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BC1888

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  1. Great to see other clubs getting on board with this now. I hadn't read anything about Dunfermline fans banner at the weekend so delighted to see that today. Daily record unsurprisingly made a mess of their reporting of St Mirrens banner last night, but seem to have tried to save face with a new one today. (link below) https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/twentys-plenty-campaign-started-celtic-20763352 The absolute best thing is for all fans to get on board and continue protests across grounds, across leagues, across the country.
  2. Theres alot more to it than simply just putting prices down, we do understand that. And we also understand clubs price their tickets as part of their income and thats when the campaign at points will point the finger and ask the question of the SFA/SPFL and not of the clubs. Should we continue to pay the price and help clubs make a profit because the people in charge of our game can't do their job and sell the game properly? You may well be right in saying there is other reasons, but you have to assume lower prices/student prices even family tickets will entice more to make a day of it. IT is daft to say but the price increases and individual prices could be the difference between getting the wains a programme and a pie etc. I read a tweet yesterday from a St Mirren fan who has to put out £81 in the space of 8 days for tickets with Killie, Celtic and Hearts all away. Thats completely unsustainable and there has to be a way clubs can make the games affordable for fans and not affect their income.
  3. A couple reasons for it. We are only in the infancy of the campaign and right now we felt the most important thing to focus on was gathering support from other clubs around Scotland. I think the last thing other fans would want to see is Celtic fans moaning about the prices of a derby which has been diluted by allocation cuts and ticket prices anyway as a starting point. For our display on Saturday as well we felt the games listed carried a bit more weight in shock factor, certainly finding out hamilton were being charged £29 to go to tynecastle and clubs were being charged 30-33(in some cases) to come to Celtic park was a shock to us and the fans around us on Saturday. It’s likely in the future individually we may do something against these prices, but for the mean time it’s a one off ticket price and doesn’t do anything to gather support from where we are looking for it.
  4. Think we are £30. Checked the ticket there but the price isnt printed on the away tickets you guys give us for some reason. Have a note of it being £30 though, a £2 increase from last season.
  5. Saturday saw the continuation of our campaign to lower ticket prices for all fans across Scottish football. This time we took to our own stands to highlight some of the absurd prices fans had to pay and called on our club to "set the trend" when it comes to making ticket prices affordable and inclusive for everyone across the country. We will continue to protest our own club, other clubs and the SFA/SPFL at future games and call on the support of other clubs to join in and do the same.
  6. New Article up on The Atheltic from Kieran Devlin Regarding the campaign. Pay per month website so incoming long post with the article for anyone interested. Before Celtic were held to their 1-1 draw away to Hibs on Saturday, a section of the Celtic support – the fan group Bhoys – displayed a “Twenty’s Plenty” banner, with parts of the stand also peppered by smaller banners featuring the 20mph road sign being elbowed by a pound symbol. It was a protest against rising away ticket prices in the SPFL and marked a continuation from Celtic’s previous away game in the league, at Hamilton, where the same group of supporters presented an “overcharging the fans/underselling the game” banner. The protests both attracted support and provoked criticism from fans of other Scottish clubs. Some agreed with its fundamental message, while others took umbrage with the context around it; essentially contending that the Celtic support should get their own house in order and condemn their own club before condemning others, given Celtic have the most expensive away admittance in the league, with restricted view tickets in excess of £30. On Monday, Bhoys took to Instagram to clarify the campaign’s objective and address the apparent loss in translation: “Football fans in Scotland are forced to continue to pay ever rising ticket prices. Yesterday, Celtic fans were charged £32 for the away match at Hibs. “We will continue to push for a drop in ticket prices for ALL supporters and would encourage fans of ALL teams to lobby their clubs to force a change for the better.” Despite the statement, discord and accusations of hypocrisy continued. In an email to The Athletic, Bhoys outlined the campaign’s ambitions in more detail. “(Celtic’s) first away game at Motherwell was £30, and the first side to visit us at Celtic Park (St Johnstone) were to be charged £32 and £30 for restricted view tickets. In our opinion, pricing tickets for the product on show at £25 or £26 was already an unreasonable financial demand on supporters, never mind hiking costs every season. “When considering the poor public transport system across the country and the price of public travel, your total matchday cost suddenly bypasses the £50 mark. “We have various plans for the rest of the season, including displays at Celtic Park against our own club’s pricing for visiting supporters. There has been some blowback from fans of other clubs because the (displays) have taken place at away grounds and, unfortunately, have been taken out of context as individual criticism of these two clubs about their pricing for Celtic fans only. We had to start somewhere and concluded the best option was these two televised fixtures. “We, the supporters, are our national game’s biggest asset. We cannot stress enough that the campaign is on behalf of all Scottish football