Why some Manchester City fans are increasingly frustrated with the club’s ticketing policies

This has not been the happiest of seasons for Manchester City but for many fans the on-pitch struggles have not been the biggest source of frustration.

Over recent months, a number of incidents at City matches, both at the Etihad Stadium and away from home, have piled up to cause a growing sense of disillusionment, especially as many fans believe those incidents are a direct consequence of the club’s ticketing policies.

Some of the examples have been ridiculous: you may have seen a supporter getting a haircut in his seat before the Champions League game against Real Madrid, or the young fan with a piece of cardboard asking for Vinicius Junior’s shirt at full time.

Some have been unusual: several fans clad in Barcelona shirts took up a row of the away end at Anfield in December, one of the toughest fixtures to get a ticket for. A month later, a group of Mallorca supporters turned up in Portman Road’s away end.

Some have been downright dangerous: video circulated on social media this week showing a Liverpool fan being dragged out of the City home end by stewards as punches rained down on him.

“A lot of this is a culmination,” Alex Howell, Under-25s representative and chair of the club’s City Matters fan network, tells The Athletic.

“It’s hard to track a lot of the frustration at the moment; it’s not just away fans in home areas or Ipswich and Anfield and all that stuff, it’s just a build-up of various things, whether that be what happened in Istanbul or season tickets and matchday prices over a longer period, right the way through to away fans in the home end. It’s just a big culmination.”

Earlier in February, City fans wrote to the club’s chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, to request that season ticket prices be frozen, almost a year on from price rises that sparked a protest banner inside the stadium which read ‘record profits but record prices, stop exploiting our loyalty’.

Fan calculations show that season ticket prices have risen 15 per cent on average over the past five years. In some areas of the stadium it is as high as 25 per cent.

Following complaints about the treatment of supporters at the Champions League final in Istanbul the previous summer — a UEFA problem but something that fan groups feel City did not back them on — it has become a regular occurrence to see supporters complaining about the club’s attitude towards its own fans.

“At the moment, everything the club does seems to be to eradicate season ticket holders and those ‘legacy’ fans, as they were called during the Super League attempt,” says Mike on behalf of the 1894 Group.

The Athletic has spoken to several supporters who each have stories of how tickets they — or family members — have listed for sale on City’s official ticket exchange have ended up being resold for far higher prices, sometimes to non-City supporters.

(Michael Regan/Getty Images)

Using the ticket exchange, season ticket holders who cannot attend matches can list their ticket for sale in return for one nineteenth of the cost of their season ticket. It is against the terms of their ticket to sell the ticket other than on the ticket exchange or by transferring it to friends and family.

When City played Wolves at the end of last season, one supporter spoke to the person who bought a ticket listed by a relative and was shown a receipt proving that the seat had been sold for £250 by an unofficial ticket reseller.

At the West Ham United game in January, one supporter spoke to two City supporters from Ireland who had paid £250 for a pair of tickets. For last Sunday’s game against Liverpool, one ticket listed on the exchange was picked up by a Uruguayan fan who was there to see Darwin Nunez.

Others say that, for the same game, around three rows of seats were taken up by supporters who filmed the celebrations of the Liverpool players and fans when the visitors scored their goals, and that stewards have begun asking supporters to report these kinds of issues to the club directly because they do not feel their own feedback has been acted upon.

City acknowledge that the presence of away fans in the home end is a key issue, and a recent meeting, held before the Liverpool game, between the club and supporters was dedicated to finding solutions.

The club have hired a ticket compliance manager to investigate examples like these, with the aim of identifying and banning supporters who are selling their own tickets for profit to unofficial resellers, rather than using the ticket exchange.

There is also the potential for official club members — not necessarily supporters, possibly even working for unofficial resellers — to buy tickets from the exchange and then sell them on for larger sums.

(Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

The club says that anybody identified as an away supporter trying to enter the Etihad will not be permitted entry, and that anybody who is identified once inside will be escorted out, though social media complaints in recent days have claimed that stewards have merely told visiting supporters in home sections to cover up their colours and move elsewhere.

City work with eight official resale partners to sell tickets, and insist that those companies would be in breach of contract if they sell to non-City supporters.

One of those sites, P1 Travel, are listing tickets for the upcoming home game against Brighton & Hove Albion from €249 (£206) per person, a package that includes “off-site hospitality, welcome drink and multi-course dinner”. Their terms do state that Brighton fans are “not allowed to visit the event” and that buyers may have to produce ID and/or sign a code of conduct.

This week, ahead of Saturday’s home game against Plymouth Argyle in the FA Cup, the club have written to a small number of supporters in the Plymouth area with no history of having bought tickets at the Etihad and who have purchased tickets close to the away end to inform them that those tickets have been cancelled.

Despite action like that, fan groups believe that the recent incidents at the Liverpool and Madrid games have been directly caused by the club.

“The people that have been going to the games for years now are being pushed out by the ticketing policy and by the pricing,” says Mike on behalf of the 1894 Group. “It’s leading to situations that we’ve seen with away fans in the home end, which means that you’re looking at safety issues as well now.

“Nobody wants to see that violence on a matchday, but the club have sleepwalked into it by ticket policy and pricing.”

Even in less dangerous scenarios, genuine City fans are being charged large amounts for tickets that other fans receive face value for. Then there is the ‘in between’, where supporters of neither club attend the match — which is normal in many sports across the world and something many fans will have done themselves — but a facor that does little to improve the atmosphere.

“The important thing for us is to keep season ticket holders in their seats, that’s the best way to build an atmosphere, which is obviously what we are all about as a group,” Mike says.

Howell uses the fact that the Champions League play-off game against Madrid eventually went on general sale to non-members, and begs the question why so many City fans who would have been able to get tickets decided not to go.

Real Madrid fans at the Etihad earlier this month (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)

“There are thousands of season ticket holders who aren’t on the cup scheme who chose to not buy a ticket for that game, thousands of members who qualified through the criteria that the club had set who again chose not to purchase a ticket which is for arguably the most attractive opponent you could manage to get in the Champions League,” he says.

“So that shows there are big questions around what’s driving that — and I think ticket pricing is a big part of that.”

One of the examples that irked fans in January was the presence of several fans wearing Mallorca hats in the away end at Portman Road. One of them left behind a slip of paper revealing that the tickets had been supplied by first-team coach Carlos Vicens.

As is standard at football clubs, a portion of tickets are reserved for friends and family of players and staff, although City say they have taken steps to avoid the wearing of other club colours in those cases.

“There is that caveat,” Howell says. “We’ve got to be very clear that people are welcome: new City fans, old City fans, whatever, and no matter where they’re from.”

That is a consistent message that fan groups have been keen to stress whenever these issues are discussed, but within City there is concern that in individual cases there is an undercurrent of problematic views towards overseas supporters from some individuals on social media, or towards newer fans who do not act in certain established ways.

And while City do recognise the seemingly increasing issue of away supporters in the home end, they point out that there will always be supporters who look to resell tickets for above their face value.

“We know that there are always going to be people at football for different reasons to us, but we just want to make sure that we’re not eradicated completely,” Mike says.

“It’s about finding the balance of putting on the matchday event that they want to do that attracts people from all over the world, that will get people to spend money, but also still showing that there is a place for us.”

(Header photo: Carl Recine/Getty Images)