Written by Liam Madamba, Year 13
The final whistle goes at the majestic Westfalenstadion and Dortmund, true to their recent tribulations, have lost at home to relative minnows of Hamburg. And yet, none of the players disappear down the tunnel. None of the fans leave the ground. A force of 25,000 fans, who ardently flock to the mythical south stand named "Gelbe Wand" or the “Yellow Wall”, continue to serenade their team with deluges of passion. Manager Jurgen Klopp joins his players on the edge of the penalty area, where they stand for five minutes in awe, their appreciative applause for the fans drowned out in the deafening roars, gazing up at one of European football's great sights; a sea of luminous yellow shirts, scarves and flags. Columns of smoke climb from pockets of fans and waves of noise cascades down onto the players. Defiant, undaunted, Borussia Dortmund's motto is tellingly "echte liebe,” or "true love" and the fans embody this sentiment. The city of Dortmund’s population stands at 580,956 and when the club reached the Champions League final two years ago, the club received 502,567 applications for the 24,042 available tickets. True love, indeed.
One of the last great romantic clubs In Europe, moments such as this harken back to the nostalgia-induced era where fans, not finance, came first. The tickets and, perhaps more importantly, the beer are affordable to all, the atmosphere is raw and seductive. It goes with saying that football in this city is all encompassing here, it reaches ever facet of life. This vivacious love affair, and the unique experience it entails, attracts more than 1,000 fans from England to every home match. This English incursion has not gone unnoticed by the Dortmund hierarchy:
“It's amazing," says marketing director Carsten Cramer. "It's always nice when English fans tell me that including the cost of a flight, two beers and a ticket, they do not pay more than a match in England. Why are tickets cheap? Football is part of people's lives and we want to open the doors for all of society. We need the people, they spend their hearts, their emotions with us. They are the club's most important asset."
The phrase is one that many clubs carelessly use, but Dortmund and its operations demonstrate that it is far more than mere words; yes, modern football clubs are undeniably businesses, but at their core, they are so much more to fans than just a business venture. And as Cramer puts it:
"We are a football club. If the football doesn't run properly, the rest of the business would not work. The business is part of a train, but not the engine."
It is strikingly different in England’s top flight; in contrast to Germany, where supporter liaison officers tend to assume powerful positions. England confers little power to their own supporter liaison officers and this is symptomatic of the greater financial problem; the common feeling among supporters that the sport they love is gradually leaving them behind. Despite football carrying an appeal and a relevance in England that goes far beyond sport, the current mismanagement of football’s boom may risk its future viability. The wealth at the top of the game is not trickling down to alleviate the rising ticket prices, to the extent that large swathes of the population are left priced out.
This summer, financial analysts at Deloitte said Premier League clubs now spend 71p on wages for every £1 generated, despite the match day revenue increasing by 6% in the Premier League last season to £585m. Yet as well as the cheapest match-day ticket rise, the average price of the cheapest Premier League season ticket has increased 8.7% since 2012, from £467.95 to £508.55.
The continued rampant inflation in players' wages is the driving force behind these rising ticket prices for fans and this reinforces the sense of an impending divorce between the clubs at the very top and the game's audience. The fortunes that clubs have made through unprecedented TV deals have not been used to alleviate the pressure on fans' pockets, especially in a time of markedly squeezed living standards; instead, they merely serve to inflate their own enormous revenues. Football fans are forced to incur above-inflation rises, 4.4%, more than treble the 1.2% inflation rates, in admission prices and points at the pernicious commercial structure of the English game. But note that in the Premier League, match-day money is less than a quarter of club turnover, with more than half of the torrent of funds that gush into top-flight clubs coming from TV rights. Yet the vast majority of clubs operate at a loss as, even with revenues surging higher and higher, they cannot match the suction power of stars' pay: the average of whom are paid in seven figure sums annually. This combination of near monopoly pricing power and irresistible cost pressures from players' wages is bad for everyone, fans and club owners, with the exception of a small number of athletes who were born with and nurtured a precious talent; perhaps a portion of the blame falls upon football culture’s fascination with the superstar and the need to indulge them, which for some reason takes precedence over the fans.
However, depicting club owners as predatory capitalist is unrealistic; many of them are consummate fans of the sport. Furthermore, match day revenue is used to improve stadia and attract the very best talents in competitive market. Many clubs have compromised, adopting discounts for the younger demographic, the disabled and away fans. And the Premier League has pointed to the sustained demand and the subsequent packed-out grounds as an indication that the prices are right.
"The attendances so far this season are very encouraging, with more than 95% of seats sold and average crowds tracking with last season's, which were the highest in English top-flight football since 1949-50," said Cathy Long, the Premier League's head of supporter services.
English clubs exist on the whims of those who just happen to be the current custodians of institutions while fans have sustained their clubs for generations and will continue to do so, making it essential for them to be involved in their administration. Again, Dortmund integrates the fans into decision making; The Bundesliga’s "50% plus one" rule requires clubs to be owned by their members. A club run by the fans, for the fans. Westfalenstadion’s almost fanatical atmosphere, the envy of Europe, is unique to them; unlike England football’s transformation into a middle-class pursuit, the club persists in cheap prices precisely to ensure all areas of society are represented in the crowd. When you lose your fans to squabbles over the rising ticket prices, the atmospheres change to lifeless and dull. When you price people out, it isn't the people's game anymore.
Modern English football fawns over the sporting superstar, the household name, but Dortmund remembers that the fan is king. The home of football’s soul needs to reclaim its birthright.
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