Opinion: Season Ticket Increases May Be Modest But Fan Expectations Are Not

A rise in season ticket prices is something fans rarely take in their stride, and yesterdays announcement of an admittedly modest hike at Spurs, has gone down like the proverbial lead balloon with many fans.

Rather than provide readers with a detailed examination of the escalating pounds, shilling and pence path that brought us to this latest flash point, it might serve more purpose to examine the product. After all, this is the standpoint from which ENIC itself operates.

Winning trophies is the metric in professional football and Tottenham Hotspur, under ENIC, by and large, don’t win very much. There will be those who might seek to debate the whole winning metric standpoint, and one feels compelled to point out that in life some participate in hobbies, and some in competitions and that some apologists for failure will occasionally attempt to conflate the two, as was sometimes witnessed under the tenure of Pochettino for example. In which instances we can spot the usual tropes weaved into the conversation; where one might be reminded of all the lower tier outcomes such as win percentages, golden boot awards, record attendances etc which are crucially, all subspecies of losing.

I have no idea what Keith Birkenshaw’s win ratio was, or what the biggest crowd at The Lane was, but I know exactly how many pots he and his boys won.

Will a charge of “entitlement” be made against those moaning? Probably. But it would be a disingenuous one. I take a view that most fans don’t actually demand very much, but they do expect it to at least look as if Spurs are trying. There’s no denying that the facilities are top notch, but a side that found itself on not one by two occasions to be the only side in Europe’s’ top 5 divisions not to spend in transfer windows could understandably be accused of having lost its focus.

Pochettino was crying out for fresh players and to a large extent his inability to influence the club’s transfer activity was his undoing. Mind you, Poch himself claims to believe that his nearly man routine was worth “more than winning titles” a remark that is unlikely to endear him at his next management interview, which well might be with owners intent upon winning their division.

Season Ticket Pricing and Renewal Timings 2020/21

— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) February 13, 2020

The responses online to the announcement have been mostly unhappy ones, and we’ll take a closer look at them in a separate piece.

Just how squeezed are supporters, right now? I believe that the price rise will give some the opportunity to justify relinquishing their seats, but most will continue to put their money where their heart is. The appointment of José Mourinho is not one that any side would undertake lightly, and IF it were the case that ENIC shipped the Portuguese in a bid to suffocate thoughts of insurrection amongst the Client Reference Numbers, then it was a shrewd move, because I believe it almost certainly will.

Entitlement is a funny old game – to paraphrase the well know words of Greavsie. After all, it means in essence that a person believes himself to inherently deserving of certain privileges or rights. However, what I believe we’re discussing here is in fact nothing more complicated than value for money.

Would the server in one of the club’s corporate lounges tell a customer who turns their nose up at rank old cheese sandwich, obviously made with economy bread and served on a paper plate, “entitled” for pulling a face? Unlikely.

Equally, it could be argued Spurs shouldn’t charge as much as they do, given what one gets in return. At least an announcement over the tannoy before kick off to the effect of: “Apologies for today’s line up, but we forgot to buy a second striker” would show at least a smidgen of contrition, eh?