Yesterday, Tottenham Hotspur announced the details around season ticket renewals via a statement on the club website. The press release started with a somewhat saccharine spiel on the importance of the fans to team performance, before delivering the real bombshell for local supporters: season ticket prices would be increasing by six percent next season, with additional impacts to older fans, as new senior concessions are planned to be removed from the 25/26 season.
Understandably, fans across the web (and I’m sure those not online as well) have reacted strongly. A number of fan websites, Twitter aggregate accounts, and sporting personalities linked to the club erupted, as #LevyOut trended with fans voicing their displeasure. The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust released a statement of their own slamming the changes, and a planned TIFO for the match against Manchester City was canned:
Look, it’s hard for me to write about this from my little corner of the globe. Down here in New Zealand, I’ve never had the opportunity to attend a match at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (let alone White Hart Lane). I can only really dream about being a season ticket holder, and being a relatively young fan (having followed the club for around 15 years at this point) it’s hard for me to fathom the absolute gut-punch this must be for those who have attended matches week-in, week-out for half a century or so.
What makes this an especially bitter pill to swallow is the reasoning behind these increases. The statement from the club mentions increased operating costs on matchdays, which sure, makes sense; but completely ignores a couple of brutally obvious points:
When you take these into account, this press release from the club comes across as facile at best. This is a club that on the face of it is making huge profits, not seeing much success on the pitch, but not reinvesting those profits into the team to generate that success, and then complaining that things are getting a bit expensive for them. Now, as I mentioned above, those wage numbers are definitely out of date so I have no doubt that the club is investing more in the on-field product, but it’s still not a good look in any way, shape, or form.
It’s easy though to forget that in the modern landscape sporting clubs are no longer the grassroots organizations that sprung up in factories, gyms, and the military, but instead profit-generating machines (except for when they’re… not). Fans overlook a lot due to the deep affinity we feel for the team, but at the same time forget the fact that this relationship is completely one-sided, and that at the end of the day these are gigantic corporations that only care about you as far as the cash in your bank account.
With that in mind, it’s hard to know if pushback from fans will sway this decision from the club. We have seen in recent years a couple of occasions where noise from the masses did appear to result in a change in tack: the potential hiring of Gennaro Gattuso for one, as well as season ticket pricing freezes this season. Holding the club to account is a good thing – the reality is that from a fan’s perspective, the club exists for our entertainment, and part of that is success; without that, why would fans feel willing to invest more?
Ange Postecoglou and the team’s performance have built up a lot of goodwill with supporters this season, and it feels like the timing of this announcement was an attempt to capitalize on that. Instead, it feels like that goodwill has just burned to a crisp. Let’s see if the club stand firm in their plans.