fans, across all divisions, who are having their pockets dipped by our leagues and clubs. We are hopeful that supporters of other clubs will join us in our campaign and we can make a difference to pricing.” Although the wealth disparity between Scottish, English and Welsh football is great, with the unavoidable issue of TV money hanging over any points of comparison, there are instructive parallels from down south, with Bhoys saying they’ve been “buoyed by the successes” of a similar campaign in England. Michael Brunskill of the Football Supporters’ Association (previously the Football Supporters’ Federation, which merged with Supporters Direct last year), has seen all the partisan bickering before. He participated in his organisation’s own Twenty’s Plenty For Away Tickets campaign for England and Wales, and recognises the suspicion dividing club fan bases — and the message being lost among the noise — from the original campaign’s own early travails. “It was important to communicate with each other,” Brunskill says, “Between the different fan groups, to prevent resentment, to reach an understanding that fans don’t set the prices and to have a united front.” The success of Twenty’s Plenty stemmed from putting aside tribal loyalties to focus on the bigger picture and the shared injustice being imposed by those from above; the pricing out of the average football fan from the game they love. “Tickets at big clubs can be really expensive but fans themselves of big clubs aren’t rich,” Brunskill argues. “Manchester City may be run by billionaires but a normal fan who lives two miles from the Etihad isn’t rich. It’s not his fault. Everyone was in the same boat.” The campaign, which began in January 2013, called on supporters from all levels of English and Welsh football to lobby clubs to reward the passionate support of away fans with a blanket £20 cap on away ticket prices. The emphasis was on inclusivity and uniformity, to not limit attention to the Premier League’s biggest culprits but focus it on every club asking too much from fans who’d already invested a significant amount of money, and time, into the trip. “There’d been a lot of discussion about fans and ticket prices for a while,” Brunskill says, “In the Premier League but also beyond it, in the Championship and below. Large numbers of Championship supporters were getting mugged off.” Given the rise in fan costs wasn’t exclusive relating to away tickets but also home tickets, food and drink, and perhaps most gallingly for impact on the wallet, rail travel, there was some debate over whether focusing on away ticket prices was the best approach, which Brunskill freely admits. “It wasn’t an overnight success, there were lots of obstacles, and a lot of disagreements as well. Some fans maybe thought the price cap wasn’t the way to go – some thought each fan group targeting their own team and home tickets was best, or going for subsidised travel – whatever benefits we could get. “We felt there was a gap for away fans to push through,” Brunskill continues, “that it was a more efficient way of lobbying clubs. When you’re a supporter of your own club, you’re critical of them and their pricing but it’s different – you’re paying for home ticket prices and it’s a different thing lobbying against your own club than for others, especially since you’re the only ones doing it. “What we found, and it was a steep learning curve, was that it was useless trying to direct it at the league generally or at teams just when your own club is playing that team. It was better directing it one at a time through different fan groups. I felt there was an opportunity for us to act on it, and in a way taking on the clubs one by one through lobbying was better as it focussed us.” The campaign was effectively a war on all fronts. As well as protests inside the stadium, they staged marches and walk-outs, including a march on the Premier League offices in August 2014 under the banner “affordable football for all”. They publicised the campaign and the extortionate specifics, including Arsenal’s £62 tickets at the Emirates for a game against Manchester City in January 2013 in print and radio media, spread the message across fan bases via social media, blogs and fanzines, and utilised guerrilla tactics with relentless phone-calls and emails to people inside the clubs. “We started emailing campaigns,” Brunskill says. “We found that was a way to get past the spam folder. We had board members with their emails clogged. They couldn’t find the email from an agent about a new striker because their email was so full of fans complaining about ticket prices.” Brunskill is keen to stress that there isn’t a simplistic ‘good vs evil’ narrative at play here, that money-hungry executives aren’t hell-bent on squeezing fans for every penny they have. There are many within clubs who are sympathetic to the cause. “It’s also useful having good contacts inside the club, because every club will have people who relate and understand the message and are supportive. There are good people who understand the money issues most fans deal with. Some clubs even started away fans schemes, where they dedicated resources to supporting away fans in whatever way they can.” Gradually, clubs such as Norwich and Swansea agreed to self-enforce away ticket caps, and one by one, the momentum behind the campaign snowballed. Others offered reciprocal pricing arrangements, including Cardiff, Derby and Liverpool. The Liverpool fans’ group Spirit of Shankly, which campaigned separately from the FSF but with corresponding sentiments, adopted one of the axioms of Celtic’s European Cup-winning manager Jock Stein for a protest walk-out against rising season ticket prices: “football is nothing without fans”. More than an inspirational one-liner for Facebook cover photos, it captured the defiance of both the Spirit of Shankly and the FSF campaigns, the indelible certainty and absolute truth that the business of football is in service to the interests of fans, and not vice versa. Implicit in the line is the sense of collective: “fans.” Meaning all fans. Every