will represent an additional annual revenue of ÂŁ1.2m to the club in the first year. For the clubâs overall financial position, this will make very little difference, but for hardworking, matchgoing fans it will make a big difference.â
1.2m could well be saved anywhere and makes no difference in Anfield upkeep, match-day safety, signing players, players contracts etc.
Is it really worth it to do that?
Trying to stay relevant imo. I joined them when I thought we were going into administration, after the owners were sorted out there was not much more for them to work on. These are the types of institutions that will complain no matter what. Itâs a requirement to find issues in order to survive.
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Considering the profit last season was 8m after tax and the year before there was 57m loss, I would say 1.2m next year and then subsequent increases in line with the CPI makes a huge difference.
Especially since club expenses are supposedly rising much more than ticket prices. That means there are already cuts /tightening elsewhere yhat is more extreme and everyone needs to do their part. A comparatively little bit borne by match goers should be reasonable.
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Average wages in Liverpool have increased by between 4.6% and 5.4% over the last 12 months.
In real terms it represents a decrease albeit other daily living costs will have risen quicker than wages, particularly with the Iran situation.
This is what I mean about the misleading element.
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To Add, if anything, the clubs success in other areas of income generation have subsidized ticket prices over the past 15 years. I wonder how many years it would take at current price increases +15000 extra seats, to pay for the +200m spent on the stadium.
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Another example of this forum being embarrassingly out of touch.
Oh, yeah, when FSG froze the ticket prices out of the goodness of their hearts under no pressure from the fanbase.
Absolute pearler of a post that one.
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Another good question is how much has the average wage increased over the last 8 years?
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Liverpool season tickets are a fraction of what comparable tickets would cost for any American major sport - NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL.
As soon as the owners feel like they can increase prices without pressure, the costs will spiral.
Keep up the pressure.
In absolute terms, quite a bit:
In real terms (accounting for cost of living changes), the picture is more complex, but tends to return to a small percentage point over time:
Which is why I would prefer to see them agree that ticket prices (or at least a significant proportion of them) are tied to the typical income of people living in the city. A fixed proportion of the minimum wage would seem fair, as everyone is guaranteed that and the bulk of matchday staff will be on modest wages, and many of them working part-time.
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Really the main thing to put a lid on is player wages; with our anemic season and move toward performance pay, youâd have to think that weâd be saving a fair bit in that department right now.
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I posted about this last week:
In 1992, the average top tier footballer earned around 5 times the average UK salary. By 2025 this had risen to 106 times average (mean) salary. Thatâs been driven by TV money, which in turn has been driven by punters like us paying the subscriptions. (Not the dodgy Amazon sticks, obviously.)
In a way, some of that is new revenue, because at one time live football, whether subscription or free-to-air, was rare.
The commercial revenue and sponsorship is another one that has grown out of all proportion. Our current main shirt sponsor, âStandard Chartedâ brings in ÂŁ50 million per year. We were actually the first club to have shirt sponsors back in 1979 with âHitachiâ. That brought in ÂŁ50,000. It has increased 1000 times since then.
I suppose that there needs to be a demarcation between player wages and matchday revenue. If the TV was to disappear overnight, much of the commercial revenue would go with it. The stadium would still need paying for, as would all the non-playing staff, Kirkby etc. Presumably players would be earning 5x average salary again?
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The obvious argument the matchgoers have here is that without local passionate support, there is no product.
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Two mediocre Dutch footballers have just been given extremely generous (unearned) wage increases that will more than swallow up the revenue earned by ticket increases, and youâve got a number of posters on here debating the specifics of the modest wage rises of locals, money that is spent on energy and food.
A total disconnect to the local support. If the ground was full of scabs the atmosphere would be as poor as it was anywhere else.
The constant criticism of SOS or Spion Kop from Americans, Australians and people from the home counties who never go to a game is laughable.
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What?
You were impressively wrong last time this debate came up, donât stop now!
That doesnât sound like me at all 
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