As the season draws to an end plans are already in hand for
the scheduling of next year’s football fixtures. So this is an open plea to the powers that be
to consider the humble fan but for more than the usual reasons.
Charlton played 11 league games on a Tuesday night over the
season including away fixtures at Leeds (away fans 303), Derby (311), Blackpool
(222) and Bolton (234) with a further two games held on a Friday evening. For away fans these games generally mean taking an afternoon off work or traveling major
commuter routes in the expensive rush hour.
After the match it means a tiring journey home arriving back at two in
the morning or in many cases an overnight stay as the last trains have left by
the time the match is over. This makes
it difficult and undesirable for many fans to attend without sacrificing time
off work and costs over and above weekend travel, and the attendance figures back this up.
Turning up at the match is usually the only way we get to
see our teams play for these fixtures.
Miss it and all you’ll get to see will be the goals on Sky Sports News
or Youtube. There won’t even be the
obligatory two and a half minutes on the Football League Show.
As football fans we often appear to be bottom of the list of
priorities, especially when it comes to scheduling fixtures and yet some
sensible planning would not only allow fans to see their team in action but
also benefit so many more in a real commercial sense. To coin that memorable phrase once uttered by
an American politician “It’s the economy, stupid!”
We all know the disparate financial gap between the Premier
League and the Championship with match day revenue being a key source of income. Who knows, Bolton with debts of around £173m
could certainly have done with more than the 234 hardy Charlton fans that made
the long journey North that night.
While we may not realise it, professional football plays an
important role in the economy. The economist
would put forward the argument as follows:-
A football club arranges a game of football. Fans buy tickets, programmes, merchandise and
beverages from the club allowing it to purchase inventory from suppliers, employ
footballers, ground staff etc, who all spend their money, creating a knock on
effect in the economy. Similarly, fans
travel to the ground, meet up and have a few pints and some food thus boosting
bus and rail companies and stimulating the trade for local hostelries and
eateries in the area, again stimulating trade and employment in the economy. The government gets more tax revenue from VAT, corporation tax and PAYE thus allowing it to spend more money on public services or cut taxes giving individuals the ability to spend more money.
You only have to look at the activity in and around
Charlton on a match day to see this in action.
It’s clearly a bit more complicated than this but you get the general
idea.
By playing those games mentioned above on a weekend many more
away fans would attend. If we assume a
further 700 fans would attend those games and that they each spend £25 on a match
ticket, £30 on travel, £20 subsistence this gives a boost of £52,500 for each
game. Assuming each team across the four
leagues has six weekday games that are difficult to travel to over the season
then that gives us a total of about £28.35m over the season. The assumptions are rather simplistic (for
example many Premier League games are sold out regardless), and this is just a
first order effect for the clubs and that does not include the second effect stimulus
for the local economy but one can see that the figures are not insubstantial.
It therefore also makes both commercial and economic sense
for the Football League to prioritise weekday fixtures such that more away fans can
attend. Given the need to generate additional tax revenue I'm surprised that no political party has yet put it in their manifesto.
Having said this I do appreciate that the busy season means
that it is not possible to avoid playing on weekday nights, and I personally
wouldn’t want to get rid of my fix of mid-week action under the spot lights. Tuesday nights are always going to be hard
for some given that children have to get up to go to school the next day and
our supporter base is spread over the South East. We also have to bear in mind the regular plea
for Boxing Day games to be held locally, given the work on the railways over
the festive season.
However, we currently do have four reasonably local teams that
are within easy distance for a night game including Millwall, Brentford, Watford
and Fulham. The atmosphere, if not the
result, at Fulham away this season was electric.
Furthermore other teams such as Brighton, Ipswich, Reading and even
Norwich can be reached reasonably by most in an evening. So it is possible to go some way to accommodating
this for many clubs.
It won’t completely solve the issue but it will go a long
way to getting more away fans to games and boosting the economy and the
financial situation of our clubs. Here’s
hoping for a bout of common sense, and don’t forget, each time you attend a
match you are assisting the economy!
