“I’m a bit younger, so this is all I’ve known,” says Nick Clarke, “but something that defines this moment is the feeling that it’s our last chance. You know that phrase: ‘The game’s gone’? I think the game is genuinely going away. It’s excluding traditional supporters and the communities that built the clubs in the first place.”
Clarke has just celebrated his 30th birthday and is coming off the back of a big season. As one of the four season-ticket holders behind the MCFC Fans Foodbank Support, Clarke has been active among the Manchester City fanbase and in the community since the pandemic. With the growing concern over the pricing and provision of tickets at his club last year, he helped coordinate protests by fans whose rivalries go back generations, but whose problems are increasingly shared. Supporters of Everton, Liverpool and Manchester United and others joined City fans under the banner “Stop Exploiting Loyalty” and in doing so became part of a new wave of supporter activism.
“I know there’s all these things about multi-club ownership, private and state ownership, playing games abroad, accusations of killing the soul of the game,” Clarke says. “But, really, what is the game? It’s the communities that go to it, it’s the communities that have made the clubs who they are, going back four, five, six generations till their very inception.
“The wider football supporter community are only just now cottoning on that we have so much more in common and if we don’t stand together the game is going to be gone before we know it. That’s all we have to do and all we can do. We just need to really keep up that momentum.”
It already seems there will be reason for fans to take a stand once more this season. It is not the first time they will have come together to demand change, but for those with clubs at the top of the pyramid there is a sense the ground is shifting and the needs of fans is becoming an afterthought, if not an outright problem.
At the heart is a concern that clubs want to move away from having matches filled with season-ticket holders towards something more casual, and more lucrative. Imagine every Premier League fixture becoming more like an Oasis gig, for ever.
“The problems are different at different levels of the game,” says Tom Greatrex, the new chair of the Football Supporters’ Association, who drove the Stop Exploiting Loyalty campaign. “In the Premier League, and at the top of the Championship, Stop Exploiting Loyalty has helped to bring to the fore a set of issues that have been developing over a period of time.
“We are seeing that parts of clubs’ fanbases, which have traditionally been loyal and go home and away, are now almost expendable to not all, but many of the people that currently run a number of those clubs. It’s gone beyond exploitation to expendability.”
Fans are suffering rises in ticket prices, the lowering or ending of ticket concessions and initiatives that require season-ticket holders to attend a certain number of games each season or risk losing their place, as examples of this trend. According to Greatrex, the effects are being felt in some grounds.
“The number of people who are there almost to experience something which they’re not necessarily part of has tipped into a significant proportion to the extent that it undermines the thing they’re going there to experience,” he says. “There is a real danger that in a short-term push for increased revenue from matchday tickets and associated spend that clubs are in danger of actually undermining the whole ‘product’ they’re so proud of.”
One topic that crystallises the anxiety over expendability is that of matches being selected for TV. There will be more televised games than ever this season, with Sky showing a minimum 215 Premier League fixtures. With each televised match comes possible rescheduling and a potentially challenging (or even impossible) journey for fans.
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“There can be very very short-notice changes, which make it very difficult for people to be able to attend those matches. I don’t think there’s been enough focus on things that could be done to mitigate some of the frustration that comes from those changes.” The FSA has called for a 12-week notice period on fixture rearrangements, the provision of more “football special” trains and the extension of the £30 cap on away tickets into the EFL.
The Premier League has committed to giving six weeks’ notice of fixture adjustments on all matches until January, but last month had to apologise after failing to meet its own deadline of announcing all September adjustments by 9 July.
It is striking that the mood among fans is so febrile at the time the government has passed legislation designed, in part, to give supporters more influence over their clubs. Fan consultation is a central requirement of the new Independent Football Regulator for the English men’s elite game and legislation is, in part, the result of long-term campaigning by the FSA.
It is not a panacea and its influence is unlikely to take hold for some seasons yet, but Greatrex, a former Labour MP, believes it can form a platform for better understanding between fans, clubs and competitions. “More than ever, there is an appreciation – among some, it’s reluctant, but among others, it’s embraced – that supporters have a legitimate voice that deserves to be heard and their views to be considered,” he says.
“[The regulator] is actually the basis for a much more constructive approach, which means that if clubs are sensible you can prevent a lot of the flashpoints getting to the point at which they become high profile, because you’ve dealt with it sensibly ahead of that time.”
Clarke would much rather have dialogue than protest. “I don’t want to be doing another protest all my life,” he says. “I know there’s no easy answers but a lot of this protest energy has come because people feel they’re not being listened to. That’s where the anger comes from.”