fan. In March 2016, it was announced that at the start of the 2016-17 season, away ticket prices would be capped at £30 for top-flight fans for the next three seasons. Although some argue that the Premier League’s lucrative £5 billion TV deal at the time greased the wheels of the cap’s enforcement, and point out it was still £10 above what the campaign demanded. There was also no agreed cap for the Football League. Yet, the legwork was only done, and the cap achieved, because fans grouped together to affect change. “It wasn’t quite £20 but it was nice getting that cap,” Brunskill argues. “The most important thing was persistence and unity, and over time, the Premier League did listen and there were some executives that realised fans were more than just part of the balance sheets. “In a way, it’s about picking your battles because this ticket price cap is only a small reduction in costs for a full day or weekend trip, but one that means a lot.” It was announced in February of this year that the £30 cap that the FSF helped bring in would be extended for another three seasons. Meanwhile, in August, UEFA agreed to cap away tickets for the Champions League and Europa League this current season, a maximum of 70 euros and 45 euros respectively. The decision stemmed from protests galvanised by Manchester United fans being asked to cough up £100 for tickets to the away leg of their Champions League quarter-final against Barcelona last season. There are many precedents proving Bhoys’ campaign can force change, and grassroots action appears the most viable vehicle for confronting the disparity between fans’ disposable incomes and ticket costs. Though the UK’s real wages – salaries adjusted for inflation – have shown a marginal increase in 2019, that has arrived after more than a decade of wage stagnation, during which time the cost of match tickets has outpaced the salaries of ordinary football fans. In 2011, according to the BBC’s annual Price of Football study, the average cheapest season ticket in the Scottish top-flight was £228.91, compared to £302.42 in 2017. Likewise, the average cheapest away ticket was £18.92 in 2011, and £22.83 in 2017. With the 2019 Price of Football findings due later this year, the increases since 2017 are expected to be high. The Price of Football survey has on multiple occasions over the past 10 years recorded that UK ticket prices have grown at double the rate of the cost of living. Bhoys’ Twenty’s Plenty Campaign is intended to address this unfairness but as Brunskill advises, for it to succeed it needs an agreed message across all of Scottish football, and an agreed plan for collective action. Nothing positive can happen without Scottish fan groups deciding on a united front. “Fans of different teams have to stick together,” he asserts, “because if you do get into the ground or are facing executives, it’s important to have a clear, together message. “It’s really important fans don’t splinter. Solidarity is the best thing to have on your side.”
  7. Can see this point, but we thought the risk of some poor first impressions was outweighed by getting a decent media response and as with the previous post we feel vindicated with the BBC post and current communication we have received. All we can hope for is the plans we have for this month at Celtic park will put the ill feelings to bed and we are extremely positive about these and looking forward to it. The communication from the likes of yourself and other supporters is key and can only thank you for getting involved in the discussion and giving us something else to think about.
  8. As said, i couldnt agree more. In fact it was the first thing we spoke about when planning. However, it just wouldnt work the Celtic support and really isnt a viable option unfortunately. For it to work we would need all current hardcore to agree to take their tickets for the game (Paying the price were protesting) then not going. I wish it was as simple, but there are too many Celtic fans who have only recently started attending who would take the opportunity to boost their records and f**k the whole thing.
  9. Just noticed this post after i replied to your other, so apologies as i replied RE palace when you have went into detail about it on this post. We completely agree with you RE protesting our own club. We will be the first to admit the price at Celtic park is scandalous and it is widely viewed as the worst experience in Scotland. All i can say for this is simply watch this space. We had to start somewhere, and a simple small banner at Hamilton was circulated round by the BBC and similarly after our display V Hibs we have been contacted by a couple outlets to discuss further and have something published. As for the fans point this is something we understand only too well. In fact i'll be the first to say there isn't a club in Scotland outwith Celtic who i have even a smidgen of positivity about. However, i am also adult enough to know when somethings not right, and being charge £32/30 pound per ticket isn't right for anyone and would hope, even if out of pure selfishness for their own pocket, that this is something other fans can get on board with. The TV deal with them is perhaps the only reason the league decided to cap it, again would be hard to argue with you there. However, it gives us a couple avenues to go down in terms of Scotland, and its avenues we will venture down. We can both pull up clubs for the pricing, but also the league for forcing the prices with underselling our game. Perhaps as you say, it is doomed to fail. But i can tell you i would much rather put everything we have into it and fail than sit back and let the increasing prices happen every season and do f**k all about it other than pay the money and have a moan to my mates. As i mentioned previously, this is just the beginning of our campaign and we will learn as the days and weeks and protests/displays pass and hopefully we will start to see other clubs follow our lead. This isnt a single club issue, and we wont be able to make a difference without the support of other fan bases.
