Evangelos Marinakis And Co

[BomberBowyer]

The owners are taking a bit of a battering on social media which in my view is unfair because ticket pricing is an issue across the whole of football. Nobody can doubt the progress we have made and are continuing to make which gets forgotten when people have something to froth about.

However I have a question for Sniffer. Despite his wealth EM is well known for being a man of the people and having left leaning views. He does a huge amount of charity work which probably doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. Therefore how does pricing out the ordinary fan, the lifeblood of our support and excluding many of the next generation sit with him? It seems out of odds with his normal behaviour. Does Olympiacos have a pricing structure that lets traditional working classes afford to go to matches?

Ultimately EM can afford to subsidise that cost to a point if he chooses to which enables younger fans to attend and in turn keeps the atmosphere at matches. It doesn’t seem to have affected Oly or has it? Could he do more or are we being unreasonable?

What constitutes the ordinary fan in the context of PL football?

Im stereotyping but the working class male has traditionally been the bedrock of support and mostly has contributed to the atmosphere good (recently) and bad (70-80s thuggery).
PL football obviously gentrifies things and good to see more families coming, its probably a 70:30 male female split around me now. The downside is “Morgan can I have your shirt” and people arriving 10mins late, sitting on their phones talking about Liverpool and leaving early so their Mercedes doesn’t get stuck in traffic. Goes without saying which group contributes to the atmosphere which for most clubs is a bit of a myth and frankly somewhat embarrassing compared to German clubs for example.

There should be a mix to accommodate both and why we desperately need a new or improved stadium. However until then don’t alienate what we currently have and maybe think first about managing finances, not using the fans to make up (a small part) of the shortfall when they land in a mess.

I think its fair that people are disappointed about the size of the increase but also fair given the way football is and losses we are facing year on year, that the club try to bring in extra revenue.  Ok it may only be £3m raised from increased SC prices but if that is one way in which we are trying to increase revenue and the club also bring in extra through other means (merchandise, marketing, events etc) then it all adds up. The problem for me will be if we keep putting up SC prices and that extra revenue is wasted as some would argue it has in the last two seasons paying for players like lingard, origi, shelvey etc or the arter’s of this world or we do things like go without front of shirt sponsor or fail to raise revenue through other avenues.