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Liverpool Supporters Lead Should Be A Springboard For Change !

Liverpool supporters groundbreaking protest which persuaded their board to backtrack on ticket prices should be a springboard that changes the way that football club's treat their fans.

Liverpool supporters are perhaps not the favourite fans of many Premier League clubs, however their protest on Saturday when 10,000 of them walked out in protest at their club's intention to raise ticket prices next season, is a lead that should be followed by supporters of clubs throughout the country.

It proved that if football fans stand up for themselves then club's will be forced to listen.

In the past decade or so many long term supporters of Premier League club have been priced out of the game, indeed at St Mary's a lot of the fans that followed the club not just at home but away as well no longer go to games after becoming disillusioned at the rising cost of a ticket for St Mary's.

But with Saints back in the Premier League the club under Nicola Cortese seemed determined to keep putting ticket prices up and those tickets kept being sold so they took that as a licence to keep doing so.

Now perhaps the bubble has burst and hopefully Ralph Krueger and his board will be taking note on events on Merseyside and considering the pricing structure for next season.

Certainly there is the scope for change in the prices, whilst it is true that in the min prices have been frozen now for the last two seasons since Katharina Liebherr wrested back control of the club the fact is they were two high to start with.

That has been shown over the past three home games which have been far from sell outs with 3,000 seats on average empty at each game, whilst there are extenuating circumstances including initially poor results, the board should be noting that supporters do consider the price too high and are voting with their feet.

In the last home game there were approximately 2,200 empty seats in the home areas, if we assume that for that game there were 28,500 tickets for home fans(3,200 for away) and that 24,000 are taken up by season tickets etc, that means that out of 4,500 single game tickets on sale for this game, barely half were sold.

Ok the game was on TV etc but only 2,500 people out of a supporter database of over 26,000 after taking into account season ticket holders purchased a ticket.

This means that less than 5% of the non season ticket holder database went to the game.

If that isn't proof that the club have got the ticket prices wrong then what is ?

All club's including Saints have to realise that crowd's are on the wane, although you will always find enough supporters to sell out your ground for the visit of the big club's, it is clear that for the majority of games supporters do not find it value for money to pay £37 to watch West Ham etc.

A new pricing policy is needed where club's reduce prices for televised games to encourage attendances, originally TV money was paid to compensate clubs for revenue lost in reduced attendances, but that has long been forgotten and now it is seen as extra revenues, not something a club should be using to reduce prices for that game.

So the Liverpool protest should not be allowed to be forgotten, those who called them Whinging Scousers were very shortsighted, the Liverpool fans who walked out could perhaps be the catalyst that sparks a change in the way that club's view their supporters.

It has made not only the Liverpool board sit up and take notice and backtrack on their pricing structure. but it should make everyone sit up and take notice, not only football club boards but supporters, football clubs have benefited from the social media boom, fans have sat back and ranted on message boards and have not got organised, at Liverpool they did and reaped the reward of showing their club that without the supporters a club cannot exist.

So if the rest of the country allows this protest to be forgotten then they can never moan about ticket prices again, but if we all show that we may have club prejudices but underneath we are all football supporters then change can take place in the game.

If we all stand together change can be achieved, we have a voice, divided as we have been for the last decade, we are nothing.

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