MUST: United’s Season Ticket Waiting List “Disappears In A Puff Of Smoke”
MUST: Friday 27th July was the deadline imposed by Manchester United on season ticket (ST) holders who have refused to sign up to the Glazers’ compulsory Automatic Cup Scheme (ACS) on top of hugely inflated ST prices for next season.
Many of those who haven’t joined the ACS feel that the company (Manchester United Limited) that owns our Football Club is attempting to intimidate them into signing up by threatening to refund their ST purchases if they don’t cave in to pressure before the outcome of a court case testing the legality of the compulsory scheme.
Meanwhile, significantly, and perhaps unnoticed amid the distractions of the Tevez affair and the pending ACS court case, the fabled Manchester United ST Waiting List - much trumpeted by the Glazers since their arrival - has been exposed as a crumbling facade. Having boasted of anything between a 13,000 and 18,000 strong ST waiting list it now turns out that the actual number is…. ZERO. STs failed to sell out in the first round of renewals and new sales and despite the supposed huge waiting list incredibly they have now gone on open sale on the club’s website!
Judging by the comments on internet discussion forums, most United supporters felt the 18,000 strong waiting list was a laughable fabrication being used as a cynical attempt to manipulate the ticket market and now the truth has been exposed.
Without doubt United will shortly announce record season ticket sales followed by a total sell-out. However, that is a tribute to the fantastic loyalty of United supporters which is now being tested to breaking point, threatening to destroy almost 130 years of dedicated support often passed down through generations.
It seems incredible that what was once a golden ticket often lovingly passed from grandfather to father to grandson is now on open sale to anybody prepared to stump up the huge sums required to buy both the Season Ticket and membership of the much reviled compulsory ACS (dubbed the Glazer Poll Tax by disgruntled Reds). So desperate have the Glazers become that, forget past loyalty, forget waiting lists, anyone can have one - you don’t even need to have ever set foot inside Old Trafford in your life!
A MUST spokesman said “When we were told, we couldn’t believe that STs could be on open sale. What happened to the thousands on the waiting list? So we rang the ticket office ourselves on Wednesday evening and rather than asking for just one season ticket we asked for two seats together. We were told: no problem, you can have two together in North Stand Tier 3 or either of the new quadrants. We were stunned - but there was the proof - there is no waiting list at all - just as many had suspected all along”.
The illusion of excess demand is crucial to the Glazers plans but is bad news for supporters as it opens us up to yet more exploitative price rises and further unpopular changes to terms and conditions. Perhaps more than any other consumer goods the market price of football tickets is directly related to perceived demand so the illusion of excess demand over supply creates the opportunity to push prices higher and higher.
Many supporters feel that the literature that was sent out with renewal requests was clearly intended to intimidate them into renewing at ever higher prices by making them fear that, if they don’t renew, there are thousands waiting to take their seats and that they won’t even be able to get day tickets either with so many pre-sold as season tickets and such a huge demand for the remaining day tickets. However, one only has to go back to last season to see the biggest home game possible - a European Cup Semi-Final against the mighty AC Milan - when tickets went on open sale leaving unsold seats on the night due to the aggressive price hikes.
The reality that the waiting list has now disappeared in a puff of Glazer spin can be explained as follows: Firstly - the waiting list was ‘embellished’ by adding onto it thousands (approximately 6,000) of people who already had STs! But surely that would be double counting if they are included as both ST holders and on a ST waiting list? The trick the spinners used is to name these special “One Year Season Tickets”. Of course all STs are one year tickets.
The only difference as far as anyone can tell (including MUFC ticket office staff when we enquired) is that these one year STs do not guarantee that you will be offered the chance to renew in the same seat, so anyone wanting to ‘upgrade’ to having the right to renew in the same seat is put on the waiting list! But there is no right to renew any season ticket full stop so this is a ‘Red’ herring.
Secondly, a particularly fatal flaw for any waiting list, most of the people on the list were not actually waiting to purchase a ST! This has been conclusively proved by the tickets going on open sale. Most of them were actually just people who’d expressed an interest, rather than made any actual commitment to buy, as any real waiting list would require by definition.
And it doesn’t stop there. All these people on the “waiting list” who have been offered season tickets this season and turned down the offer have obviously now been removed from the waiting list haven’t they? Err, no apparently not. We’ve been told by people on the list that after being offered a ST and turning it down they have been added back onto the list - just moved to the back of a queue of other people who have all turned down season tickets! You could not make it up.
It seems to many supporters that this kind of misrepresentation is manipulating the market and falsely inflating demand, and therefore prices, in a market which is a micro-monopoly as obviously the club are the only sellers of the product - a Manchester United ticket. Normally this kind of market is regulated to prevent abuse of the consumers but until the last few years this has never proved necessary due to the unwritten contract of mutual respect and support that both supporters and owners had for their football club. However, now the Glazers (and many other greedy club owners in English football) have crossed the line and it is time for Government to intervene.
A MUST spokesperson commented “The way loyal Manchester United supporters are now being treated makes one wonder whether the Glazers’ sponsors, companies like AIG, Audi, Nike and Budweiser, treat their own customers with such contempt as the owners of the company they are sponsoring? As a first step MUST is currently taking advice with a view to a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading regarding this abuse of a dominant market position and if the ghost of the season ticket waiting list is resurrected by the Glazer spin doctors then this will surely form part of the evidence which will be submitted.”