  10. To a certain extent its hard to disagree. Would it work? Undoubtedly so. But as i posted above, speaking purely for my own support, it simply wouldn't happen. And were clubs to boycott Celtic Park/Ibrox, would the clubs care? Sadly i doubt it. As i posted above, this does not need to be the action that gets us as Scottish football supporters what we need. Crystal palace fans ran a successful campaign in England without boycotting. We hope to replicate their success whilst similarly not planning any actions supporters would not buy into.
  11. Our next action will take place at Celtic park. We foresaw a conversation taking place about the first two actions being done at away grounds, but two lunchtime televised kick offs for us was the ideal place to start. We aim to make a difference, but we are aware this needs coverage and needs to start a conversation too. Unfortunately this is less likely to happen with a 3 o'clock kick off at Celtic Park, so hopefully you can see why we started with Hamilton and Hibs (it wasn't a case of pinpointing these two clubs, it needed a starting point and anywhere outwith Celtic Park was likely to have this response) Our next action is planned for Celtic Park this month, with further protests aimed at our own club at Celtic throughout the season. I have stated a couple times on this thread, but are are extremely aware we are one of the most expensive away tickets, and generally viewed as the worst away day experience too. We are looking forward to this hopefully quieting those who think it is solely aimed at clubs outwith ourselves and gathering more support for the issue. In terms of a boycott that a few have mentioned, we have discussed this amongst ourselves a number of times, and the short answer is it just wont happen. We are a relatively small group, so if we were to arrange one ourselves, 30-50 seats empty either wouldn't be noticed, or would be snapped up elsewhere anyway. There isn't an appetite amongst the Celtic support anyway to boycott games, and even if the hardcore who do go every week were to have their arm twisted there would be many more right in behind seeing it as a chance to better their record. We don't believe fans should have to miss a game because of ticket prices. Loyalty shouldn't be taken advantage of (fans not customers etc.) Also worth noting that Palace were able to implement this down south without any boycotts. Eventually it is likely it will lead to ore than "bits of paper in the air and bringing banners to game" but this is a campaign a few weeks into the making. We are currently the only club with a vocal and visual voice on the matter, the more clubs that involve themselves the more pressure we can all put on our clubs and the league.
  12. Saturday Saw the second of our displays protesting ticket pricing across the whole of Scotland for ALL Scottish football fans . Football fans in Scotland are continually forced to pay ever rising ticket prices. We will continue to push for a drop in prices for ALL supporters and would encourage fans of other teams to join us and lobby their clubs to force a change for the better. This has been picked up again a bit on social media by some journalists. Unfortunately there is still some supporters completely missing the point and thinking we are only referencing Celtic fans. I can't stress enough this to be any further from the truth. I'd like to thank everyone again on this thread for the continued help and information and if people can keep giving myself information about the prices they are being charged for away tickets, it would be greatly appreciated.
  13. If we were to purely put it down football allegiance, its easy enough to say who cares what other fans pay. But taking a sidestep from that, its something all fan bases need to unite upon, if for nothing else other than it eventually benefiting your pocket. Are we all to just shut up and pay it? If not now, when clubs are paying £30 and over when? Does it become a real issue for some when clubs start charging £50?
  14. Have you not been paying attention? This is nothing to do with Celtic being charged whatever for going to away games, and had you bothered to read any of this thread, or the post you replied to, you would have noticed that. This isnt a single club issue, and if you were able to remove the chip off your shoulder you might notice that. Lets take Celtic out of the equation altogether. Should Hamilton be paying £29 to go to tynecastle? Should St Johnstone be paying £25 to go to the Tony Macaroni arena, and again £26 for Pittodrie? The fact of the matter is, that clubs are increasing their price season after season (in our own case, roughly £2 per season) because our League are unable to bring in enough interest in our game and sell a decent TV and league sponsorship deal. If your happy to sit by and watch ticket prices rise season after season because a section of fans broke a few hundred flimsy pieces of plastic and youre still upset about it, be my guest. But regardless, football fans in this country are having the piss taken out of them, and clubs (i cannot stress this enough, INCLUDING MY OWN) are pricing fans out of attending games.
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