Firstly some background. I'm not a season ticket holder. I never have been due to a combination of factors meaning it's either not been affordable, not worth it as I can't get to enough games, or both. I grew up in Manchester but moved away for University and never got around to moving back. Nothing intentional, just the direction life took me. I now live in Birmingham and so going to a game is a full day trip. Usually when I go I take my son with me and this means going to a game costs a minimum of £100 (usually much more) when you include tickets, travel, food etc.
I've become very aware of the ever increasing ticket prices and, looking forward, it's only going to get more expensive for me personally. My son is now 15. Next season he will be paying adult prices for both the football and train tickets, meaning the cost of going to a game is going to be at least £130, probably higher. And then there is another question - when we he be able to afford to buy his own tickets?
I recently found the ticket from my first ever game hidden away in a scrap book I'd kept as a kid (see above). It cost £2.50 then and if prices had followed inflation, then that same ticket would cost £9.59 today. Instead, a ticket for the recent Spurs game for my son cost £21 (and £44 for me). I was 6 when I went to that game so obviously didn't go on my own, but was going to the occasional game without my parents well before I went to University. I say occasional because I couldn't afford to go more often.
That was in an era when ticket prices were much lower. I can remember being shocked when it cost £10 to go to a pre-season game away at Wolves in the mid-90's. If I found it difficult to justify spending £10 on tickets, how will my son be able to justify £40+ tickets at the same stage in his life?
This is a part of the ticket price debate that rarely gets mentioned. Pricing out the next generation is usually talked about in terms of children and families going to matches. There are lower prices for them, but what happens when they stop being children and start paying adult prices at a time in their life when they are unlikely to be earning much? Will the next generation of support stop going in their late-teens or early 20's?
This issue makes me very sympathetic to the protests, Even ignoring my own personal interest in having lower prices, I think football has it wrong. The next generation of fans will lose the habit of going to games.
So why is this a dilemma? Based on what I've said so far I should be in support of the protest and instinctively I am. But then there is another side to this for me personally and it comes back to what I mentioned earlier about living some distance away and not being able to get to every game.
Typically I get to around 8 games a season. The West Brom game will be the seventh this season and likely my last. I've already bought the tickets (months ago when City decided to put the rest of the season's tickets on sale meaning I had to guess which games I'd be able to get to up to 6 months away, but that's another story), and I'll be spending a long day travelling to the game and back. So do I want to spend all that time and money to only see 2/3 of the game? There is a part of me that doesn't want to do that, and another part that thinks it would be selfish of me to not join in the protest (if it happens).
So there is the dilemma - the conflict between not wanting to feel I've wasted time and money on one of my limited trips to a game, and the need to make a statement for the long term good of every fan.
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