West Ham manager Slaven Bilic has weighed into the debate about ticket pricing after fan protests at Liverpool forced their owners to have a rethink on their pricing strategy.
Slaven told reporters “It is business. Football clubs are business. On the one hand I can understand it, on the other I saw a great picture in the paper of a lady at Anfield with a banner that said ‘I am not a customer, I am a fan’ That is brilliant. “It is like everything in life, you should find the right balance. We are getting a lot of money from TV rights, from this that and the other, so the tickets should be at a good price for the fans. Football is not polo, it is not golf, it is not a sport for the upper class. Football is the most popular sport in the world. It should be affordable.”
“If you go to shop and you want to buy caviar or champagne it costs and there is nothing wrong with that, but bread and milk should be cheap and they are. So in my opinion it should be the same with the price of tickets. “We are a good example because the board and the club are progressing really well with prices for next season. We are going to have the cheapest season tickets, cheap youth tickets and still we are trying. We need money, but not from the ticket sales.”
“It was also a better atmosphere with terracing, but the people who said no more terracing did it for a reason, because it became unsecure. They kept in Germany because of the tradition and it is different if you look at the Dortmund stand or the Hamburg stand, or Gladbach or whoever. Maybe it is a good idea, but only if it is safe. You should keep the fans happy, not only with the quality of the game, but with the pricing of the tickets. Some people will say if you want to go and see a film like Les Miserables, you have to pay, but this is not Les Miserables this is football and it is for everybody.”
