I had an e-mail from the club last week, one of many one thing Sir Jim certainly hasn’t cut back on the e-mail writers.
Working from home is bad, we don’t need ticket office staff and we certainly can’t afford a proper center forward but the SPAM e-mail writers, well, that’s a key position we need to finance.
Anyway, this e-mail did catch my interest as it was offering me the chance of a 15-minute training session on the Old Trafford turf for the princely sum of £175
Now, having the chance to take a penalty in front of the famous Stretford End would be a dream but for that price it would need to be in the last minute of a League cup game at least.
Here comes the spooky bit, the following day at work and discussing the ridiculousness of following United with a colleague, we went back onto United`s website to have another look at this `once in a lifetime` experience only to find that the price had been changed to £225.
Now this isn’t an isolated incident, at some point during this season United have decided to offer, for a fee the possibility of a flexi ticket for members, so just like National Express and Megabus if you decide you can’t be bothered to travel, you can sell your ticket back to the club.
Basically, the club are making it up as they go along.
Remember the days of going for a pint after work on a Friday and deciding with your mates if you fancied the match or watching Saint and Greavsie and deciding to high tail it to the ground, sadly those days are gone but if the weathers looking a bit dodgy or the games been skyjacked as long as you’ve paid your fiver the club will sell the ticket to someone else and it wont be at hospitality prices promise.
This brings me to the point of the article; we need the club to be honest about the new directive to maximize every revenue stream to the nearest penny because things are looking bleak.
The ticket forwarding membership is £20 for literally nothing, you don’t get a membership card or a free bobble hat or water bottle, but this is big business for the club.
Every home game these days we get introduced to a new supporter’s club, San Francisco, Malta, Bombay and so on and so on.
It seems the remit is to put a pin in every corner of the globe, which on the surface looks and sounds lovely despite cries from us who are there every week `What about us`.
But think a bit deeper and look at the real reason for this every time it`s all about maximising revenue.
Every time Hank from Florida, Sandeep from New Delhi and Sarah from Donegal come over for their once in lifetime visit the Theatre of Dreams the club open the tills, £20 Membership, £50 Pound tickets, £5 Flexi before they even hit the megastore and pay £9.60 for three items from the concourse.
Now don’t get me wrong this is nothing new and doesn’t even scratch the surface when you think about hospitality and sports break packages, but the question has got to be why are United doing this, just be honest about the situation.
People are losing their jobs while lads like Casemiro can’t be shifted on £325K a week, while we let lads like Martial flatter to deceive and rinse the club and fans.
If Sir Jim has the massive courage he alludes to, I`d rather him rip up some of these contracts and pay dead wood off than make the ticket office staff redundant.
Who is holding United account to this, live and in real time. This isn’t a knock-on other group but a few years ago, I suspected that the club had increased the non-members ticket fee from £5 to £10, I never got to the bottom of it, but I am still convinced they did.
I approached the Trust Chair to chase and all I got back was him regurgitating the Season Ticket Prices to me. I don’t think he even knew about the non-members price that dates back to the 80`s.
I really fear price increases and the removal of concessions are on the way.
What this new group need to call for is honesty and integrity, if the club is struggling tell us, if we need to make more money for FFP include the fans they may help.
Honesty really is the easiest thing to do. Unless you are Manchester United that is.
See the advertised roles and charter if you feel you are passionate and want to make a difference here.
Any MUSC groups feel free to contact us through our channels on this site.
We will endeavour to get a comment from the club on this situation.
