Manchester City's Quiet Scandal?
Manchester City's season ticket policy risks destroying one of English football's most special elements
Amidst the carnage of Manchester City’s ongoing legal battles with the Premier League, a quieter scandal has been brewing in the blue corner of Manchester.
Two weeks ago, the City Matters Group – City’s official fan liaison group – published a brief update with news that the club were doubling down on their promise to stop selling new season tickets to supporters.
Though City are not actively removing season tickets from those supporters who already own them, no new season tickets are being issued by the club.
Instead, their plan is to gradually shift supporters onto what they call “Flexi-Gold” memberships.
Under the terms of a “Flexi-Gold” membership, supporters pay £150 to get “first dibs” on a specific seat at the Etihad. Fans will be given a short window to decide whether they want to attend a game. If they don’t, the ticket is put up for general sale.
Since its launch, the Flexi-Gold ticket has been marketed to supporters as a flexible, modern alternative to the traditional season ticket, which “allows fans to attend most home Premier League matches in the same seat, but with the flexibility to choose when they attend.”
However, supporters represented by the City Matters Group have raised concerns that the introduction of the Flexi-Gold scheme is little more than a hawkish move to charge more money for access to games, both through subscription fees and by reselling tickets at higher prices.
As a scholar of football heritage – with a particular focus on the intergenerational, deep connections between communities of football supporters and their clubs – City’s move to slowly phase out season tickets is alarming.
Historically, season ticket holders have been integral to the identity and evolution of the clubs which constitute English football.
They represent a stable, core group of loyal supporters who bring a sense of stability and continuity to specific fan communities, a coherence to fan cultures and have provided the financial backbone for the clubs they support over decades.
However, since the establishment of the Premier League in 1992, English football has become more popular globally. This means clubs rely less on local match-goers for their financial support. As a result, elite Premier League clubs are increasingly viewing season tickets as a millstone around their necks, which prevents them from charging top dollar to a wider, global fanbase for tickets.
Predictably, it is Manchester City who continue to push the frontiers of commercialisation and globalisation in football, by becoming the first Premier League club to take serious steps towards abolishing season tickets for good.
The reaction from City’s season-ticket holding supporters has been overwhelmingly negative, as fans have taken to social media to vocalise their concerns:
Absolutely ridiculous. My daughter comes in on my knee (she’s 3) and we’ve been trying for the last 2 seasons to get her a ST! Looks like she will never get one… - Sianne Harris (@SianniebobsMCFC), 16/10/24
Had a season ticket for years and years but now will never be able to get one for my kids to sit with me. It’s an absolute disgrace the club do not want the local fan base anymore they could not make that any clearer – Liam Willingham (@WillinghamLiam), 16/10/24
What is especially striking here is how the club’s refusal to issue new season tickets is preventing loyal supporters from being able to bring their children along to games – one of the great rites of passage of being a supporter.
This threatens one of the fundamental aspects of English football culture: intergenerationality.
The reason that English football has so much global cultural capital is that it is constituted of clubs and institutions which have had vibrant communities attached to them through time. Within these fan communities, support for a specific club is passed down like an heirloom across generations for decades, and even centuries.
Within families, support of a club has the potential to strengthen family bonds, create memories and create moments of shared joy and passion. Within the wider supporting community, younger fans who grow up supporting a team alongside family members are more likely to develop a deep, lifelong loyalty to the club.
Perhaps most crucially, intergenerationality also lies at the heart of football’s enduring cultural legacy and sustainability, as older fans pass down the traditions, stories, rituals and memories that constitute fan culture through families and social circles.
Over the course of Manchester City’s 144-year history, support of the football club has been passed between generations of families and friendship circles.
Without season tickets – the most effective mechanism at the disposal of supporter communities to safeguard and protect their intergenerational connection to football clubs – City are potentially preventing their most loyal supporters from being able to pass on their connection to the club to the next generation of supporters.
This is especially vital in the context of Manchester City.
Though disposing of season tickets may mean City can tap into a baying market of tourist fans in the short term, it is worth remembering that for most of their history, City were not the global superpower they are today.
It was only with the takeover by Sheikh Mansour and the Abu Dhabi United Group in 2008 that City have established themselves as one of the world’s elite clubs.
Though most City fans have delighted in the parade of trophies and superstar players which have followed since the takeover, a small, vocal minority of City supporters have struggled to acclimatise to a new world order in which City’s focus has been reoriented from serving a more local community to a global audience.
In seeking to abolish season tickets, and by breaking the intergenerational connections which have sustained a community of Manchester City fans for over a century, the club threaten to destroy the very idea of what it is to support Manchester City. As summarised by one disgruntled supporter in a response to news of City’s refusal to reinstate season tickets:
Sums up what City have become. I've been a season ticket holder for more years than I care to remember, but what exists today isn't my club. Granted things change but we're everything we hated about United and a bit more now. They'll be my team but that's not my club – Stu Hamilton (@bluenobby), 17/10/24
This entire episode once again lays bare the tensions between the traditional, local supporters and newer global audiences in modern elite level football.
In their actions, Manchester City have created the impression that the “legacy” fans who have been connected to their club for generations are seen as an active hindrance to the club’s commercial development.
Though the desire for elite clubs to court economic development through global audiences and tourism is understandable, it seems that the communities with the deepest, most enduring connections to their clubs that are set to be the most severely punished by English football’s commercialisation.