Supporting Your Team No Matter What Good Or Bad

Just to start with, I’m not saying people should stop going to watch football and there’s an argument to say that you should support your team no matter the circumstances but in this day of clubs being increasingly run like businesses, with increased revenues for owners/shareholders, is it right?

I think for the corporate employees, fans are turning into mere consumers and as such, can rightly demand high standards given the huge outlay of supporting a football club – we all contribute, whether it’s attending in person, paying huge subscription costs for TV or even those supporters on social media, leading to further expansions of marketing in once smaller markets.

We’ve been conditioned to keep going no matter what – any opposition to this opinion will have you labelled as ‘plastic’, ‘not a real fan’ etc. Our fans take great pride in our attendances in the ‘dark days’ of the 70’s, which was great but it was a different time and I honestly don’t think it would happen nowadays.

It’s not so bad for PL teams, with increased revenue through TV deals meaning even the worst teams can have good players but look at Exeter City – £22 for a seat to next weekend to watch a 4th tier club languishing in 17th place. A good cup result against Liverpool will generate some revenue for a short time that probably won’t be reinvested in the team and their best players could be poached. Give it a few weeks and it’ll be back to being freezing, watching poor football on an awful pitch with a half empty stadium.

I admire those that take pleasure from this and love their club, even with only the occasional modest success but doesn’t it just allow the people running clubs to lack ambition and accept poor performance, without the pressure of having to please their customers?

I watch the NFL/NHL and fans seem a lot more fickle – in essence, if a team are bad, attendances go down. The draft system distributes talent better but they seem to work a lot harder to ensure that markets don’t ‘die’ and when they do, they simply move to a city that wants it. I’m not sure it’s ‘good’ and not that I’d want that as it’s appalling to loyal fans but games are generally more competitive and arguably enjoyable. I feel that football should be doing a lot more to make it competitive and enjoyable for all fans cross multiple leagues, which can only happen if fans use the only power they have – withholding custom.

Anyway, I’ve waffled so nice to hear what other people think…