Yesterday, after what I’m sure was an incredibly lengthy and arduous decision process, Chelsea Football Club released a short-statement announcing that they had decided to remove the current coach subsidy for all domestic away games.
This comes into effect immediately. The first game up being a somewhat short journey down south to play Bournemouth. Instead of the usual £10 fee being charged to all fans who partake in the service, there’s been an immediate price increase to £29. For the time being, the Chelsea Supporters Trust have thankfully intervened and agreed to subsidise it themselves, which will temporarily reduce the fee back down to the original £10.
The fact that this was necessary in the first place is nothing short of disgraceful.
On average, I’d say I attend around 10 away games a season, with the majority of these being somewhat local to London. Personally, I’ve never needed or even particularly wanted to use the club coach. For starters, you have to get to the ground to use it and given that takes me around 45 minutes (not long I know) I’d rather head to a London terminal instead. Secondly, they often run a pretty tight schedule in terms of departure and arrival times. As someone who likes to take in the local sights and pubs, this again does not appeal.
However, for people who live close to the ground, are attending games on a budget and in vast quantities, they are are an absolute lifesaver. Not least in the current cost of living crisis we now find ourselves in.
There are a fair few people out there who will attend every single domestic away game every year. Previously you could do this for as little as just £190. Not bad eh? The Bournemouth coach ticket they listed was £29. In terms of away games though, Bournemouth isn’t all that far away from London. When you factor in the various northern games, I think you’re going to be looking at an average ticket price of ~£40. Over the course of the season that could well amount to a new total cost of £760. A total increase of £570.
It’s the most typical thing I’ve seen of this new ownership group, the total cost of this subsidy was a mere £250,000 a year, but what does that mean in Chelsea terms?
It pays for 1.5% of Raheem Sterling’s yearly salary.
It pays for 0.2% of Moisés Caicedo’s transfer fee.
It pays for 0.02% of our total outgoing’s on transfers since Todd Boehly took over.
In other words, the total money going into this subsidy is completely inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Who’d have guessed it.
I really struggle to see the thought process behind this move and the inevitable bad optics that it’s immediately created. This is an ownership group who’ve been battling for fan approval since day one and almost every time they reach a fork in the road, they pick the wrong option. It’s absolutely laughable at this point. In no world ever should a fan-funded supporters trust be having to step in and fund away coach travel.
In this scenario, I think the club have forgotten just how vocal the minority of global Chelsea fans who attend games are and they’re certainly making their feelings clear on social media. Whilst a huge number of people can be bought over by big-money signings and nice kits, the match-going fans cannot.
We all know how this goes. In a couple of days, maybe a week max, the club will release another statement peddling the usual lines about how there were “unforeseen consequences” of their prior actions and how they’ve “listened to feedback” and the “decision will now be reversed.”
Whilst the decision may well be reservable, they’re not preaching to a crowd of goldfish and the match-going Chelsea fans will not forget this quickly, especially when there’s inevitably a similar escalation needed in a few months time. The obvious leading candidate at this point in time would be a rise in matchday ticket prices.
It’s clear that right across football there is a growing distain for regular, match-going football fans and this is most clear in the clubs which are owned by private equity firms, such as Chelsea. It won’t be long at all before we have another European Super League on our hands and the signs were there for all to see.
The Shed Diaries 