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View from the Kop

Support Sky or the stadium?

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Liverpool FC fansTHE feeling of being in the Kop and hearing YNWA sung by the Anfield faithful is, in my opinion, amazing.

No public house can compare to the atmosphere of Anfield.

It’s a spiritual experience I am keen to revisit and take my wife, who’s never been before.

Many people go to stadiums and some are aggressively proud of their devotion. They hold the banner of real fans high and look down upon those who stay at home with Sky, or those who just pop over to their local watering hole.

The costs of going to a Premiership game increase every year, when you take into account the total costs from travel, food, drink, tickets, etc it’s astronomical. The fans in the stadium pay through the nose to watch and spur their sides on as the proverbial twelfth man. Their sacrifice, investment in their club seems valued by players, managers, commentators and fellow fans, even referees and their assistants seem to be painfully aware of the costs.

Following your football club is getting far too expensive in my opinion and looks like others agree. Linesman John Brooks found himself in hot water when he told Manchester City players to go and thank their fans. The fans that chose to pay £62 for a ticket to support them when they played Arsenal at the Emirates in the Premiership.

Manchester City had sent back 900 of their 3000 tickets as a form of protest against these huge ticket prices.

What about those who watch at home or gather in pubs and bars to follow LFC?

The money generated by armchair fans paying to watch their teams on television has changed the game and made the Premier League what it is today, for better or worse. Clubs exist in their current form thanks to the revenue generated by television and the sponsorship it brings.
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Having Sky Sports alone doesn’t mean you can watch all the televised LFC matches, as ESPN have had a few this season too. Getting both Sky and ESPN costs £29 a month, that’s £348 a year! When you multiply £348 by the number of households, it really adds up. Pubs and bars pay more; for most it’s the best part of £2000 a month, possibly more!

Compared to the commute from Birmingham to Liverpool, the costs associated and the time it would take makes mid-week games impossible to watch at Anfield. I just don’t go to watch the Reds or anyone in stadiums any more – I haven’t been in years. I choose to skip the commute, work up until 5 minutes before kick-off if watching at home, or 20 minutes before if watching at my local.

I choose the warmth of the great indoors and the glow of a bevy in my hand. I choose replays with “expert analysis” by morons who I enjoy criticizing. I choose the banter of friends who don’t support LFC but will meet up in a pub and catch up.

Colleagues who support their local team, Aston Villa, suggested it is the death of football if everyone thought like me. They paint a picture of empty stadiums and stale games where there’s no atmosphere. I don’t see it that way. In my opinion the stadium experience is the theatre version of football, compared to watching the same match at home being the film version.

The theatre exits with the same stories as found in film, both co-exist so why do I get grief for being an armchair fan. I contribute, with my subscriptions and going to the pub, the pubs pay even more for their Sky/ESPN.

I put it to you that if all armchair fans got a life and stopped watching, then clubs would be hit harder than if there were empty stadiums.

What do you think? Leave your thoughts below…
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An armchair fan who loves the stadium experience but likes the bread and butter of replays, moronic pundits, a drink in a pub atmosphere. LFC is my religion.

Common sense is missing from football but the situation is always complicated so I endeavour to give opinion and encourage discussion and thought about LFC.

16 comments

  • Brad says:

    If there were empty stadiums there wouldn’t be any games. Guaranteed. Football would be dead.

