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Spare tickets, anybody?

5:42pm Thursday, 30th April 2009

There's a famous story about the FA Cup Final that's been told year after year for over a century. It's called, 'Where have all the tickets gone?' It resurfaced again this week with some serious belly-aching in public by leading figures from both finalist clubs, and of course their fans. Everton CEO, Robert Elstone was quoted: 'Everton fans will be forced to buy tickets from touts if they want to watch the FA Cup final against Chelsea'

It's a sad tale inevitably, an epic drama which depicts great longing and suffering by masses of people, but (unlike the match sometimes) it rarely has a 'Hollywood' ending. It's a pity too because over the past 25yrs the story had at least started to move towards a happier conclusion.

When Everton faced Liverpool in the 1986 Final, there were a mere 12,500 tickets allocated to each Club; and yet together they regularly had crowds of over 100,000 fans for league games. It was worse than cruel. It was the first time ever that these two great rivals had faced each other in an FA Cup Final. Generations of fans had dreamed about this occasion - but only a few could get tickets from their Club when it came along.

On the day, grown men wept on the steps of Wembley as the realisation sank in that they could never afford the high prices demanded by the numerous touts in a demand -led market. Inside, half the stadium was blue; the other half red - so clearly many had sold their kitchen appliances and TVs to buy on the black market.

The FA responded to the unmistakeable injustice - and strong representations by the growing independent fan's organisations - by seriously re-examining their allocation system. Since this time, the numbers for Clubs have since grown steadily for some years, but they reached a ceiling once the FA Cup Final returned, finally, to the new Wembley.

One would think that the increase in capacity afforded by one of the biggest and best stadium's in the world would satisfy the fans of each FA Cup finalist. Not so, however, since the availability of tickets these days articulates a core conflict which lies at the heart of the modern football business. The financial reality is that, given the huge capital requirements to construct the new stadium, sponsors, partners, and the more corporate led market were required to pay top dollar to get on board - and they quite naturally want their benefits - including tickets for the great occasions. In addition, 'Club Wembley' premium seats were sold for ten years in advance - and last year some 17,000 Cup Final tickets were issued to them. The very structuring of financing the new stadium meant that contractual requirements would severely limit the FA's ability to respond when two very well supported Clubs reached the Final - which is usually the case these days.

Ask any football club administrator, player or fan whether England should have a National stadium and the answer will be an unequivocal 'yes'. If the only way to finance it is through a complex mix of commercial contracts, meaning the corporate market achieves a higher than normal share of an increased capacity, we suspect the vast majority of football stakeholders would still accept the situation. That is, until their team reached the final of the world's oldest domestic cup competition and the reality of supply and demand kicks in.

So who'd be a football administrator? They will need the wisdom of Solomon to sort this one out. Maybe, the only hope is that the 'football family' (the regional FAs and many other organisations) who also receive tickets will eventually agree to donate their allocations to the clubs when necessary.

However, for supporters of Everton and Chelsea, this year's FA Cup finalists, any solution has come too late and, once again, that is a crying shame.

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