  • Rob says:

    for some of us it is not that we want to stay at home and watch the match on sky we would luv to go the match it is a matter of we cant always get tickets and if we can we got to pay over the odds for them witch i want do

  • russ says:

    i believe we now have to subsidize the fans who go to the game how well there are ways say ticket price was 60 quid reduce it to 30 quid and get mega companies to advertise on the big screen and side line panels exclusive to them captive viewers in ground and on tv the club charge these big boys the shortfall in ticket takings plus a bit so approx 1.5 mil fans club and advertisers happy cost to advertisers 51 mil but they can paint the pitch like they do in other sports so much more exposure after all some pay 30 mil just to get shirt rites add other avenues to get income from sponsors stop ripping the fans and rip the big boys who can afford it figs i used are at anfield but you do the maths it could but on the proviso that the fans pay half what they do now and all the traditional fan bases would be back with a bang dont discount corporate boxes tho this is just a rough idea but with some serious thought and clever people and some sort of protective legislation in place families can be back at the grounds advertisers get what they want exsposure and the clubs money ? why couldnt that work ? cheers russ

  • russ says:

    also do away with season tickets just put them all back on the market and the people who really want to go to the games will be there it would work great the atmosphere would be back as how great would that be ???

    • Businesses want n need stability. Season tickets facilitate forward planning. No way they are going any where. But good idea for fans.

    • baz says:

      Great? No. Cos all those extra tickets would end up in the hands of tout c**ts and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded.

      The answer is to build a stadium with the capacity to make tickets easily available to all. For example if Anfield had a capacity of 70,000 it would rarely be filled to capacity but if we averaged 60,000 to 65,000 a game then the extra 5,000 empty seats would mean everyone who wanted a ticket would be able to get one AT FACE VALUE and would not have to pay over the odds to those scummy f**king tw*ts

  • kiernan says:

    Going tomorrow night, 120 mile one way, taking son straight from school and won’t be home til 1am,son at school Tue and me at work at 6am but will absolutely love it! SUPPORT

    • RESPECT! Wish I was able to do same, work commitments mean I can’t dedicate a 4pm-1am to watch LFC.

      If we win, we go above Swansea, that would feel like a minor monkey off our backs for me.

  • karlitl says:

    Would be a dream to be able to go to Anfield every home game,I’m looking out for safe standing to come,the prices will surely be more affordable then,the atmosphere is what’s missing watching sky but it beats not seeing the reds at all.Roll on Fsg putting spade into ground & the extra capacity

  • TaintlessRed says:

    Vikas, I believe that for the majority of clubs around the world the largest part of their revenues are TV related, the exceptions are primarily in the Bundesliga, so from a purely monetary sense the loss of TV is a bigger hit. In Spain many of the stadiums are mainly empty, and the TV revenue slices are dominated by Barca and Madrid so it’s little surprise that so many are teetering on the edge.
    However having a full stadium is the most important of the two. The reason for this is that a full stadium is part of the allure for a tv audience. If a club had an empty stadium it sends the message that the club is not enjoyable or worth watching and TV revenues would begin to dwindle. The same isn’t true the other way around.
    To your other point, I don’t think anyone should be critical of any fan however they choose to support their team. For some going to games regularly is too expensive, and for others perhaps due to the nature of their job or where they live it isn’t practical. Fans in other parts of the world wake up in the early hours of the day to watch the team and then go to work a few hours later, and buy every conceivable type of merchandise to support their club. This is actually a lot harder than rocking up to Anfield 5mins before a game.
    Anyone who supports the club is alright by me.

  • Dave says:

    The difference is I buy my season tickets and the money goes to my club, I’m there every other week watching the boys and I get a great buzz, and I hate the fact I can only go a few away games a season due to cost and availability of tickets and hurts me to watch the reds either in my house or pub live knowing I’m not there with them supporting them, you buy sky and the money goes to all the clubs and the pundits including Gary Neville and don’t have the same sense of pride as me, that’s difference!!

    • TaintlessRed says:

      Very true. We are in a desperate need of a bigger stadium as there are so many who want to get in but can’t.
      We do pay a portion of Nevilles salary, although we are the best represented club in terms of TV punditry. Hansen and Lawro on the Beeb, Redknapp, Souness & Tommo on Sky and Keegan, Barnes and Macca on ESPN and wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot more of Carra on one of the channels next season. Considering our relative lack of trophies that’s pretty good, United only have Neville on Sky and Keane on ITV as regulars I think.

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